Kindergarten Eudemony
J wrote on a Buddhism list:
Agreed. But your method - "engaging in a contemplative practice while being "sensitive" to the arising of the jhana signs" - is the post-graduate course, IMHO. You yourself obviously achieved many of the jhana preliminaries during your fifteen years of yoga. But if just sitting does not absorb a meditator into jhana states, either of joy, pleasure, bliss, exuberance or rapture, equanimity, and finally tarrying within various wisdom ecstasies on ever more subtle levels of 'pleasurable abiding,' then perhaps a little spinal breathing with the mulabandha and chanting 'OM' or, if you have neighbors, just smiling and swatting thoughts away with voluntary blinks might be a good preliminary.
Can you flare your nostrils, do the mulabanda and blink at the same time on the inhale? I have to practice a little to synchronize. One or the other tends to come first! It does however, elevate me right into the 'body electric...' Of course all the exercises I post here seem to have that effect (smile) -- for me, at least...
I frequently ponder the fact that the Buddha achieved all eight jhana (absorption) levels BEFORE his enlightenment and discovery of the Middle Path. The question then is, "If the Buddha had not already achieved the eight jhana absorptions before creating the whole structure of the Middle Path, would he have achieved them later?" Silly question?
Perhaps I am asking: "Did the Middle Path bring any of the Buddha's followers to his same level of accomplishment and, if not, why not?"
I believe that if the Buddha's teaching was complete, it should have created an overflowing cornucopia of Buddhas in his wake. Perhaps in the first generation it did? This reminds me of something written by a founder of a somewhat eccentric Christian cult:
The first generation is led by the Spirit or Ideal.
The second always has the good example
The third still will have the memory (of the good example)
But the fourth will be stuck with all the rules and regulations made before them.
I found nothing more "advanced" than simply engaging in a contemplative practice while being "sensitive" to the arising of the signs of absorption (jhana-nimitta),
then once they arose, remaining with them, even throughout the day.
Agreed. But your method - "engaging in a contemplative practice while being "sensitive" to the arising of the jhana signs" - is the post-graduate course, IMHO. You yourself obviously achieved many of the jhana preliminaries during your fifteen years of yoga. But if just sitting does not absorb a meditator into jhana states, either of joy, pleasure, bliss, exuberance or rapture, equanimity, and finally tarrying within various wisdom ecstasies on ever more subtle levels of 'pleasurable abiding,' then perhaps a little spinal breathing with the mulabandha and chanting 'OM' or, if you have neighbors, just smiling and swatting thoughts away with voluntary blinks might be a good preliminary.
Can you flare your nostrils, do the mulabanda and blink at the same time on the inhale? I have to practice a little to synchronize. One or the other tends to come first! It does however, elevate me right into the 'body electric...' Of course all the exercises I post here seem to have that effect (smile) -- for me, at least...
I frequently ponder the fact that the Buddha achieved all eight jhana (absorption) levels BEFORE his enlightenment and discovery of the Middle Path. The question then is, "If the Buddha had not already achieved the eight jhana absorptions before creating the whole structure of the Middle Path, would he have achieved them later?" Silly question?
Perhaps I am asking: "Did the Middle Path bring any of the Buddha's followers to his same level of accomplishment and, if not, why not?"
I believe that if the Buddha's teaching was complete, it should have created an overflowing cornucopia of Buddhas in his wake. Perhaps in the first generation it did? This reminds me of something written by a founder of a somewhat eccentric Christian cult:
The first generation is led by the Spirit or Ideal.
The second always has the good example
The third still will have the memory (of the good example)
But the fourth will be stuck with all the rules and regulations made before them.