Steve; I don't know whether if you are familiar with the meditation book "The Blooming Of A Lotus" by TNH. This was my very first introduction into meditation. I recommend it to everyone who is not familiar with the subject. It's a book of a range of exercises with the purpose of healing and transformation. They are guided meditations to better to be done in a sangha. Amongst the exercises there are some pretty good visualisation over getting old, sickness, death, impermanence.....Amongst this visualisations there is one very moving and that is the one of visualisation of seeing first one as a five years old child....then one father as five years old....then one mother as five years old...This meditation have brought tears to all of us who have done for first time. It was amazing the first time we did this one during a retreat with my sangha. I recall it as amongst the most moving experience had with the sangha at that time. Do mind that the Scotts are very reserve people and that seeing them expressing themselves in such courageous openness was an overwhelming experience. Agree with you Steve and we have to be opened as different ways of meditation are for different purposes. For instance I entered a couple of years ago into just sitting down. This could be well change at any time. There is no better or worse methods here but just whatever help us to be in contact with reality at different periods, moments in our lives. Mayka --- On Sun, 10/4/11, SteveW <[email protected]> wrote:
From: SteveW <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] Re: Buddhist meditation practices To: [email protected] Date: Sunday, 10 April, 2011, 2:58 --- In [email protected], Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote: > > STeve, > Â > If you say 'insight awareness', vipassana may fall into that category, > doesn't it? > Â > Anthony > > Hi Anthony. Yes. But I have noticed that vipassana can take widely divergent > forms. What I am referring to is any type of open witnessing of phenomena as > they arise and pass away. Single-point concentration, of course, can involve > any number of objects of concentration. IMO, open witnessing forms of > meditation lead to insight, whereas single-point concentration leads to > mental stability. Both are useful in their own right. I don't have much > practical experience with visualization, but I can see where that could be > quite useful. Neurological research has shown that the brain's neurological > wiring will react to a vivid and intense visualization in the same way as it > reacts to an actual experience. IMO. Steve
