The Meditation Pages: Part 2

 

 

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( 5 ) The MEDITATION pages  Part 2. 5a is a Long section

 

( 5 ) HOW to MEDITATE: It’s about ‘Practice’ • What is “Mindfulness” Awareness-Meditation? •  True SILENCE & Stillness & Still More Waiting...     ( 5a ) The BASIC MEDITATION INSTRUCTIONS Beginner's Guidance Stage 1. Mindfulness • Helpful Meditation Sitting Tools & Encouragement     • ON 'PRACTICE' - sitting meditation is a Training!  • Many Meditation Learning-Quotes • ‘NOTICING’ PRACTICE catching a ‘felt-sense’. •  .... just a “GOOD ENOUGH" Meditation Practice            To read Here just begin to SCROLL ▼DOWN

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Like a handsome tree –

Come to  Meditation slow

with the heart of youth

and grow slowly into it.

Why are you impatiently

in such an irritable hurry?

'Results' are simply a useful illusion.

An illusion of Appearances none the less.

 

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How to Meditate:

 

How to Meditate:

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

If you forget this –

attaining Enlightenment

will be the least of your problems.

 

~ The Sayings of a Jewish Buddhist

 

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"Become a True Disciple

of your Own Silent Awareness"

 

Instead of 'trying' to become something other than I am,

I realize fully what is already here now. Pure 'Is-ness'.

 

 

Inner-Stillness itself - is what Awakens

your Deep Radiant Heart of Grace and Wisdom

 

All you have to do is - learn how to really Sit Still,

to calmly fully experience and to mindfully observe everything.

Non-Reactively – Look Deeply – See Clearly.

Silence ‘informed’ by the Dharma does all the rest !

 

 

~ above quote by the revered late Mahapadya Aggamaha Pandita

Sri Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Maha Nayake Thera

of the Amarapura Sadhammavamsa Maha Nikaya Lineage.

August 24, 1896 until July 18,1998, at 102 years. Whew!

 

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This Is The Complete Buddhist Dharma Practice in one sentence:

 

" Let a Dharma-based Compassion - keep influencing your Wisdom ~

and Let a Dharma-based Wisdom - keep informing your Compassion."

 

~ Bhante Ananda Maitreya

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True Silence is not the absence of Sound ~

True Silence is the absence of 'Self'.

 

~ Anthony de Mello  

 

The Meditative Ideal While Simply Sitting There:

 

Sit very Still: Just Allow total ‘Stillness’ to overcome you

 

while Everything is Fully Experienced.

 

Everything is simply Mindfully Witnessed / Observed ...

 

Nothing is Blindly Reacted or Responded To –

 

until an Appropriate Good Intention arises in the mind –

 

Mindfully prompting a Wholesome Good Action or Inaction

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But of course you probably will react & you probably will

 

blindly, impulsively get caught up in the Dharma ‘Drama’ Story

 

of your life for awhile yet - so patiently just keep on meditating.

 

Giving yourself plenty of patient blessings of compassion and

 

forgiveness for yourself & others - which you may not do now,

 

but will certainly do it, if you do the Awareness practice a bit.

 

Then how can the Heart-Mind not Open like a Wide Sky ?

 

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~ Stillness ~

 

If you ignore its simple profundity,

you can never ‘Practice Stillness’.

Like the Great Void,

It is Perfect and lacks nothing,

nor has any excess.

If you differentiate,

you will miss its Suchness.

Cling not to external-causes

– nor stay in the Void.

'Distinctions' ceases if you can be simply impartial.

'Stillness' comes when all disturbances are stopped within.

Clinging to Stillness is also a mistake.

If you cling to opposites, how will you ever know the One?

 

~ Third Patriarch of Zen  - Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-T'san

 

 

For the listener,

who listens in the snow,

And, be nothing himself,

Beholds

Nothing that is not there

and the 'Nothing' that is.

