I would prefer not to burn a candle indoors. How would a yellow disc or square work? The reason I chose that symbol is because with yogic practices that are part of my routine, I often will witness a yellow disc in the visual field, or a bindu, a dot. In fact, when these appear within the mind's eye, why not just use these phenomena, which are naturally occurring anyway, as a kasina?

did you not know that kasina practices, as recorded in the old texts, were done with a coloured disc? did you not know that those practices, as recorded in the old texts, led to similar appearances in the mind's eye?

a couple links to modern sri lankan commentaries on/explications of this:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/gunaratana/wheel351.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanatiloka/wheel394.html - under part 4, 'mental cultures'

No I did not know either of those facts you wrote about, though that would all be consistent with my intuition on this matter. And thanks for the links. And lastly, do you have any personal commentary on such from your own sadhana?

Further clarification: Due to yoga practices, a ring or dot appears during meditation. Now, after reading Practicing The Jhanas I question the utility of doing all the various kasina practices with various kasinas. If there is some benefit above and beyond just continuing the naturally occurring imagery, I would embark on all of that, but would need to get some encouragement from you as to the benefit of all of that. After reading Daniel's book, Practicing the Jhanas, and The path of Serenity and Insight, I conclude that I have been entering the material and immaterial jhanas for many years, with daily Nirodha meditative state as well. So would the formal series of kasina meditation/visualizations be of any particular benefit? Thanks in advance to any advanced meditators, Arahats, or Buddhas who might be in a good position to advise.
(And parenthetically,now that I think about it, who is to say who is a Buddha and who is an Arahat anyway. Isn't such a distinction presumptuous, nonproductive, and dangerous from the conceit issues involved?)

Hey, I would love to hear descriptions of what you have been going through and entering in your practice, if you are interested, descriptions of the phenomenological sort, actually what you are feeling, experiencing, and then how interpret or label those.

Nirodha, you say, meaning Nirodha aka Fruition or Nirodha aka Nirodha Samapatti?

As to using every object and every kasina and skipping around jhanas and all that, that's fun and interesting, but more interesting is finishing the thing up, aka permanent untangling the knot of perception.

As to who is to say someone is a an arahat or a Buddha or whatever, there are good reasons to have criteria and to attempt to apply them to reality, as maps and those sorts of related technologies can help people progress, know what to look for, avoid stopping short of their full potential, and have a way to communicate experiences to others and discuss things that help, realizing that all of that is not always a perfectly clean process, but it is better than what happens when people flounder around in the dark on their own unable to discuss these things with a wider community and thus get external reference points and the like.

i trained in the jhanas by developing bliss and tranquility via the refinement of subtle bodily, and then mental, sensations. by the time i was encouraged to try kasina practices by someone proficient in them, i had already gotten my jhanas as hard as i needed them to be, and as i had by then also learnt how to enter jhanas directly (by entering directly into their factors), i lost interest in learning alternate methods of arriving to them.



they would be of benefit if you want to learn how to make your jhana harder, better, faster, stronger.