It struck me as interesting the other day that the Dalai Lama spends four hours a day meditating. And in one of the experiments that has popped up in the news an experienced meditator is considered to have done 10,000 hours. If you meditate for 2 hours a day, it’s going to take you almost fourteen years to become an experienced meditator. That’s some time.
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Posts Tagged ‘buddha’
Meditation time
Saturday, March 20th, 2010Meditation by sound
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Who seeks me by form,
Who seeks me by sound,
Perverted are his footsteps on the way;
For he cannot perceive the Tathagata.
The Diamond Sutra, The Buddha
There are a number of products out there that claim to work on the brain to produce deepened meditation or enlightenment. One came in my mailbox yesterday claiming Discover how to meditate deeper than a zen monk in just five minutes – without years of practice, or hours of boring meditation CDs – by using a secret shortcut you can’t find anywhere else.
How do they promise to achieve this? Through sound. (more…)
Hypnosis
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Hypnosis comes from the greek word for sleep. James Braid who coined the term thought it was misleading and tried to change the name to monoideism. I think that both terms are suggestive. If you watch carefully you can see people moving in and out of hypnotic trance regularly as they internalise and follow a single train of thought, a memory, or perhaps a well worn fantasy.
When Hui Neng, commented that the mind of the ideal person rests nowhere, I think he was pointing clearly to being awake.
Imperturbable and serene the ideal man practises no virtue.
Self-possessed and dispassionate, he commits no sin.
Calm and silent, he gives up seeing and hearing.
Even and upright his mind abides nowhere.
As you know, Buddha means the one who as awakened. The problem is not matter but identification with it. That’s materialism, a resting of the mind within a conceptual framework. However the issue is any resting of the mind in any concept. To awaken from the sleep of identification with thought, even the concept of self, that’s being awake.
The Method of No-Method: The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination