History & start and meditation
Briefly I started training for a miler in November 2020 with a Mindfocus Running course with Rob learning to meditate .This has mushroomed into a concious daily exercise of at least an hour a day and I have done a few coursera courses including Buddhism and Psychology by Robert Wright .That was very instructional in explaining some scientific basis for the buddhist view of the mind and meditation.
I then on 1 April did a 3 day course at the Jhana Grove Meditation centre .Had a lot of opportunity to meditate and learn about meditation.
These are just some of my notes on the weekend and the 2 sessions recorded and on the Buddhist Society of WA You Tube site.
At the Buddhist retreat I attended 1-3 April 2022 at the Jhana Grove meditation Center at Serpentine I managed to increase the amount of meditation I would do.For the week I managed 14 hours .
Lessons learnt in Meditation and trying to reach the deep meditations or Jhanas all aim for
- practice , practice and more practice.It will not always be perfect .Learn loving kindness or metta for your self .
- Have compassion and loving kindness for self not forced meditation
- follow the 8 fold path
The Noble Eightfold Path
Right understanding (Samma ditthi)Right thought (Samma sankappa)
- Right speech (Samma vaca)
- Right action (Samma kammanta)
- Right livelihood (Samma ajiva)
- Right effort (Samma vayama)
- Right mindfulness (Samma sati)
- Right concentration (Samma samadhi)
- Practically the whole teaching of the Buddha, to which he devoted
himself during 45 years, deals in some way or other with this path. He
explained it in different ways and in different words to different
people, according to the stage of their development and their capacity
to understand and follow him. But the essence of those many thousand
discourses scattered in the Buddhist scriptures is found in the noble
eightfold path
- (see the article on Tricycle The Noble Eightfold Path ,The Buddha’s practical instructions to reach the end of suffering By Walpola Sri Rahula)
- live a wholesome and virtuous life , as a drug dealer can't reach the deep levels of meditation bliss
- be in the moment
- do everything mindfully leads to doing your best in everything
- Ajahn Chah "always put 100% in everything you do"
- Ok to be sad , angry and cry in the moment but not dwell on it ,always learn to let go
- no quick way to samardhi
- try all techniques ...there is no one path to mindfulness meditation
Ajahn Santuthi mentione an often cited story of Ajahn Chah ( Ajahn Branhm mentor and teacher is the Mango tree analogy , monastics have to wait for the mango hanging on the tree to fall to the ground not climb the tree Takes time to reach jhana or deep meditation states
In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna (Sanskrit: ध्यान) or jhāna (Pāḷi: झान) is the training of the mind, commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses to sense-impressions, and leading to a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness (upekkhā-sati-parisuddhi)."[1] Dhyāna may have been the core practice of pre-sectarian Buddhism, in combination with several related practices which together lead to perfected mindfulness and detachment.[2][3][4]
It is a Marathon not a sprint
Dharma Talk By Ajahn Brahmali
Dharma Talk
Dharma Talk
Article in Trcycle on self and ego
