Archive for December 2023
6 – THE SEVEN FACTORS OF AWAKENING
The seven factors of awakening are: 1) mindfulness 2) investigation 3) energy 4) rapture 5) tranquility 6) concentration 7) equanimity We have three concepts from the five spiritual faculties (mindfulness, energy, and concentration) and four that seem new but have already been touched on to some degree. The order here is closely related to the…
Read More7 – The Scopes of the Three Trainings
The scopes of the three trainings of Impermanence, dissatisfaction, and Anatta – No self HAPPINESS First, I will consider happiness in the context of the scopes of the three trainings. Since training in morality is such a vast subject, the ways we can find happiness is also a vast subject, and becomes interesting primarily in…
Read More8 – THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS there is: 1) Suffering or dis-satisfactoriness 2) The cause of suffering 3) The end of suffering 4) The path that leads to the end of suffering. The fourth noble truth is The Buddha’s Noble Eight-fold Path that leads to suffering’s cessation: 1. Right view 2. Right intention 3. Right speech 4.…
Read More9 – The Higher States of Human Consciousness – The Jhanas
The word jhana (a Pali word that literally has two basic meanings, “to contemplate”, and “to burn up”, as in to burn up unskillful states of mind) refers to a whole mode of attention, a whole broad package of mental aspects and possibilities that are vastly more essential than they are typically considered to be.…
Read MoreSpirituality Inherently Calls to Everyone – Meditation is just one of the Answers to that Calling
Silence is the language ‘God’ speaks, Meditation helps to still your body enough to open the door to your inner silence. Within this inner silence one can abide the boundless space of our True Nature, It is here deep within ourselves that we can hear the whispers of Wisdom flow through our Being. It is…
Read More10 – The 2cd 3rd and 4th Jhanas
The second jhana is an improvement over the first in that significantly less effort is required to keep the attention on the meditation object, and clarity is increased. The descriptive phrase in the tradition is, “with the dropping of applied and sustained thought or effort, one abides in the second jhana,” but it does take…
Read More11 – THE CONCENTRATION STATES (SHAMATHA JHANAS)
While our practice generally has some aspects of insight and concentration mixed together, in this section I will mostly talk more about what practice may look like when we try to stay towards the concentration side of things, that of the smooth, flowing, pleasant, more apparently stable states that concentration practice can produce. ~~~ Regardless…
Read More12 – THE SECOND SHAMATHA JHANA
The second shamatha jhana is like the first, a seemingly solidified mind state. With the dropping of almost all applied and sustained effort, the rapture and happiness/joy factors created by concentration can really predominate. Thus, whereas the first jhana requires you to make effort to pay attention to maintain it, the second jhana has much…
Read More13 – THE THIRD SHAMATHA JHANA
If the meditator decides to go on to the third shamatha jhana, this can be achieved by just cultivating the second jhana more deeply and eventually noticing that the rapture or emotional “wow factor” of that state eventually becomes annoying, distasteful, agitating, or even boring. and what is left is a more cool “bodily” bliss…
Read More14 – THE FOURTH SHAMATHA JHANA
If practitioners wish to go on to the fourth shamatha jhana, they cultivate the third jhana and begin to pay attention to the fact that even the cool bodily bliss is somewhat irritating or noisy, and that the mind is still not as spacious and evenly balanced across the field of experience as it could…
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