The Meditation Pages: Part 1
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( 4 ) The MEDITATION pages Part 1.
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NEW to BUDDHIST-Styles of MEDITATION ? • Learning Quotes about Meditation • Names in use for our Buddhist Meditation-style. • What about more Experienced Meditators ? • Poetic Analogies illustrating Meditation • Excellent DEFINITIONS of MEDITATION • How Insight Awareness Meditation Works To read Here just begin to SCROLL ▼DOWN ~ currently ~ please always phone to confirm the current evening of the week The “BUDDHISM” Class Vipassana Insight Meditation “The PATH OF NO EXPECTATIONS” A Path of Very Abundant ‘Practice Opportunities’ • OPEN Newcomer's Night with Akasa Levi • LIMITED Study-Group Nite with core-students 7:30 - 9:30 PM • Santa Monica • 310-450-2268 Best phone times – on any day – Noon to 6pm
Join our OPEN Ongoing Classes at Any Time |
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" Mindfulness meditation is 'practicing' how to fully experience being in the present moment "
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Seeing better in Silence
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To study the Buddha-Way is to study the Self.
To study the self - is to forget the self.
To forget the self - is to be Enlightened
by the Ten Thousand Dharmas.
To be Enlightened by the
Ten Thousand Dharmas is to be Free of
one's body and mind and those of others.
Even no trace of Enlightenment remains,
and this Traceless Enlightenment
is continued forever. . . .
~ Dogen, 1200 -1253 'Enlightenment as Everyday Life'
Only the 'idea' of a Self remains
Floating on a sea of cells –
Only heartbeats short of Eternity
In breath after breath only do we dwell.
~ Mike Garofalo 'Above the Fog'
The Lotus has its roots in the mud,
Grows up through the dirty deep water,
And rises to the surface.
It blooms into perfect beauty
and purity in the sunlight.
It is like the mind unfolding
into perfect joy and wisdom.
~ The Lotus Sutra
All human 'evil' comes from merely this:
a man's being unable to sit still in a room.
~ Blaise Pascal – 1654
Solitude is such a beautiful thing !
but it really needs someone to tell you
that 'solitude' is such a beautiful thing.
~ Honore de Balzac – 1840
Buddhist • Vipas’sana • Insight • Awareness
Sati-pat’thana • Mindfulness • Meditation Practice
These are the various Names in use that our Buddhist Meditation
is often referred to. It is a Silent Sitting-style 'Yoga of The Mind'.
Gradually training yourself to just Sit Still. Attentively ‘Mindful’ of the flow of the mind-process.
Watching – Witnessing – Observing without Reacting. Softly allowing Stillness to overcome you.
A “Dharma Satsang” is a Sangha-Group Discussion or Dialogue on Meditation & Dharma Practice.
We will also help you understand the ancient sacred psychologies of the basic Indian root-traditions
of traditional Buddhist Vipassana, Hindu Raj Yoga, Advaita Jnana Yoga, Tibetan Dzogchen practice,
and the wonderfully irrational Zen practices with a touch of pithy Tao. Thought that characterizes Asia.
“People ask me what I’m doing these days, and I tell them ‘I sit at home a lot’ and they think
I’m on a big sofa somewhere watching the tely - funny isn’t it” ( the meditators erupt in laughter )
~ John Lennon from a talk at Zen Center of NYC 1979. John was a long-time meditator.
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☼ NEW to BUDDHIST-styles of MEDITATION ?
Beginners are very welcome ! You will be very patiently guided.
Make One Evening a Week your 'Meditation Class Night'
Your ‘Quiet Time’ for Meditation Instruction & Dharma
may actually be the very best way to sincerely begin –
a steady 6-Week Group Class + ½ hour Sittings at Home.
Beginners: There will be careful Guided Instruction & tips
to help you refine your ‘Silent Sitting’ in Awareness Practice.
" Meditation helps to keep us from so
identifying with our own 'movies of the mind'."
~ Joan Borysenko, M.D.
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Or maybe you already do meditate now ?
There are more Experienced Meditators out there who are now seeking a much
deeper questioning and inquiry into what just may be a False Belief in a "Self".
A de-mystifying, open-minded, caring 'conversation' into Wisdom, Empathy & Spiritual
Reality in our Western life-style + some good poetry & laughing! Our practice is formally
'informed' by traditional early Theravada Buddha-Dharma for an 'undecorated' clarity of view.
Meditators with already more consistent 'sitting experience' - and some background elsewhere
in a teacher-led practice, day-longs or actual retreats, etc. – are always welcome to come
and do 'sittings' and join in with us at anytime without any 'class commitments'.
