[Mike GMember]

Dear all,
I’d like to add my personal perspective to this interesting topic. I’m coming from the other side to a certain degree: I was a Zen practitioner for several years. I ended up switching to TMI not because I was unsatisfied with Zen practice, but because my practice had fallen asleep and when I moved, there wasn’t a Sangha or teacher in my new city.
Then, when I had decided to restart my practice, I heard about TMI, was intrigued, and decided to try it out. I’m very happy and am quite sure to stay with this practice, but if I had continued doing Zen, this would have been good as well.

So, Tom, about your question. Stream entrance is quite an accomplishment, and I believe that it is quite compatible between the different schools. Sure, the philosophies and techniques vary enormously, but the goals don’t. Zen teachers try to teach you attention, awareness, Samadhi and enlightenmend just as Mahayana or Vajrayana teachers will. Especially the “goal-less” Zen way is almost the opposite of TMI with all it’s stages, but these are to a certain extent details.

I believe that someone who has realized stream-entry will be able to find footing in any genuine meditation tradition without too much difficulty. Sure, you’ll have to start from scratch in the sense that techniques will be unknown to you, but with a pliant mind, you’ll go through these rather quickly. So, in my opinion, as far as training your mind is concerned, you do not start from scratch.

Best wishes! Michael

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by  Mike G.

[Mike GMember]

Dear Matt,

thank you so much for your precious observations – they are profound and very helpful! Yes, the fact that the Hara is still is why I was having trouble using it for watching the breath. I decided that this creates more complications than are necessary. I’m sure to come back to it and to your great incentives later down the road, when I have established a reliable focus and am ready to expand my techniques.

About the attitude about in meditation: I assume that I don’t have all too many problems with this. I think that I got a decent understanding for now that doing nothing absolutely isn’t the same thing as not doing anything 🙂 I have been so lucky to have practiced for a while in a great Zen group with a fantastic teacher – I’d like to think that this has given me a head start. (Why am I here then, now? The main reason is that I moved away from that city about 8 years ago, and I lost the focus on keeping up the practice. Without a good Zen teacher who is present, I decided to go with TMI’s detailed approach until further notice. Be warned – further questions about Zen vs. Vipassana might follow).

Still – this is such an important point that it simply can’t be stressed often enough. Also, the clarity in Ajahn’s writing is very inspiring, it helped a lot to read this.
Shinzen Yound said this nicely: You’re damned if you talk about stuff, and you’re damned if you don’t. Then Zen way is to avoid too many directions – the advantage is that it reduces the danger of getting stuck on instruction. The disadvantage is that not everyone ‘gets it’ this way. A style of instruction that probably works best if there is a teacher physically present to embody this kind of teaching – many things can be communicated non-verbally.
Vipassana, on the other hand, has all these detailed explanations, which have their own advantages and drawbacks. It
s like its stated in the TMI manual – one has to drop the instructions and thinking at a certain stage.

Oh, and I have been meditating on the nostrils – it worked out decently for me. I often fall back into watching The Breath as a whole, how I used to – but I’m sure this is a minor problem. It’s probably better to fall back on that, at least keeping with the breath at all, than to go full mind-wandering and resume my dreams of world domination. But, of course, it is still a loss of focus, since I intend for now to follow the TMI instructions closely.

So, thank you all again for your replies, my dilemma has been solved for now. I might come back to this thread in a while, when I’m past mastering the basics (Milestone 2 or something like that) and am ready to explore other techniques.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by  Mike G.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by  Mike G.

[Mike GMember]

Hey Ward,
yes, I believe that my motivation is similar. I decided to go with your suggestion. I’ll report in in a few weeks, but I believe that I’m just gonna stick with that. And reserve Hara related things for alternative practices further down the road, when I have established a solid Vipassana practice.

[Mike GMember]

Dear Matt, Dear Darlene,
thank you both for your replies. The provide interesting input!

Matt: I skimmed both your texts, and found them very interesting. They are certainly very good instruction. If I got it right: the bottom line is to use various points in the body as the focal points, leading breath energy and feeling the breath in various places. In the end, this is quite similar to what you kindly proposed, Darlene.

I’m not sure how I can use this, because I see one crucial difference, and please do correct me if I got it wrong: all of this includes a kind of ‘mental’ technique, using imagination to ‘do’ things with the breath, and focus, and body. The TMI approach, at least at this point, seems to focus on observation on one point alone. And this might be a good idea for now, because I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible for now.

I’m focusing on steps 2-3 as of now. While I do have a fair share of meditation experience (I started 8 years ago, did Zazen and some mindfulness movement stuff, and read quite a bits, but didn’t practice very consistently) I haven’t built concentration that is as solid as it might be. So, for now, I want to really invest some time to very solidly master the first steps.

What is clear to me is that the main difference between Zen breathing (If I misrepresent anything, it’s my fault and not my teacher’s) and the TMI approach is the latter’s great amount of detail in the instructions. In the Zazen I did (it’s not a monolithic technique, there’s a lot of variation), you follow the breath, sometimes breathe “into” the Hara, but you don’t analyze in so much detail. The way of focus is much more open, intuitive, following the breathing sensations wherever they arise, trying to keep the whole process in mind. I’d say, it’s roughly comparable to step 3 of the gradual 4-step transition outlined in stage one. And of course, there’s the minimalist framing, which shuns too much instruction and analysis. Obviously, this has advantages over the samatha-vipassana technique as well as disadvantages. But, it is, in the end, a very different approach.

This is probably why I’m having difficulty: there’s not much sensation ‘left’ in the Hara, which is below the abdomen. One uses what I might call a kind of mental technique, imagining how the breath is being lead into the hara, which is exactly where you two have been so kind to suggest further information. And one doesn’t focus on the Hara alone, but includes other breath sensations. I’m not sure what to do with it, because for me, both of these approaches seem to rather contradict what is outlined in TMI, being the classic vipassana approach in only focusing on the physical sensations in one place, without adding mental suggestions or images, or taking several different spots into considerations, or keeping a more lose, open focus.

So how could I do it? If I want to follow the physical sensations associated with breath, I need a point in the body that provides a fair share of them. I can either use the whole abdomen, as is mentioned in the book several times, but that’s not really Hara breathing anymore. Or I can keep the focus in the Hara, which necessitates a ‘dual’ approach, because I’ll have to focus on breath sensations in another spot where they are present.

The closest thing to keeping my familiar technique would thus be to keep focusing on the Hara, and observe the whole breathing process somewhat intuitively. I think that it is possible to use this whole conglomerate as the focus of mediation, and apply the 10 stages to it. But this would mean re-interpreting a lot of the precise instructions of the TMI manual to make them fit.

I would very much appreciate your input on this, since I wonder if I’m doing myself a favor here, coming in as a TMI beginner and wanting to modify the technique. I’m starting to think that it might be wiser to drop all of the previous technique for now, start from scratch and simply go with the nostrils.

Thank you very much.

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