Hey Curtis: On Jan 5, 2008, at 12:44 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
This is really interesting topic Vaj. I'll have to give it more thought. I also read the article you posted by Wallace. (before zipping off to Parez Hilton's site to check on any Britney updates. I'm deep like that!)
Leave Britney alone!
I've been spending a little time with Jon Kabat-Zinn's books and occasionally sit for about 15 minutes or so doing a version of his meditation, sort of noticing the breathing like a mantra and letting myself sink into silence. I find that the centering effect lasts and a little goes a long way for how I want to balance my awareness. It feels good, but I can't imagine wanting to do a long program as I did in TM again. I am enjoying approaching meditation from a more value free perspective. I suspect this is the place many long term mediators who still practice but aren't into the belief view it. Not as a path to anything, but just something that feels good. I'm trying to be open minded about meditation having a place in my life as a mental resource, but it is a work in progress and I haven't really made up my mind.
It's a good thing to have no beliefs about meditative tech and it's ensuing states, etc. Being totally completely open and relaxed seems more important to me.
I don't connect it with any of my previous beliefs about higher states or experiencing truth or my big Self. I think of it as a channel option of my awareness. But even from this very limited use, I can relate to the 9 stages article as describing what I experience. When I was way into meditation and devoted a lot of time to it, I could delineate very fine aspects of my inner experience. But I have lost that level of interest.
I see the whole Pure Consciousness trip as being really the Consciousness skandha or an aggregate arising out of something that is an agreed upon and mutually reinforced illusion.
I think science has the same problems in psychology with finding language that allows someone to describe internal states. Same in music really. I am currently having interesting discussions with my singing teacher about how I can use my awareness and attention to communicate more in my music. We run into the imprecision of descriptions all the time.
In the case of meditative observation of various stages and stages, it's like any other science in that if you want to do a certain thing, in a truly scientific manner, you have to do so with the correct instruments for what we wish to do. You don't study cells with a magnifying glass, you use a microscope. When you explore meditative states and their ensuing stages, you can look at it with discursive thought--but we do much better if we can have total ascertainment of whatever it is we're grokking at a very stable POV, where discursive BS does not touch or slides off like teflon. The Tibetans say the mind becomes "pliable" once it attains pure attention, like you'd work a dough in your hands, supple. It's this type of instrument we need to really begin our study.
In training the voice I sometimes try to imagine myself taking on the sound of an another instrument or an animal, that way I can use attention in a way that doesn't lose the natural feel of spontaneity. But having said that, I'm by no means a great singer, very average or worse.
Your point about how people are developing a more precise vocabulary is very interesting. I guess it is still a work in progress. Once a person is in a meditative state their ability to feel the meaning of a word is enhanced. I just don't know if it is possible to tell if the person is just applying the words to their experience or are able to tell if they are reaching the described state.
IME a minimum of words and terms are used. It's kept very simple, but there is a few that are best kept in original lingo, whatever that might be. And some like "prana" or "karma" are already common terms. In terms of meditation practice, one is just often given a starting practice, little tech-speak needed if any and if the student wishes nothing further, it ends there. Those who wish to go further might learn more tech-speak, but it's really completely unnecessary if you have good instructors, guiding you based on your experiences, rather than having the sadhana have any special value per se. We grow, our practices change. You don't need to have a cosmology or some huge complement of techno-speak since the practices are really rather simple.
Conversely if you do want all the techno-speak you can handle, it's there as well--esp. if you enjoy learning another language. But we also needn't be surprised at such a thing as any specialty is bound to have it's own lingo just as well.
What do you think of Jon Kabat-zinn's perspective on secular meditation?
I rather enjoy what he has done. I was impressed in him since I first heard of him on the 60 Minutes (or one of those TV magazine shows) did a segment on him. Since that show (probably a decade ago) he's now specializing in more high-end customers. He was even more interesting when I saw who his parents were.
-V.
