On Nov 24, 2008, at 8:40 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Nov 23, 2008, at 3:12 PM, Bhairitu wrote:
Unfortunately the movement often pushed meditating when
people should have stopped for a while because they were
burning out. Stopping would have allowed more progress.
A crucial but often missed insight.
Also, it is not to be overlooked that the *reason*
the only advice the TMO gave was "Something good is
happening" and "Keep meditating," or "Meditate more"
is that they had *no other advice to give*. There
was no mechanism in place (or even, as far as I
could tell) with dealing with issues that commonly
arise among meditators.
The reason there was no such mechanism is that the
dogma promoted about TM (that it was "100% life
supporting" and could not *possibly* have any neg-
ative side effects) made it counter-intuitive to
have any remedy when those statements were proven
false.
And this is the danger of "canned" meditation checking procedures,
they ignore the fact that everything changes. So the minute you set
it into stone, it's already on the path to being obsolete. While
canned or mechanical learning can often cover a majority of student
meditators, there will always be a subset who could miss the correct
instruction. Less important when you're teaching just a few people,
but vitally important when your goal is to mass-produce meditators
who keep meditating. It's also the reason there is an advantage to
learning from an experienced meditation master or someone with a lot
of experience: they don't need to give pat answers from a memorized
list, they give answers based on the road they've already travelled.
I recently was invited to attend a weekend basic training in
meditation with a close, life-long friend in the Shambhala tradition.
It was probably the most impressive basic meditation instruction I've
ever witnessed as the teacher was a 30+ year veteran who spoke from
his own considerable experience. They operate under the basic
assumption that intro meditation is the most difficult to teach so
the Shambhala people only authorize their most advanced teachers for
the first level. For a weekend starting with an open friday night
lecture with breakfast Saturday and Sunday, lunch on Saturday,
afternoon tea and a reception gourmet feast on graduation Sunday the
course was only 100 dollars.
Most interesting was seeing the unity experiences people began having
right away, in that short weekend; young college students, college
professors, old folks, a blind lady with her guide dog. Lots of time
to interview privately with the teacher(s) and small group
discussions as well as along with the whole group.
