On Nov 17, 2006, at 11:40 AM, Marek Reavis wrote:
Reading Sparaig's excerpt from the Shamatha teacher, it seemed to me to be, in essence, a verbose description of what Maharishi was able to succinctly capture in his teaching of an effortless meditation. But even Maharishi described his meditation, in the beginning days of his mission, as a form of mind control. That conceptual paradigm was/is a long-established one and, reading that description (of Shamatha) from the vantage point of a long-time TMer, it seems to be describing (albeit kind of complicatedly) correct meditation to me.
Interesting.
The problem for the person being presented with that description of meditation would seem to be how to figure out, from all that wordage, that all you need to do is effortlessly think/use the object of meditation (whatever that would be in the Shamatha tradition) and whenever you were aware that you were no longer thinking/using the object of meditation, to quietly come back to it in the same, natural way that you think any other thought. Just effortless thinking. Effortless effort.
A couple of things: in terms of meditation practice anytime you fail to maintain the transcendent and are back in thoughts, the process, intentional or unconsciously due to engrained repetition, this does (in terms of meditation) constitute subtle effort. In Shamatha this process of not being yet in effortless meditation is called "patching", where we don't judge the fact that we are in thoughts, but just return to the object of meditation easily and simply. This actually represents about the 3rd stage of Shamatha.
True effortless meditation in Shamatha is sitting to meditate, deciding to meditate a certain amount of time and then transcending the entire session: one inward stroke, one outward stroke. No "patching".
It's a situation somewhat parallel to reading Nisargadatta. All his books are just transcriptions of questions and answers from his satsangs. His words and teachings are so clear to me (as a long-time meditator), but you read how the people posing the questions (oftentimes) just don't seem to understand what it is he's telling them to do. When I started practicing his instructions re self- inquiry it was like turning on a light -- so easy, so simple, so Self evident. But I wouldn't have gotten any of that (I don't believe) unless I had the experiential background that Maharishi and my meditation practice has provided.
You might enjoy Nisargadatta's only work written in his own hand. It's on the web for free.
