suggestions on class

[juliemarie]

I was thinking I should learn about mediatation. I have to calm my mind. Plus I have a Nice Neptune connection in my natal chart so I think it will do me good. Whenever I get a chance (its hard with 2 little ones I like to try and write my dreams) I am thinking I also need some endurance so yoga may do me good as well. I hear a bit about the different types of yoga, and mediatation wondering what's right for me? I have little endurance for physical but need to build it. Also I am easily distracted & can get overwhelmed with things hard to focus in general. Music calms me. Any suggessions? Plus I would have to get someone to watch my kids so maybee a YMCA? yet I don't think they offer mediatation as well.? I am in the Chicagoland NW IN. Area.

[Michael Hawkins]

Hi Juliemarie,

It's a tough call, and I'll tell you why.

I started out by getting involved with our local Boulder vipassana community.

Here are, by the way some links to Chicago-area groups:

www.pakasa.dhamma.org/
www.buddhapia.com/hmu/bcm/directory/temples/watdhamm.html
insightchicago.org/

And you can probably find a sitting group in the Theravada tradition closer to your home.

These groups give a sense of community, spending time with others who have found meditation and dhamma study (i.e., Buddhist spiritual reading/discussing) to be beneficial in their lives. This is a good thing.

Unfortunately, none of these groups has been able to strip away a nearly universal bias against the ecstatic within the Buddha's original teachings on meditation. In fact, most insight/vipassana meditation teachers actively discourage the charisms (i.e., "signs of absorption" that are typically ecstatic in manifestation), saying that they lead to unhealthy attachment or are a diversion from the "goal" -- a goal that is never really acknowledged, in fact, since the general consensus is that Nibanna is not attainable unless you are a monk living with tigers in some remote Thai forest.

Truth is, the Buddha not only encouraged the ecstatic in meditation, but the 8th fold of the Noble Eightfold Path is defined in terms of meditative absorption, and he insisted to his followers that the arising and maintaining of absorption IS the sure path to Nibanna -- if not in this lifetime, then in a very few more. Among other things, saturation in meditative absorption is what removes hindrances to the most skillful ways of being, allowing the Noble Eightfold Path to function at the high/pure level that truly does lead to the cessation of suffering and the ultimate goal of final liberation. This is what the Buddha REALLY taught, despite what's being marketed as such these days.

So, I finally disassociated myself from all things "insight" or "vipassana" (vipassana is a Pali term usually translated as "insight," but which is not found in the context of the Buddha's actual meditation teachings, and is in fact part of the "packaging" of Buddhism for Western consumption beginning less than a hundred years ago), and have been studying/practicing with other ecstatic contemplatives who are part of an online community called the Great Western Vehicle.

www.greatwesternvehicle.org/

Over the past seven years, I've done two long retreats with Jeffrey Brooks and other members of the GWV, and I consider this to be my Sangha now. I became a "jhana yogi" on February 1, 2005, and have been helping to mentor others as a member of the GWV teaching faculty for the past couple years.

All of this is by way of explaining that it may be good, as a fresh-starter, to find a local Sangha in order to gain support in establishing a daily meditation practice. Doing longer retreats (of the nine or ten day variety) will likely help give rise to charismatic phenomena, despite the teacher telling you to "ignore it." Most Sangha members (or even teachers!) don't have a very vigorous meditation practice -- perhaps a few minutes before or after sleep, then once a week for 45 minutes at the Shangha meeting -- but you do have a friend right here (in me), plus access to others here who have committed to a serious practice, and we would LOVE to offer support in whatever way you need for getting established.

As you can see, I'm a strong advocate of ecstatic contemplative practice, and am very much devoted to helping kind souls like you who are hearing the "still, small voice inside" that desires to lead you to a permanent place of bliss, joy and ecstasy, regardless of external circumstances. Please use me, dear friend!

Much love,
Michael

[jhananda]

I have little to add to Michael’s excellent introduction to ecstatic meditation. I too started with Insight, or vipassana meditation, but I found their method too boring for words, but then I had found ecstatic meditation before I had found vipassana meditation in 1975. I just used the Insight/vipassana meditation community as a useful inspiration to practice meditation regularly. It was through a regular daily meditation practice, as Michael outlined, that produced ecstatic meditation for me within the first months of meditation practice. If was not for those ecstatic states that I had found in meditation, I surely would have given up the practice of meditation decades ago, so I am not sure why the Insight/vipassana meditation community rejects them, other than they must not have had the experience of the ecstasies, which the Buddha called ‘jhana.’

[juliemarie]

Thanks, I will check out the links and the info was just what I needed. I am feeling drawn to it.
Take care, Juliemarie

[Michael Hawkins]

Go get 'em, Juliemarie!

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