Your Help is needed on this evolving meditation Help Guide

I've been "solo" meditating for so long that I need your help on this. I know it sounds strange , but please hear me out... I'm putting together a free online help guide to meditation, and I need your input. If you could choose your category (thinking about starting, beginner, or advanced) and give me some input, I'd be very grateful:

If you are thinking about starting to meditate: What are your concerns about meditation (if any)? Anything keeping you back, or did you try once and it just didn't feel right? What kind of information/advice do you need?

If you are a beginner (less than a year's experience): How long have you meditated and what kind of problems have you had? Good/bad experiences? What kind of information/advice would you like but is hard to get an answer to?

If you are advanced (over a year -- how long?): Do you need any information that you can't find in any books? Any information you'd like to deepen your meditation practice?

If you prefer to send me your response through a Personal Message, please do. Thank you very much.

Best wishes,
Oz

 

Meditation cannot be learned from a website. I have tried to teach it like that and it doesn't work. Sorry.

 

Not knowing who to turn to I turn within.
Not knowing what I am I ask myself.

Then turning to within I am re-ligare.
Becoming the refreshing sensation of what I am continually.

Thus from the outset I have been the path and its fruits.

Thus the wise turning of the wheel is to not move from what one already is.
The generation of benevolent intention brings all good things.

Sadhanas are keys of mental training so as to refresh benevolence indefinitely and thus, as they say in my path...thus escape both hope and fear.

 

Perhaps you didn't try hard enough. Perhaps you faced your own limitations as a student and as a teacher.

 

Perhaps.

 

Dear Chodpa
I have to agree with you teaching, if we are still enough, there is a inner knowing that guiding us always. It is so subtle that we must be still enough to be able to receive it. we can even keep connecting to that inner stillness while we moving.
Try Japa, it can take us there.

 

Well here's the thing. I taught meditation in a series of steps. Something like TM. A friend of mine, Billy Smith of Ireland, took a different route and taught by CD disk. I charged nothing and he charged a small fee. I taught two men for over five years. However, they already had some background in different techniques and similar ones so I was able to give them something they could feel. However, there's simply no way I can know what the student is experiencing if they are not forthcoming with their experiences in correspondence. There's simply no way for me to responsibly say that I am there for them either. Not in the palpable way of daily reality.

Nobody really should charge for theory, which is what all this is. Also, it's the seeker's perogative to find the proper teacher since it's their life. Personally, I figured that since I still had teachers I should not buck the systems which gave me the push to where I am now. So I merely refer to them now as TM and Dzogchen Buddhism. That's what I did for about 27 years now. Why would I want to go and buck the Great Perfection?

They say that a Bodhisattva is made when a realized being enters the Wide Way of Mahayana for the sake of others. One can follow lots of teachers but when one finds Buddha inside then there's nowhere else one can go. One is already perfectly there.

Okay off to fix Sunday brunch. Fuck me!

 

Hmm.
I've studied meditation in Buddhist temples, and the instruction they give is in essence the same as the written instruction they produce.

A teacher is useful and highly recomended, because they can answer questions and watch for common pitfalls as they arise, but I think it is perfectly possible to learn and teach meditation through a text medium.

 

Well, traditionally meditation techniques are highly secret and taught from mouth to ear, like Kaballah.

One main point is that one can't read and meditate at the same time. Also the suggestiveness of written meditation guides itself can be a block to clear experience.

So many of you agreee that meditation can be learned and taught through written medium. I don't suppose then you all have had your experienced pushed as through shakti or a holy place.

My only single main grudge with meditation through books and the net is the lack of clear support group when obstacles arise, which they will frequently do. In TM we had free meditation checking when I was into it, and that really helped keep the practice clear and flowing.

In Dzogchen there is the constant stream of empowerments and chod and other rituals which instantly clear the mind.

What does the internet offer in terms of the non-virtual? It would be hard to break through the stifling ignorance if one lives in an angry tenement.

 

The Zen Buddhists are in a lot of trouble then, because we tell anybody who asks how to meditate

Dogen Zenji even wrote a very public essay called "recommending Zazen to all people" and his written meditation guide is still read in Buddhist monasteries all over Japan.

