Anyone worth their weight in meditation will tell you there's only one rule.

Never lose your moment. No suttas, no jhanas, no teacher, no practice journals, only your one moment. You have your meditation object, whatever it may be, and you never lose it.

You wanna travel fast? That's what you do. If all posts on this forum were replaced with the above statement little would be lost.


That being said... if I were pushed to say one more thing it would be this:

Share your merits.

1) Share your merits with your teacher, whoever you learned dhamma from and with your lineage. If you do this wonderful things will happen. The force will be on your side, deceased arahants will come help you meditate, your energetic knots will unty ect.

If you do not do this your progress will falter and the bandwith at which you receive dhamma will shrink. I had to learn this the hard way.

2) Share merit with your parents and whoever has helped you in general. You owe them a very large dhammic debt

3) Share your merits with everyone

4) Apologize to those you've harmed, forgive those who've harmed you.

If you do these things there will be VERY real implications that will happen in your life.

You don't have to make a big deal about it. Just pick one or two of the above each night before you go to sleep and spend 15 seconds with it. if you can really feel the gratitude that is best but if you don't simply going through the motions is fine. The merit will go where it naturally needs to.


-d

Massively motivating, Blue, thanks. However many times 'be here now' has been said, and by however many people, I find it easy to drift away from.

Would you care to talk in any more detail about your comments on sharing merit? What do you mean by bandwidth? Are you talking about grace, ultimately?

In terms of my own practice, perhaps it's time to start practicing metta seriously - it always strikes me as a powerful practice but I never think to do it.

So, umm, how do you share merit? What do you say

Look at the bottom page of this text:
http://www.dhammasukha.org/Study/Books/Metta_Booklet.htm

Simon

Merit is just good karma.



Even better than "be here now" is to be with your meditation object at all times. Nothing will progress you faster. Half your attention on life, half on your meditation object, whatever it may be... breathe, body sensations, ect (I don't know how you'd do it with noting). Eventually it will take off on its own and will happen effortlessly.




Say who you are thanking and then be silent and give it a little time, about 10 seconds. Then do the same thing with another person. The more you can feel the emotion of gratitude the stronger it will be, but if you don't feel much that is fine as well.

By saying these things you automatically start the energetic process in your body of giving merit. You may even have certain tensions in your body released by because you have corrected an imbalance. Don't worry about the process, the merit will flow naturally where it needs to go the most.

So once again. Thank your dhamma teacher/lineage, thank dhamma in general, thank your parents, and anyone who has helped you



Stick with your insight practice with a couple minutes of metta after each session. Insight is much stronger than metta.



No people exist. There is no one individual. It is just a giant energetic ecosystem with constant giving and receiving between beings. Merit is energetic currency. You need to pay back the people who have helped you, it is very beneficial for you.




We have a rate at which we progress in Dhamma. This rate will reduce if you withdraw too much without giving back thanks.

Thanks, Blue.

Thank you for helping my practice. This post resonated with me a lot.

"(O Monks) the first rule of Dhamma club is that YOU do not talk about Dhamma club."

sorry, obvious gag

Good to know, sounds easier than is.
Very helpful, thanks.
SN

good reminder j

Very useful advice, thank you!