[EricMember]

5 of us had a nice hour chat, hour meditation and debrief. Here is a link to the call and guided meditation.

mucho metta,

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1huWepa1YyId7VsHDaEmXcot6zhUMA83P?usp=sharing

[EricMember]

Hey Roger,

Try this and see if it works. Make the 6-step prep more deliberate to tamp down the distractions by actually writing down the answers to the first 5 steps…as if you were filling out a questionnaire. Maybe save your answers to see how they change over time (another lesson in impermanence 🙂 ). Eventually you will see you won’t need to write them down as you work on overcoming gross distraction with the breath. That is the attentional work you do with the breath will have an effect on the mind. Spend a minute or 2 considering each of the 5 steps. The clarity and seed laying at this stage helps with mastering stage 1.

mucho metta,

[EricMember]

Hey Raza,

I was going to suggest going to the abdomen but only in the interim till you get to Stage 6. In Stage 5 there is a preliminary step before the body scan to go to the abdomen. So your attention will be there at the abdomen already. As you go on to scanning sensations in the body, going from smaller to larger areas and vice versa, you can try and discern very small areas like segments of a finger. What you will find is that proximity of sensations does not effect the focus and clarity of the sensations in attention. That is, you can define your scope of attention to a finger tip and ignore the breath sensations in the rest of the finger. So when you get to Stage 6 and define a tight scope of attention on the breath inside the nose and the upper lip you should have developed the skill to ignore the sensations in your gums from the body scan (I recognize the pain is more challenging to ignore then breath sensations in the fingers but you are ignoring the gum pain while at the abdomen already). In fact if you are focusing on the pain sensations you will be alerted to the fact that your scope of attention spontaneously expanded. This will help and may hinder you. It will help as you will right away tighten up your focus to exclude them from attention, it may hinder in that you want introspective awareness to do this and not a ‘pain alarm’ alerting you to the expanded scope. Anyway, I am sure you will find your own way thru.

Check out Coconut Pulling for your gum pain. My mother in law had some pain in her teeth from some recent dentistry. There was no basis for the pain on xrays and Coconut Pulling seemed to take care of it. It could of just been she needed time to heal but it was persistently the same pain strength until the oil use.

mucho metta,

[EricMember]

Hey Raza,

First I think it’s great the way you have used and framed the challenges you face and progressed to stage 4…way to go! Have you read stages 5 & 6 in TMI? I think I see a way thru for you but you will need to be familiar with the techniques and goals in those stages first.

Re: the pain in your gums. Have you looked at foods that cause inflammation (not allergies)? In the states there is a company called EveryWell that analyzes a few drops of blood and tests for the foods that cause inflammation in the body. Every person is different and they rate the foods into 4 categories of increasing inflammation. I had 3 foods in the high category. One I knew of and avoided and one of the others I ate almost everyday and did not realize the issue. When I eliminated them from my diet the ache I felt in my knees when I did qigong in the morning disappeared and has not returned.

mucho metta,

[EricMember]

Hi Blue,

Anatta or no-self is an insight for one “internally” or subjectively…for ones own freedom. It’s not meant to be used or wielded on others i.e. “why are you sad that your mom died, there’s no-self ya know!”.

Compassion (all the brahma viharas) is no-self reflected into no-selfishness “externally” or inter-subjectively with others.

Dhamma has connotations of ‘duty’. Realizing no-self “internally” does not absolve one’s duties to others. That is, the selfless person still performs their duties (familial, vocational, etc.) but non-selfishly (some would even say more effectively). Most practice this in reverse until anatta is realized. That is, we may not understand or have realized no-self but we can understand and enact no-selfishness fairly easily.

mucho metta,

[EricMember]

Ajahn Buddhadasa had a nice contribution with his 2 languages. The people language and dhamma language the Buddha seemed to be speaking. So discerning when he is speaking which and to whom can be helpful.

Sutta has a relation to suture. Santikaro once advised to follow a thread within the suttas to gain understanding. I found that helpful. With this in mind its helpful to ground your understanding in your own practice. This way you have threads that are worth following. This is how the suttas can ‘come to life’ and inform your practice.

When I first started reading the suttas I shelved whatever I did not understand and would come back to it periodically.

Reading different translations of the same sutta is helpful. You see that everyone is coming to their interpretation with their own personal understanding.

I read Kalupahana’s “The Buddha’s Philosophy of Language” recently. He said the Buddha had a language of becoming while his culture had a language of existence. I would say that most of us have a language based in existence (ontology) so it takes some time to consider what a language of becoming would be like. Culadasa talks about ‘process’.

I once heard that each and every sutta is only about emptiness…it’s fun to try and discern how emptiness is in each sutta.