This is also true for our Irregular Regulars who have previously attended
frequent meditation classes and sittings on a regular basis in the past.
Ask about the Study-Group Nite limited to mostly core students.
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So – Come renew, refresh, review, revive
or even challenge your current meditation practice.
Stale? Stymied? Sleepy? Stumped? Slumped? Stuck?
The very best way to ‘maintain’ real, progressive continuity of mindful Insight Practice –
is to be in stillness & silence with silent group support - and maybe the presence of a teacher.
In the quietness we come to simply realize that
Whatever 'It' is - It's just a 'Thought'
The "Secret of the Receptive"
Must be sought in Stillness.
Within Stillness there remains
The 'potential' for action.
But if you force empty sitting,
Holding dead images in mind,
The tiger runs, the dragon flees !
How can the healing-elixir be given?
~ Sun Bu-er, Chinese Zen-Taoist Woman
Tiger & Dragon elements are used in Chinese medicine
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The moon is one –
but on agitated water
it produces many reflections.
Ultimate Reality is One –
yet seen through a mind
agitated by thoughts,
it ‘appears’ to be many.
Complexity appears –
ripples radiating across
what was once
a still pond.
~ The Ramayana ~
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Your true ‘Authentic Being’
is always shining and free !
But human beings go make
a ‘Something’ out of absolutely Nothing.
And get so attached to that non-something
– and then automatically enter the ocean
of ‘suffering’ of that illusory 'something'.
Only without 'attachment-thinking'
can you return to your true non-self
which is the authentic 'no' self.
Practice "Dont-Know-Mind".
Practice "No-Surprise-Mind".
The mountain is always blue.
White clouds coming and going.
~ Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn ~
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Tricky Stuff, this Zen Mind
If you want to be truly free
Get to know your 'No Self'
Consciousness that is no
longer self-conscious Self.
But how? Just 'Know' that
‘The Real’
has no form, no appearance,
No root, No basis, No abode,
But it is lively and buoyant
It responds with versatile facility.
But how? Just 'Know' that
Its function cannot be located
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from 'It'
When you seek 'It' - since 'It' isn't
You turn away from ‘It’ all the more.
~ Rinzai / Linji
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~ another famous moon-analogy ~
Enlightenment is like
the moon reflected on the water.
The
Moon
does not get wet
nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
the moon is reflected
even in a puddle a single-inch-wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky !
Are reflected in one single
little dew-drop on the grass.
~ Zenmaster Dogen 13th century AD
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~ here's some good DEFINITIONS of meditation
MED•I•TATE – Latin: medi’tatus – from MEDI - to be right here in the MIDDLE OF -
and yet be of neither this side nor that side; 'to be meta-physically poised on the fence'
– exquisitely balanced. To be in an alert semi-trance-like state of relaxed observation,
where physical action is voluntarily suspended. This enhances the ability to deeply
observe, witness, consider, contemplate or simply watch without judgment, without
commenting or the impulsive 'need' to arrive at any choice or any decision or simply
to arrive anywhere. The meditator develops the ability to 'space-out' (space-in) while
being fully mindful & keenly awake, reducing that nagging 'obsessive' thought activity;
an alert, wakeful but deeply restful attentiveness without the driven impulse to action;
to be serene, sublime, divine, tranquil and be calmly passive BUT by voluntary choice
– until a Wisdom-Informed Intent of a 'skillful action' that is entirely appropriate to the
situation naturally arises & unfolds. "Becoming a true disciple of your own Awareness".
Ideally, to be more & more free of 'self-identified', self-conscious thinking – by choice.
To allow a letting-go – and to just sit there free of 'compulsive' desire, impulse and
attachment. The Ideal Meditation: all ‘demands’ cease – to be still and at peace.
~ Akasa Levi
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♦ Insight Meditation ( ‘Vipassana’ in Pali-language of the original Buddhist teachings )
is the simple and direct practice of ‘moment-to-moment’ mindfulness. Through careful
sustained observation, we experience directly for ourselves the ever-changing flow of the
mind/body process. This keen awareness leads us to accept more fully the pleasure and
pain, fear and joy, sadness and happiness that life inevitably brings to all our ‘experiences’.
As insight-awareness deepens, we develop greater equanimity & peace in the face of change.
Wisdom & Compassion increasingly become the major guiding principles ‘informing’ our lives.
~ Joseph Goldstein
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♦ Practicing Meditation Is To Keep The Heart Open - Coming to our senses & opening
our hearts - is the sacred work of meditation. Meditation is a way of experiencing the world
without aggression and fear. A path of cultivating sanity and generating compassion, which
leads to peace in ourselves – which we can then, each individually, extend boundlessly and
un-compromisingly out into the world.
