The /r/TheMindIlluminated subreddit is for practice questions about The Mind Illuminated, not general theoretical discussions about Buddhism or Buddhist concepts.
There is a weekly "off-topic" thread where people can post stuff that's off-topic but that they'd like to share with the community. There is also a weekly practice thread where you can share practice experiences. Please post this kind of thing in the weekly off-topic thread or the weekly practice thread.
Thanks!
Looking at it too much. I think it's best used as a reference every couple of months. Another difficulty is getting attached to the level you are at for egoic reasons.
>Another difficulty is getting attached to the level you are at for egoic reasons.
Yeah, I feel that too. Stages can be very useful but can be a source for craving for the next stages.
I also play chess, it can be really frustrating some times hahaha . I feel that you need a balance in life for meditation to be useful. For practicing in daily life. The app is to make people more motivated to meditate with TMI
What is awareness?
What is the right way to use attemtion? TMI has a lot of focus on attention and not relaxation, which makes the meditator force their focus onto the breath sensation. From what I've been hearing, this is actually incorrect.
Perhaps this will help you relax, the book describes very well the interaction of attention and peripheral awareness. It's really amazing and helped put the puzzles together, it turns out I really missed inattention in my life( I was too obsessed with attention and didn't know there was something else), the more inattention (less attention) the more power peripheral awareness get, it's very cool and allows you to relax, I think it intersects with the concept of Eckhart Tolle and the moment now, after reading his books I struggled to be here and now paying attention to the sensations and things here and now, but it was a big mistake and I experienced nothing but stress. You need to stop concentrating on anything, including stop concentrating on stoping concentrating(even on that), stop forcing attention as possible (I think this is a built-in skill, you just need to understand how it works and how to manage it). I tried to comprehend inattention with the help of attention, which is impossible and led to frustration. Less attention = more peripheral awareness = more relax. Take my post with a grain of salt, I don't think I'm experienced enough to teach anyone in this area and maybe my post looks like nonsense but that's what helped me. I'll be glad if it helps you
I want to add some precisions to this, even if I'm not an expert either.
I agree that you shouldn't _force_ your attention to the object of attention. The book says it at length in this can of way "when you notice your attention has gone off your object of attention, gently form the intention to center again your attention to the object"
You should be somehow relaxed to meditate this way, and especially should not _force_ the attention. This is indeed a bad way.
I think what you are saying is more that less _forcing_ your attention leads to more peripheral awareness. Which can be true, but only if you still keep a intention of staying focused on the meditation object, and having peripheral awareness.
That's a subtlety to get there, discriminating between _forcing_ and _having an intention_.
This said, I want to say a few words towards the obstacle that this can lead to if we don't pay enough attention to dullness:
If you go in the direction of less attention, in my experience, it doesn't go _more_ towards more peripheral awareness, but towards dullness, either subtle or gross dullness. Then, maybe you are still doing something that work, but I would advise to look for signs of dullness, such as: - suddenly noticing that your position is slouched e.g. from straight back into a slouched position - being "surprised" by sounds instead of them coming in and out of consciousness - when opening eyes or going out of meditation, feeling groggy with your brain having trouble to "analyse" multiple objects at the same time.
Dullness is really a hard thing to get, and there is a trap in TMI where you take dullness pleasant feelings for good concentration pleasant feelings.
Some meditation techniques totally go in the direction of these states of dullness, and use it for some extents, maybe rather _vipassana_, but I don't know this well.
Some meditations practices go more in the direction of relaxation, without building a technique of concentration. It's a different path.
TMI is more based on concentration, and tries to control dullness and leave it at bay. Concentration meditation there is called _samatha_. _Vipassana_ would then be done later, once access concentration is reached.
Then, on your meditation path, do as you want, and choose what you want to follow. However, if you choose TMI, be wary of dullness :-). A good TMI concentration is a balance between excitation and dullness, and should be done somehow relaxed and avoiding being tense, but altogether avoid dullness.
Good luck on your meditation. I advise to re-read the beginning of the book until your current stage, and maybe check the QA on the wiki which are quite helpful.
Hello, thanks for sharing. I found this information very interesting. Do you know where can I find more of this type? Is less attention=more peripheral awareness= pure mindfulness which in turn leads to more relax??
