Hi DhO,
I'm new here, this is my first thread. I've been a buddhist for about 6 months now, and I've been meditating regularly for that long as well.
Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking with two bona fide Theravada monk about meditation. He really gave me some food for thought and I thought I'd share it with the people here.
We began by talking with one monk about the sermon he had given at the International Budhhist worship service that had just ended. he explained how in this sermon, he had stuck to very simple concepts - the five precepts - because, as he explained, people had to begin with simple concepts and work there way up, As he put it "I couldn't just start talking about, for example, vipassana because how could they understand that if they didn't understand the five precepts?"
When he mentioned vipassana, I brought up the fact that I had been practicing vipassana earlier that day. I told the monk I had been reading the Samipatthana Sutta. At this point, the monk next to him joined the conversation: "Yes," he said, "Samipatthana is good, but what is important is that you start with tranquility - with samatha." He was adamant that a meditator would get nowhere with vipassana (which he equated with samipatthana) unless they already were adept in samatha practicing - in establishing tranquility.
But he went on to describe what he considered the goal of mindfulness of the body:
"You have to be aware of every single hair on your arm," he told me - an example I found compelling.
"Wow," I exclaimed, "I've never thought about the hairs before! That's genius."
"Yes," the monk replied with a smile, "that is the example we often use. It's what we call [this term was pali or something but I don't remember it], which means... um... how do you say it... 'nuclear'. It's like you have a magnifying glass on every single cell in your body, viewing them all at a nuclear [i.e. subatomic] level." He seemed to feel that this was the level of mindfulness that you needed to establish in order to move on to higher stages of insight into the nature of phenomena.
I just thought it'd be interesting to recount this here because, although Im new here, I get the feeling that this can be a somewhat vipassana-centric community - although that may be only because there's more to 'talk about' regarding vipassana.