Meditation, is in itself, an 'act of resistance' to the inhumanity of violence, war and misguided
human politics – whether you feel it is a ‘just’ political environment or not. How do you keep
your heart open in the face of anger, fear, disappointment and sorrow? During meditation we
experience ways spiritual practice can realistically express our love of life & bring a peaceful
co-existence to this world – in a skillful, responsible pro-active way - as we ‘train’ ourselves
outside of our usual framework of time & space and daily responsibility - and then go back in !
~ Sharon Salzberg
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♦ Getting Into the ‘Gap’ – to abide in, to be in the more Open Spaces and subtle PAUSES
that are between the dots • • • ( non-thought ) - you just simply need much more Inner-Silence.
Silence that gradually takes root in your very being – innately & calmly allowing you much more
e x p a n s i v e • • • spacious room inside to simply see, to allow –
a continual, natural Waking-Up of your Deeper Awareness now being Wisdom-‘Informed’ just
as you read here now - and explore the Dharma-teachings here together in Heart, in Clarity
and in Reality – Instead of yapping, we are 'Gapping' our way through our very own conscious
Re-awakening, Self-Awakening Process – always a spacious present moment of right Now.
Pause now. Observe this mind as it is right now – not some 'fiction' about some 'other' mind, some
past / future-mind that you could've had. See the fiction of all these 'minds'. Then begin to notice
the vast all-pervading 'Observing-Consciousness' that is behind ALL these ‘mind-states’
you're experiencing.
~ Billy Bo Sat
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♦ Meditations we DO NOT teach: FYI for those who've inquired about guided imagery,
visualization-practices, darshan, diksha, empowerments, initiations or incarnation-work,
Tantra, or Mantra and the protection, teachings & blessings of tutelary Deities or Yidams.
A Yidam is a very specific Bodhisattva-mind-form or a Deity-mind-form – organically integrated in
the student's very basic nature or character-potential to become a Buddha - in this or a future-life.
This initiation-empowered or self-discovered ‘archetype’ precisely corresponds to the individual
psychological temperament of each person. Archetypically, it’s finding your inner-Spirtit-guide-muse.
The student uses a mantra and initiated-meditation to visualize the outstanding characteristics of the
Yidam - until he or she achieves complete inner union with it. According to the Tantra.yana practice
traditions, a Yidam is considered as the truest-emanation of the student-practitioner's very own mind,
the state of being indestructibly, inculcated, bonded now with the inherently Pure & Liberated Mind.
The Laughing Buddha Sangha does not offer these valuable Vajrayana Devotional Deistic practices.
We would be happy to refer you to other amenable Mahayana Buddhist teaching-settings that do.
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about insight-awareness meditation
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Highly Refining the 'Cognitive'... only one of the ways insight-awareness works This is a Buddhist-style 'Insight' Practice ( not guru- devotion, diksha or samadhi ) that can be ‘experienced’ even by the beginning meditator. It flexibly combines 3 Insight-Inquiry approaches together: The keen, but ever so gently focused sobriety & 'observation' approach of (1) Theravada Vipassana-Mindfulness – which can become very soft, so nakedly-bare and receptively vulnerable in it's 'witnessing', in it's ‘non- comparing’ clear 'Looking'. Rebirthing the innocent eyes of a child. We need intuitive inner-strength to carry this delicate ‘3rd Eye’ that Sees and Knows. This is contrasted, supported, protected, fearlessly made sturdy by the more radical 'argue-as-you-might' indefinable "Crazy Wisdom" irrationality of the abstract (2) Zen sensibility – teamed with India's razor-sharp (3) Advaita Non-Duality & it's loving but relentless, uncompromising 'Inquiry' approach – that lets your 'stories' & 'reasons' get mindfulness ‘recognition’ while insightfully wearing themselves down by themselves at the same time - into nothing but empty ‘Realization’. So you can experience directly – right within yourself how you so tenaciously maintain the False Belief’ in an "Ego-Self". A 'Belief" that totally believes in 'Itself', if not coercing itself to believe in itself. There’s often bitter concealed resentment or outright despair. That 'self' has to constantly sell it ‘self’ ON itself & can’t it just be desirable just as it is. ‘Believing’ itself a failure. That’s grounds for indignation on top of deep insecurity. Suffering a life of searching for a reflected ‘desirability’ in just about everything/anyone. Self has a full time job. As the meditator (you) - begins to install and apply and refines for yourself a new mind set of Dharma within the meditation - these polar opposite schools: vulnerable