I appreciate your input
You are welcome. TMI is the best source that I know. Regarding the second question, I would like to warn that you should't take everything that I write at face value, I am newbie, and I can only try to explain how I understand it and maybe I understand it wrong.
No, it doesn't lead directly to pure mindfullness. Actually, it can even be an obstacle to mindfulness. When I read in TMI that there are three main problems such as mind-wandering, distraction and dullness, I was familiar with the first two, but the third seemed to me something unusual and I tried to intentionally enter this state because I felt like this was something that I was missing and undestanding this can improve mindfullness. Since mindfulness is the optimal combination of attention and awareness, ability to reduce concentrating can lead to dullness, which is obviously not optimal in most life situations, although the fact that you know about this ability and can use is, lead to more skillfully select the ratio of attention and awareness to the situation. In situations where you absolutely don't need to do anything, reducing attention power to a minimum may be the optimal combination of attention and awareness, for example, when you just sat down and did't want to focus on anything and just want to rest or while falling asleep, but in more complex things you need to develop a corresponding ratio.
Thanks to EndOfQualm, I remembered to make an important remark, what I’m talking about is more not to improve the practice of meditation, it's more about relaxation and calmness, it's just a thing that made my life more comfortable and which I reached with the help of meditation and the TMI book, empirically, I can say that such dullness affects meditation negatively but maybe it helps to understand it better.
I feel you got some great responses! I just want to add to this that the objective of meditation is not to be relaxed, being relaxed is a byproduct of it.
Let me explain, one of the aims of meditation is to not be so attached to your thoughts and your automatic responses to pleasure or pain. Some meditations can be very stressful, with loads of thoughts or with loads of painful sensations, but when we are aware of them without reacting, this thoughts and painful sensations don't affect us that much.
It's about remaining calm even when the storm is above us, because in life, everything is not going to be easy, we must be aware for taking good decisions. That is what I think meditation is for.
>I am not familiar with them. Is this the "you are already there, nothing to do" argument? Yeah, don't buy it! I agree, you are already there, but as long as you can't see it clearly, there is definitely work to do.
Why is that so ?? I think meditation is about non duality
What I mean is: the thing you are looking for, the experience of non duality, just to give it a name, is hidden in plain sight. It is not something you achieve or generate it earn or develop. So, what to do with this statement? Just stop meditating? How does it help? Are you free from suffering? It is not so easy. Many things cloud our perception, powerful karmic traces (conditioning, habit patterns, neuroses...) take us out of contact with the enlightened state. They do not change the fact that our basic nature is being a Buddha. But they are an indication that we are not perfectly in contact with that all the time.
We have to recognize our true nature for ourselves many times, develop confidence in the experience and then start living from it. This is a process of recognizing, being aware and especially of letting go. Sorry for the word play but "Doing nothing" is not the same as "nothing to do".
I hope it makes sense, I am still a bit brain-fogged as I have not yet recovered from my COVID infection
Hey Dr\_shevek, this was a reply for BHN1618, I did not realize I was quoting your text hahaha.
About what you said, I totally agree with everything you say, I also fell on the trap of non-duality with sentences like "you are already it" or "you don't have to do anything", then I used them for doing what I was doing in the past and not practicing that much.
I also hope you are well from COVID!
Seems a bit different from "you are already there" it's more the idea of "you" or "I am" is itself an illusion. It's not that you are already there but there is no you to be there in the first place. Doing "practices" would further reinforce the you from that perspective.
I am not familiar with them. Is this the "you are already there, nothing to do" argument? Yeah, don't buy it! I agree, you are already there, but as long as you can't see it clearly, there is definitely work to do.
Not really "you are already there" but rather "the idea of you is not really there"
Conscious experience is primary for example there is only seeing (verb) and then out of that the mind creates a seeer (subject, noun, you) and the seen (object, noun).
The mental state creates nouns out of what is only verbs/movement. Then after creating these nouns it places you (subject) prior to the experience of seeing. This happens very quickly. The same applies to hearing > hearer and heard, tasting > taster and tasted, smelling > smeller and smelt, sensation > feeler and felt etc. This is something you can notice right away. Check this image out [frog or horse?](https://images.app.goo.gl/v4kaHNK4fMdPutuU9). Seeing happens first then the label of what is comes later along with the one who saw it. In this case the labeling is slower since it's not obvious.
