On Nov 17, 2006, at 1:46 PM, sparaig wrote:
--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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".
You've got a different definition of transcending than the
researchers into TM have.
There's no decision-making to reduce activity of the thalamus.
Your body just spontaneously goes and sits down to meditate?
That actually explains a lot.
