I will soon embark on a fire kasina retreat. I've been digesting several resources including "the fire kasina" book by DM and Shannon Stein. I wrote down important points as I went through it that I thought might be helpful to read as I begin or if I need reminders throughout my upcoming retreat. I figured I'd share this brief summation of the book with y'all, and definitely encourage one to read the book itself to get the a more complete picture if you're going to take on fire kasina on retreat. A number of other great resources are at https://firekasina.org/.
*Some of what I wrote is word for word, some is my paraphrasing*
Fire Kasina Retreat:Keep eye muscles loose and relaxed. experiment with not closing eyes too tight. Can experiment with eye mask and seeing visuals in darkness with eyes open if eyes are becoming too tense.
Use mantra with visuals / fire kasina throughout whole day, even off cushion.
Can do walking mediation with eyes closed or faintly closed, especially in beginning. Later on, you can gauge concentration by how well you can keep the after image with your eyes open. Can also just tune into changing spacial field in general as you move / transition between things.
Later in the retreat, maybe past day five, if you are inclined towards magick, you can find a darker space, perhaps at night-time, and begin trying to draw visuals in the air. Enjoy this practice as mindful expression if it is helpful and continue concentration on the visuals that are produced.
whatever magical experiences pursued must be done with strong mind/concentration and clear intentions. fill the whole universe with the intention you set, then let it go, let it happen. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s normal to get frustrated, try to be accepting and open.
May consider audio recording after each day or half-day for the sake of post-reflection or sharing experience with others embarking on the same journey.
1st jhana - red dot, small, initially unstable, have to make an effort to stare at and maintain.
2nd jhana - red dot shows itself naturally in the center of attention with shimmering detail, outlined with thin colors, dot still 2d, ‘happiness born of concentration’
3rd jhana - attention goes wide, starting the murk, initial swaths of rich color, many sub-phases within it as attention develops. beginning of subtle 3d shapes and can develop to rich, complex images; some sense of more space and depth. Can be a lot of Cooler bliss in the third jhana.
4th jhana - clear, luminous alive images, like living daydreams but much more clear, and the bliss is gone. a somehow pleasant neutrality prevails, and the mantra may go silent. 3d visuals may be magnificent, unbelievable. substantial sense of spaciousness, body sensations may vanish, vibrations drop off, attention may totally buy into dream-like realms.
be prepared for patient repetition. do not rush things, just attend to what is there, there is how concentration grows. there may be themes and similar patterns displaying. just attend to it and trust the process. keep noticing the fine details of what is occurring in the visual field.
‘get yourself out of the way’ and the let the act of perceiving become an intimate connection with the details of the field.
Forgetting / losing the mantra and becoming mesmerized in the color is a good thing if it happens naturally. it’s important for deeper concentration, it means less striving for something, and just relaxing into the magnetism. Set up intentions for what the colors will do before hand before you get deep into things.
the hyper realistic images come in forth jhana and are more fragile. Getting into fourth jhana is as if suddenly you notice you are dreaming. The transition into it comes after a weird period of spacing out and relaxation, which allows the shift to occur.
really keep concentration consistent, don’t let up, it’s fragile and will diminish quickly.
When restless one can
- totally power down all controls and try to just sit passively, this kind of floating can restore an imbalance regarding tranquility.
- You may be sitting too long, trying walking or going outside in nature. Becoming physically grounded will likely help the sits.
Keep going vertical up the jhana/insight stages until deep into 4th jhana. Later, in the review phase, you will be more confident, safer, and find it easier to go horizontal and see jhana to nana correlations.
For fruition, setting an intention to see the entranceways to the three doors can be helpful. This helps gain insight when reflecting back later on how to enter again. The three doors will take anything as object. One cannot generally choose the specific door, but one can increase odds for the no-self door such as by intending to collapse into the luminous eyes of a tantric image, recognizing its intelligence is your integlience.
After a fruition, instead of going back to the beginning of the insight cycle, one can go back into fruition, using the clarity and power of the afterglow of fruition to help.
If seeing a grey visual field, that is completely okay. stay with it. it’s its own fusion of color - white and black an all colors. it initially feels wrong to stay with the grey, but its not.
repeated fruitions are normal to grow softer and feel less satisfying over multiple repeated fruition’s, back-to-back. After a fruition, most have a hard time recognizing what happened at the entrance into one of the three doors. Look for very rapid, discreet mind moments.
After fruition, the coming back on-line is a sort of ‘orientation’. Quickly, all the parts we think are us reassemble. there is a perceptual configuring of a ‘this over here’ and a ‘that over there’. Eventually, you should try to notice exactly how that happens and how the illusion of this side and that side split off and what goes on each side.
If practice is feeling out-of-balance, keep the seven factors of awakening in mind and see what you may be missing.