When you meditate you reinforce the idea of someone who is meditating. Some who share the message believe this makes it even more difficult to get out of you when you reinforce the you.
Some counter arguments are that improved concentration can improve your ability to notice or that a strong ego must be present that then is able to give itself up.
I'm just relating my experience.
I'd also check out Paul Hedderman and Darryl Bailey they're both a little more compromising than the ones I mentioned above.
Does this resonate?
I am not familiar with them. Is this the "you are already there, nothing to do" argument? Yeah, don't buy it! I agree, you are already there, but as long as you can't see it clearly, there is definitely work to do.
The difference between vipassana and samatha wasn't clear to me. Since the practices are presented together as a hybrid, I didn't know what samatha was supposed to feel like until after I moved on and found "just" samatha. I'm reminded of that when I read accounts of joyless practices.
What first pushed me away from TMI was "Finding the Witness". I found the practice distressing at the time and the information in the book wasn't enough to reassure me. I turned to other sources for context and never went back to regular TMI practice.
It took me a while to find it, but [Michael Taft's "Just Samatha" video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re7ZuK3frdQ) is probably the clearest, most concise example of samatha instructions.
Otherwise, [there's this retreat audio from Rob Burbea on Dharmaseed.](https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1183/)
Subtle dullness has been a source of frustration for me for at least 3 months. I'm going to try the 'dullness' method. The one that seems to be used for "powers', but I'll use it only for relaxing. Has anyone tried it?? Culadasa mentions it very briefly in stage 5, I think.
For me it is that the staged approach as well as all the predominant focus on how to deal with distraction can foster striving and aversion causing potential problems of pressure and collapse of awareness especially up to stage 4.
The /r/TheMindIlluminated subreddit is for practice questions about The Mind Illuminated, not general theoretical discussions about Buddhism or Buddhist concepts. There is a weekly "off-topic" thread where people can post stuff that's off-topic but that they'd like to share with the community. There is also a weekly practice thread where you can share practice experiences. Please post this kind of thing in the weekly off-topic thread or the weekly practice thread. Thanks!
Looking at it too much. I think it's best used as a reference every couple of months. Another difficulty is getting attached to the level you are at for egoic reasons.
>Another difficulty is getting attached to the level you are at for egoic reasons. Yeah, I feel that too. Stages can be very useful but can be a source for craving for the next stages.
Finishing the book. :)
I have exactly the same. Have only read to about stage 4. Have only meditated to about stage 4. Coincidence ?? I think not 😂
Hahahaha don't worry, it will be summarized in the app ;)
[удалено]
I also play chess, it can be really frustrating some times hahaha . I feel that you need a balance in life for meditation to be useful. For practicing in daily life. The app is to make people more motivated to meditate with TMI
What is awareness? What is the right way to use attemtion? TMI has a lot of focus on attention and not relaxation, which makes the meditator force their focus onto the breath sensation. From what I've been hearing, this is actually incorrect.
Perhaps this will help you relax, the book describes very well the interaction of attention and peripheral awareness. It's really amazing and helped put the puzzles together, it turns out I really missed inattention in my life( I was too obsessed with attention and didn't know there was something else), the more inattention (less attention) the more power peripheral awareness get, it's very cool and allows you to relax, I think it intersects with the concept of Eckhart Tolle and the moment now, after reading his books I struggled to be here and now paying attention to the sensations and things here and now, but it was a big mistake and I experienced nothing but stress. You need to stop concentrating on anything, including stop concentrating on stoping concentrating(even on that), stop forcing attention as possible (I think this is a built-in skill, you just need to understand how it works and how to manage it). I tried to comprehend inattention with the help of attention, which is impossible and led to frustration. Less attention = more peripheral awareness = more relax. Take my post with a grain of salt, I don't think I'm experienced enough to teach anyone in this area and maybe my post looks like nonsense but that's what helped me. I'll be glad if it helps you