Mindfulness and powerful Zen-Advaita now awake with built-in, ready to use tools - that ‘knows’ more precisely “what IT is” arising in this-very-moment of consciousness. In as well as out of meditation. In a penetrating, but in a kind, totally non-aggressive, 'observation' mode - in calm, compassionate watching. This quiet, meditative, enhanced-seeing may yet yield spontaneous Insight at a level of such clarity that the Reality of the Real now becomes fully Awake and Aware ! And you’re Freeeee of it ! ( for longer & longer extended periods ) Actually, it frees itself ! You do zip. OK: What is it that really works here - is the way this whole mind-set - is ‘set up’. Holy Good Cop, Holy Bad Cop. Gradually it happens in the “process” of frequent meditation practice – that there is a soft, open, totally 'safe' middle-zone (mindfulness) – protected by two adorable tough guy 'resilient' Zen zones flanking it on either side. This mid-zone allows an innocent, non-reactive, unconditional 'seeing', allowing the 'Ego' to be yielding, calm & un-resistive. Unsuspecting: we’re gonna’ compassionately bait & catch the Ego fish. It’s gonna prefer the Dharma. Both approaches are openly skillful & so necessary as supportive allies: otherwise how could you possibly dare to engage and entertain such 'radical' thinking |
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such 'radical' thinking about even the possibility of 'obsolescing' the existence of a wily, cowering or macho or elusive Ego-Self's totally survival-oriented maneuvers to exist & persist. Ego just won't tolerate leaving. It won’t let go. Just look at what happened any other time we tried. We'd cave, crumble and get crushed. We're swimming our individual Unreality upstream against currents in a society that takes Ego as being so potentially, profitably Real? Try gentle Meditation? “Give it up - are you kidding” snaps Ego. BUT then Ego falls in love with the WISDOM of Dharma. Ego found the Dharma out there somewhere. Now it’s Ego’s new prize. I’m going to learn Wisdom. I’m going to get busted. Wisdom tells me ‘Wisdom’ is not for sale. Mindfulness, Zen and Advaita certainly can short- circuit the chronic, so obsessively ‘self-identified', 'self-absorbed-mind' – that takes 'itself' as being so Real. Meditation undermines that ! At an optimum: Ego-Self becomes more irrelevant & ‘goes natural’ till it opts to gracefully obsolete by early retiring itself ! At a minimum: the Ego-Self so 'likes' what happened to it, it now feels so included, so talked about in this “Venture' of Ego-less-ness” ( Wisdom likes Wisdom ) Hearing its name all the time now, Ego gets to be the center of your attention. That it naively joins forces with the Victor (Dharma-Vijaya) and agrees to learn Dharma (a new toy), sit meditation and hopelessly hope for the best that’ll survive. Result: the gradual growth into a very Good Person - with a twinkle in their eye. Ego becomes your pet instead of your master or jailor. Through Meditation - fresh new brain chemistry actually happens – for a much more calm, naturally expanded & tremendously strengthened Awareness. As one develops a 'Dharma'-Informed Mind instead – through skillful Wisdom-study, a lovingly-persistent deep questioning, and an unromantic de-mystifying, open-minded, caring, passionate investigation into the True Nature of Reality - nourished by a rich, kind, non-cynical, genuine Empathy. Self obsoletes Self. Hey, talk about self-sacrifice ! Doing yourSelf in . . . Creating a fearless 'life of compassionate practice' continuously dedicated to your own Awakening process, each one of us at our own pace - that will extend spontaneously, boundlessly towards the welfare and happiness of all other living, feeling, struggling beings. You'll get it. They'll get it. Everyone can Awaken ! ~ Bhante Akasa-maitreya ______________________________________________ "It's not You that wakes up ~ It is Reality itself that wakes up. The Truth itself wakes up. 'You' are not enlightened – 'Enlightenment' is enlightened." ~ Adyashanti |
A Silly Satori
Enlightenment: Early Laughing Stream-Entry Stages
'Enlightenment' just simply steps out into the Light for you.
When you 'recognize' Enlightenment in you ~ Enlightenment is already lit up !
More n' more the Light is on. A quiet light. You learn greater humility in its presence.
You have more and more consecutively-mindful enlightened-moments in a row. AhHa !
The Insights of AhHa ! AhHa ! AhHa ! consecutively becomes Ha Ha ! Ha Ha ! Ha Ha !
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The genuine essence of an 'Adventure'
is that one just really doesn't know the outcome.
The essence of an evolving 'Spiritual' Adventure
is that one shouldn't need to know the outcome -
and that one absolutely can’t know the outcome!
And that there really aren't any 'outcomes'.
~ Alexander Carpenter
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'Chance' favors the prepared mind. Prepare yourself. ~ I Ching
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