 

~ Wallace Stevens 

 

Do Nothing – Just Sit There !

 

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Simply wait, without asking for anything.      

 

You say you want the pleasantness of meditation and you want to go there quickly ?

Don't be hasty. Go at your own pace. You may try imagining you are connected to

someone - it may be pleasant - but your meditation will stop with your imagination.  

Rejoice when peace comes to you gently. Certainly you will advance to the next step.

 

Meditation has no shape or form. Methods aren't necessary.

If you tie yourself to a method or technology, it will bring limitations.

Of course, there are 'the basics'. The basics need frequent practice. 

It is like eating food – it comes naturally and is available to everyone.

But table manners and diets are particular to each and every culture -

and so one adjusts how one eats based on what they are taught. 

So what was once simple becomes complicated.

 

But no matter how you eat it, the food is still tasty, isn't it ?

Simply, rejoice from the heart when you eat delicious food !

But sometimes, you may wish to visit another culture and

experience their ways.  Sometimes it is useful to do this.

 

It is the same with meditation. If it is useful to you, then try it.

Do you need a meditation training-certificate ? 

That just shows you have money to spend. 

Nothing is proven with written-qualifications or saying you are

at such and such a level.  Do you really think your meditation

can't advance without another class or workshop ?

 

You will only reach meditation by doing it.

 

The first step is the Heart's request for peace. 

When that feeling comes, your heart finds a place

to settle even if you are walking –

or sitting with eyes open or closed. 

As for my method, I simply sit ... and wait. 

Not for any particular thing ... I just wait.

Unintentionally, one waits with expectations,

looking for experiences or results. This is asking. 

This is the imagination. 

Provide the space for your Heart to ask for peace. 

And then simply wait, without asking for anything.

 

~ Gayuna Sun'dima from Burma 

 

 

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"The Baby Buddha" Inside Each of Us Becomes Quiet –

– as they say in Zen: "The first aim of sitting down

to meditate is to stop the baby from crying."

 

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For the Basic MINDFULNESS MEDITATION INSTRUCTIONS ~ please just scroll below

 

What is “Mindfulness” Insight-Awareness Meditation?

 

Simple: In practicing this particular style of Buddhist silent-sitting meditation – it becomes

gradually possible for you to have the ‘experience’ that everything is noticed & quietly ‘observed’.

Have you ever just stood there and ever so calmly, quietly, silently looked at something? A flower.

Just simply looked. Before thought intrudes. Of course you have.  Well, it’s simply that.  In our

meditation-style called Vipassana Insight Meditation: everything you silently ‘experience’ counts –

it all becomes a "Noticing and observing, hearing and feeling sensations, witnessing meditation" –

In this ‘non-doing’, ‘just being’ of silence and stillness. Letting things be as they are. Just look.

Just allowing yourself to experience. Allow experience. Permit experience. Nothing to “do”.

 

"Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance

of the present experience as it is.

'Realization' isn't more complicated than that !

It is opening to, or receiving the present moment,

pleasant or unpleasant – just as it is –

–– non-judgmentally ––

without either clinging to it - or rejecting it."

 

~ Sylvia Boorstein

 

 

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“An ongoing Practice of

Meditative Inquiry into the 'Self' –

is always, totally a ‘fresh start’ every moment

Self-inquiry will not transform the mind. It will not make of you ‘anything’

else that you are not already. It will over time, dissolve the False Belief that

you 'are' this body, this mind, this ‘history’.  Only just STOP for one moment

to see how it feels to just simply BE !   And then Stop again.  And then again.

Just that.  Stop.

And all the rest will be taken care of.”

 

" The mantra I continuously say to myself is –

I  Will  STOP  Searching  Outside ! "

 

both quotes ~ Sri  Ramana Maharshi ~ Arunachala 1931

 

 

 

 

NEXT: click to GO TO ( 5a ) The BASIC MEDITATION INSTRUCTIONS

 

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