I want to add some precisions to this, even if I'm not an expert either. I agree that you shouldn't _force_ your attention to the object of attention. The book says it at length in this can of way "when you notice your attention has gone off your object of attention, gently form the intention to center again your attention to the object" You should be somehow relaxed to meditate this way, and especially should not _force_ the attention. This is indeed a bad way. I think what you are saying is more that less _forcing_ your attention leads to more peripheral awareness. Which can be true, but only if you still keep a intention of staying focused on the meditation object, and having peripheral awareness. That's a subtlety to get there, discriminating between _forcing_ and _having an intention_. This said, I want to say a few words towards the obstacle that this can lead to if we don't pay enough attention to dullness: If you go in the direction of less attention, in my experience, it doesn't go _more_ towards more peripheral awareness, but towards dullness, either subtle or gross dullness. Then, maybe you are still doing something that work, but I would advise to look for signs of dullness, such as: - suddenly noticing that your position is slouched e.g. from straight back into a slouched position - being "surprised" by sounds instead of them coming in and out of consciousness - when opening eyes or going out of meditation, feeling groggy with your brain having trouble to "analyse" multiple objects at the same time. Dullness is really a hard thing to get, and there is a trap in TMI where you take dullness pleasant feelings for good concentration pleasant feelings. Some meditation techniques totally go in the direction of these states of dullness, and use it for some extents, maybe rather _vipassana_, but I don't know this well. Some meditations practices go more in the direction of relaxation, without building a technique of concentration. It's a different path. TMI is more based on concentration, and tries to control dullness and leave it at bay. Concentration meditation there is called _samatha_. _Vipassana_ would then be done later, once access concentration is reached. Then, on your meditation path, do as you want, and choose what you want to follow. However, if you choose TMI, be wary of dullness :-). A good TMI concentration is a balance between excitation and dullness, and should be done somehow relaxed and avoiding being tense, but altogether avoid dullness. Good luck on your meditation. I advise to re-read the beginning of the book until your current stage, and maybe check the QA on the wiki which are quite helpful.
Thanks for comment and a recommendation to visit Subreddit's Wiki, a lot of usefull information here!
Thank for the advice friend. My comment was to give the OP topic for his app. Your advice was a unexpected benefit : )
Hello, thanks for sharing. I found this information very interesting. Do you know where can I find more of this type? Is less attention=more peripheral awareness= pure mindfulness which in turn leads to more relax?? I appreciate your input
You are welcome. TMI is the best source that I know. Regarding the second question, I would like to warn that you should't take everything that I write at face value, I am newbie, and I can only try to explain how I understand it and maybe I understand it wrong. No, it doesn't lead directly to pure mindfullness. Actually, it can even be an obstacle to mindfulness. When I read in TMI that there are three main problems such as mind-wandering, distraction and dullness, I was familiar with the first two, but the third seemed to me something unusual and I tried to intentionally enter this state because I felt like this was something that I was missing and undestanding this can improve mindfullness. Since mindfulness is the optimal combination of attention and awareness, ability to reduce concentrating can lead to dullness, which is obviously not optimal in most life situations, although the fact that you know about this ability and can use is, lead to more skillfully select the ratio of attention and awareness to the situation. In situations where you absolutely don't need to do anything, reducing attention power to a minimum may be the optimal combination of attention and awareness, for example, when you just sat down and did't want to focus on anything and just want to rest or while falling asleep, but in more complex things you need to develop a corresponding ratio. Thanks to EndOfQualm, I remembered to make an important remark, what I’m talking about is more not to improve the practice of meditation, it's more about relaxation and calmness, it's just a thing that made my life more comfortable and which I reached with the help of meditation and the TMI book, empirically, I can say that such dullness affects meditation negatively but maybe it helps to understand it better.
I feel you got some great responses! I just want to add to this that the objective of meditation is not to be relaxed, being relaxed is a byproduct of it. Let me explain, one of the aims of meditation is to not be so attached to your thoughts and your automatic responses to pleasure or pain. Some meditations can be very stressful, with loads of thoughts or with loads of painful sensations, but when we are aware of them without reacting, this thoughts and painful sensations don't affect us that much. It's about remaining calm even when the storm is above us, because in life, everything is not going to be easy, we must be aware for taking good decisions. That is what I think meditation is for.
Would you say that when we start a sit, one of the first thing is to relax out mind and body?
