Dharma Treasure Community

Hi everyone, thanks for the opportunity, this is a great forum and has many helpful posts, and much appreciation to Upasaka Culadasa for his brilliant and accurate guide to the 10 stages of meditation.

I have a long history of ‘so called’ meditation, it has required using intense discrimination (at times, when done correctly) and a strong devotional aspect. Mostly though it would be sitting in dullness and distracted states either subtle or gross (and until recently not recognizing them as mere dullness) and either letting thoughts ride on their own with a modicum of concentration on a meditation object, or getting high on internal energies.

So after totally renewing my approach via the 10 stage method, I was able to move quickly to level 4 and start recognizing dullness and distraction. Attention would stay with the breathe fairly easily with some vigilance and diligence I started to feel more equanimity rather than struggle. Not perfect by any means, but strong enough to feel that level was fairly stable.

Moving on to stage 5. Here the really big change was vastly increased mindfulness, totally unexpected and reminds me of constantly (and then easefully) de-fogging a mirror to see clearly or be awake in sitting practice, as well as daily activities. I must admit I have struggled previously with this potential and basically given up on the real possibility of being clearly ‘awake’ or ‘present, alert and available’ at least most of the time (not looking for a perfect outcome). I could simply not hold wakeful awareness for any length of time. So I perform a lot of present, mindful action outside of sitting. As Culadasa states there is a natural joy or happiness in present mindful action (not talking vipassana here) that keeps us in step. Does this sound a reasonable stage 5 outcome or am I on the wrong track and further if this is on track how to move it into stage 6 (not in a hurry, happy enough to mature in 4/ 5 first) your feed back welcome.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by  Marty G.