To the folks that want to change the suttas to fit a modern understanding like Batchelor’s ‘Beliefs without Buddhism’ (hahaha). Would you go into an art museum and want to redo works of art from antiquity because they did not agree with your modern aesthetic? I’ve found putting myself into the shoes of who the Buddha is addressing to be helpful i.e. do I posses a similar belief or perspective to who he is teaching. Then ask, ‘what is he trying to tell me’? So I literally don’t have to be a cow or dog ascetic but do I posses forms of ‘magical thinking’, etc.?

If you want to find a deeper dhammic meaning the tendency to literalize needs to be kept in check when reading the suttas. Ajahn Buddhadasa’s seeing jati (birth) as the birth of ego is a case in point.

mucho metta,

[EricMember]

Hey Florian,
Check out the graphic on P184. There you will see the components of the discriminating mind.

Mucho metta,

[EricMember]

Hey Kim,

I had an emergency appendectomy years ago that left me bedridden. First the surgeon could not find the appendix and so opened me up 5 inches and then he could not close the wound because he thought it may be septic and I’d be worse off if he closed it. Anyway, I basically found a breath that calmed my body enough to not feel the pain so badly. The nurses thought I was being macho when I refused pain killers. But I could manage it and relax around the pain using the long breath (actually cultivating a long breath) enough that I felt OK and at ease. When I went to see the surgeon a few weeks or so later he was impressed with how fast it was healing. I don’t know if he said that to make me feel better or if it was because of the way I used the long breath to destress my body to allow it to heal faster (the long breath fosters a greater Heart Rate Variability which is a measure for stress). This was years before TMI but I was basically hanging out all day in the preliminary Steps 2 – 3 transition to the breath…being aware of the whole breath from nose to navel and sensing the state of the whole body. As my body healed and I felt stronger I eventually went back to the sensations at the nose.

mucho metta,

[EricMember]

I get together with some friends every couple of months and we go over a sutta or 2 in depth. We were looking at this sutta.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.204.than.html

In the metaphor at the end tranquility and insight come to consciousness via the 8-fold path. If we see that the path is developmental then we see that not only tranquility is developed but so is insight. Many teachers talk of insight as this event or series of events but the sutta’s metaphor is describing insight inline with the graduated training. So how to help foster the development of insight? Spend some time seeing via the lenses of the 5 insights. Periodically look thru the lenses of anicca, dukkha, anatta, idappacayata and sunnata. It does not have to be only when you are meditating.

mucho metta,

e

[EricMember]

“Eric – that is interesting – I just bought a book on Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong which is based on acupuncture meridians and it has tapping along the acupuncture meridians as one of the exercises. Very interesting. how did you know they released old emotional stuff? Did it come out as mental content?”

Yes the stuff came up as thought content (memories) and emotional energy in the body. That is how the technique works, you start to drill down or uncover layers of stuff. You keep going until you either resolve the current layer to a satisfying degree or eliminate it. Or you keep going uncovering more layers till you get to the root and resolve it. It can happen in a session or take many sessions (if it’s old and deep it usually isn’t cleared in a session). My wife uses it daily to let go off stuff from the day…like brushing her teeth.

mucho metta,

eric

[EricMember]

Hey Steve,

If there is an unresolved emotional component to your energy imbalance, you may want to check out EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique aka tapping). Like acupuncture it is meridian based and meant to remove energy blockages. Although it would be helpful you don’t need a trained therapist and can self facilitate it. The technique is easy to learn (you can find instructions on youtube). However a skilled therapist will most likely hone in on the underlying trigger and help resolve it more quickly. That is really the key… finding the underlying cause (as well as being open to the technique) as there may be layers to get thru to uncover that underlying cause. My wife is a therapist and this is one of her go to techniques when there is an underlying emotional component to any issue. I brought my wife in to some groups and we group tapped (studies have shown that you can tap for other people…so the group all tap on one persons stuff). I was amazed at how the technique released old deeply held patterns in my friends. Some had no idea they were still carrying around their old stuff.

mucho metta,

eric

[EricMember]

Re: sitting with pain

I tell folks that if you wake up the next day and your body hurts i.e. your knee, back, etc. from sitting with the pain too long then you overdid it the day before. Most won’t feel anything the next day from a one hour sit unless they began with an uncomfortable position. I don’t recommend starting in full lotus etc. unless you can start in that position comfortably without stress on your joints. Common sense goes a long way! 🙂

mucho metta,

eric

[EricMember]

Hey Henk,

” I tried to hold the intention ‘to turn my mind inwards’ but then nothings seems to happen (ie. ‘my mind’ does not know where to turn attention to).”

Before working with TMI I spent a few years with Shinzen’s 5 Ways. He has a clear and simple way to differentiate introspective vs. extrospective awareness. See/Hear/Feel Out (Chapter 2 link below) are extrospective and See/Hear/Feel In (Chapter 1 link below) are introspective. If you spend some time noting with those 2 nomenclatures you should easily discern “where” you are looking when checking in. If you need further clarification, please don’t hesitate to ask. Below is the link to his free book.

https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FiveWaystoKnowYourself_ver1.6.pdf

mucho metta,

eric

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