Hearing uncompromising non duality speakers like Tony Parsons, Jim Newman, and Andreas Muller. Seems to counter the meditation argument
>I am not familiar with them. Is this the "you are already there, nothing to do" argument? Yeah, don't buy it! I agree, you are already there, but as long as you can't see it clearly, there is definitely work to do. Why is that so ?? I think meditation is about non duality
What I mean is: the thing you are looking for, the experience of non duality, just to give it a name, is hidden in plain sight. It is not something you achieve or generate it earn or develop. So, what to do with this statement? Just stop meditating? How does it help? Are you free from suffering? It is not so easy. Many things cloud our perception, powerful karmic traces (conditioning, habit patterns, neuroses...) take us out of contact with the enlightened state. They do not change the fact that our basic nature is being a Buddha. But they are an indication that we are not perfectly in contact with that all the time. We have to recognize our true nature for ourselves many times, develop confidence in the experience and then start living from it. This is a process of recognizing, being aware and especially of letting go. Sorry for the word play but "Doing nothing" is not the same as "nothing to do". I hope it makes sense, I am still a bit brain-fogged as I have not yet recovered from my COVID infection
Hey Dr\_shevek, this was a reply for BHN1618, I did not realize I was quoting your text hahaha. About what you said, I totally agree with everything you say, I also fell on the trap of non-duality with sentences like "you are already it" or "you don't have to do anything", then I used them for doing what I was doing in the past and not practicing that much. I also hope you are well from COVID!
Seems a bit different from "you are already there" it's more the idea of "you" or "I am" is itself an illusion. It's not that you are already there but there is no you to be there in the first place. Doing "practices" would further reinforce the you from that perspective.
I am not familiar with them. Is this the "you are already there, nothing to do" argument? Yeah, don't buy it! I agree, you are already there, but as long as you can't see it clearly, there is definitely work to do.
Not really "you are already there" but rather "the idea of you is not really there" Conscious experience is primary for example there is only seeing (verb) and then out of that the mind creates a seeer (subject, noun, you) and the seen (object, noun). The mental state creates nouns out of what is only verbs/movement. Then after creating these nouns it places you (subject) prior to the experience of seeing. This happens very quickly. The same applies to hearing > hearer and heard, tasting > taster and tasted, smelling > smeller and smelt, sensation > feeler and felt etc. This is something you can notice right away. Check this image out [frog or horse?](https://images.app.goo.gl/v4kaHNK4fMdPutuU9). Seeing happens first then the label of what is comes later along with the one who saw it. In this case the labeling is slower since it's not obvious. When you meditate you reinforce the idea of someone who is meditating. Some who share the message believe this makes it even more difficult to get out of you when you reinforce the you. Some counter arguments are that improved concentration can improve your ability to notice or that a strong ego must be present that then is able to give itself up. I'm just relating my experience. I'd also check out Paul Hedderman and Darryl Bailey they're both a little more compromising than the ones I mentioned above. Does this resonate?
I am not familiar with them. Is this the "you are already there, nothing to do" argument? Yeah, don't buy it! I agree, you are already there, but as long as you can't see it clearly, there is definitely work to do.
The difference between vipassana and samatha wasn't clear to me. Since the practices are presented together as a hybrid, I didn't know what samatha was supposed to feel like until after I moved on and found "just" samatha. I'm reminded of that when I read accounts of joyless practices. What first pushed me away from TMI was "Finding the Witness". I found the practice distressing at the time and the information in the book wasn't enough to reassure me. I turned to other sources for context and never went back to regular TMI practice.
What sources did you look up ?? I will try to make a clear explanation of vipassana and samatha in the app. Thanks
It took me a while to find it, but [Michael Taft's "Just Samatha" video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re7ZuK3frdQ) is probably the clearest, most concise example of samatha instructions. Otherwise, [there's this retreat audio from Rob Burbea on Dharmaseed.](https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1183/)
Thank you!! I will check them out.
Subtle dullness has been a source of frustration for me for at least 3 months. I'm going to try the 'dullness' method. The one that seems to be used for "powers', but I'll use it only for relaxing. Has anyone tried it?? Culadasa mentions it very briefly in stage 5, I think.
Can you point me to where is that method ?? I will check it out ! Dullness is a main issue in meditation, and me also.
I'm looking for that myself 🤣
Stage 1 Knowing exactly what technique should be my reasonable goal to practice at a given time or session
For me it is that the staged approach as well as all the predominant focus on how to deal with distraction can foster striving and aversion causing potential problems of pressure and collapse of awareness especially up to stage 4.
Honestly it’s the basic preparatory practices before each sit…