There are esoteric schools of meditation, as well as exoteric ones. But meditation techniques have an equally long history of being taught to the public at large.

Being "stingy with the Dharma" is actually against one of the precepts in the tradition in which I practice

Maybe you can't

I agree that the benefits of a teacher are many, and I don't mean to encourage written meditation guides to the exclusion of teachers, I merely mean that such guides are perfectly acceptable means of learning the basics.

If you can't experience enlightenment everywhere, then it isn't enlightenment.

 

If you experience enlightenment everywhere then you're on an ego trip.

 

If you don't, it isn't enlightenment. Plain and simple.

You can't switch the truth on and off.
If it can sometimes be, and sometimes not be, it is a transient thing. And transient things have transient values.

I'm making no claims to any profound spiritual attainment, I'm just stating what should be plain.
"enlightenment" is not that nice little feelgood vibe you get while meditating. that can be reproduced with drugs, sound waves, electromagnets, sensory deprivation or any other number of things that meddle with the brains normal functions

 

Chodpa, I've read some pretty weird stuff from you before, but this goes beyond absurdity ...

There are plenty of locations in the US that offer FREE meditation retreats with personal, one-on-one support ...

Where does this "highly secret" stuff come from?

I have no idea what has come over you, but anyone who actually accepts this as truth, is completely gullible ...

Forgive me ...

And even if you don't, then ... that's okay ...

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Looking over his/her (sorry, don't know) posts, I think Chodpa practices in the Trancendental Meditation tradition, which involves the recitation of a secret mantra taught by a Guru, and there are a few other schools in this "esoteric" tradition.
Since this technique would require mental recitation, I suppose it would make it hard to do whilst reading.

Needless to say though,

It isn't the same for all of us

 

Thanks for pointing out all my shotcomings. Felt great. Love it here.

 

Actually I was trying to explain your post to darrel to show that you weren't being stupid.
When I intend to cause offense it is a lot more obvious

 

Well, actually your response was well thought out. Thanks for that.

 

Be careful, Chodpa

You are practicing a conceptualized technique, relying on other people's interpretations and meditative beliefs. TM charges a fee for a mantra that is given to thousands of students, it is hardly secret. There is nothing secret about meditation, and I don't like to say it, but people like you, trained by people who have been trained by others, and so on and on to believe that meditation is mystical, rigid, strictly mantra-based, are damaging meditation and what it truly and simply is:

Awareness.

I thought I'd bring your awareness to this issue, as most conflicts arise when there's too much clinging to a mantra/belief, and not enough mindfulness and compassion to absorb other perspectives, or not enough contemplation to see beyond the concepts and pre-interpreted beliefs. If this makes you angry (and it is not my intention), perhaps you'll see my point.

 

Fact is, none of you even know my name let alone what I practice. My statement is that it's nigh unto impossible to get meditation from books and I stand by it. Those of you who meditate from a book. Fabulous. Those of you who like to cap on me like Darrell have weird problems that I can't really understand. But Darrell can just keep away from me entirely. As for the rest, you're entitled to your opinions. Darrell seems to stalk my posts and always contradict them. Not very forest retreatant and monkish. How about leaving me alone Darrell. I sense harassment. And I've said so before. You may be a great person and no doubt you are. Now spread that light on others please, or I will leave this board, and I do not lie. Especially if the mods themselves pick on me. Please give it some thought.

 

Obviously, others are not entitled to their opinions as you say else you would not be reacting so to anyone who expresses their opinions in opposition to yours, even a mod.

You feel like you're being picked on? Perhaps you should insert an addendum to all your posts stipulating "replies not accepted if they are in opposition to my views and/or opinions."

You want to leave the board? No one is stopping you. Bonvoyage. Adios. Astalavista baby. Don't let the door hit you in the *** on the way out ... But no matter where you go you'll always feel like your being harassed or picked on if others oppose your views and/or opinions.

What is obvious to me is that your practice is not a very effective one if you are still being motivated by anger and hatred. Perhaps you should seek another practice.

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