Any advice welcome!

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Mitchell K Hardy, modified 10 Years ago at 9/24/13 3:49 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/24/13 3:49 PM

Any advice welcome!

Posts: 7 Join Date: 4/8/13 Recent Posts
Hi,
I have been meditating for a while now. My focus has been on Concentration, but I am seriously considering going for 1st Path.

I am a student, and I work part-time, but I have 5 hours of free-time for a few days per week. Do you think this is enough for SE?

Also, any advice on shifting from Samatha to Vipassana? Seems like I can pretty decently hit 1st jhana, and occasionally touch on 2nd and 3rd.

Lastly, when it comes to walking meditation I have some motivational/technique problems. How many hours did you do walking meditation before you started to observe progress?
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/24/13 6:51 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/24/13 6:51 PM

RE: Any advice welcome!

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
The best thing to do is both a sitting practice and a daily life practice. In the end you want to tell the difference between spacing out into daydreams over likes and dislikes (stress) and paying attention to your bare experience in the body (less stress). It's very easy to get good on the cushion but if you can't take it with you in daily life you'll be disappointed. It's also important to identify things or activities that consistently cause you stress but are meaningless and remove them from your life. It's good to end bad relationships where they influence you in a bad way (hopefully you don't have any). Try to defuse conflicts before they start and practice right speech with others. Eg. Don't gossip. A lot of this basic stuff will make it easier for you to develop mental peace.

Keep up your concentration work and use it as a resting place for when you get too tired or need a rest from mindfulness. I would also include a metta practice since it goes up to the 3rd jhana and you say you can get there, because it can also soften the blow of investigating your psyche. Insight practice weans you off dopamine addiction but you can give yourself some hits along the way with concentration practices. If you want to fade your senses with concentration to test whether consciousness is permanent or not and to become dispassionate with all the mindstates you'll need to have really really good concentration to do this. Concentration is a conditioned skill so if you stop it completely it will atrophy. Of course that is the point in the long run is to not need much meditation anymore but in the mean time concentration can be helpful and fun.