Dharma Treasure Community

As someone who has switched from Theravada to practicing the Dzogchen ngöndro, I can testify that I have not had to start from scratch. Switching to a new tradition has required me to get use to new techniques, a new theory of how emotions work, and a new approach to discipline, but for the most part, my Theravada training has carried over…[Read more]

I have found the following invaluable for understanding how to apply effort during stage 4:

Tips for Stage 4 from TheMindIlluminated

Tips for Stage 4 – Part 2 from TheMindIlluminated

I have recently made the discovery that increasing the amount of time I spend on walking meditation does not have the same impact on the movements as increasing the amount of time I spend on breath meditation. In fact, it does not seem to have any impact at all.

Because of the body movements, I got the impression that meditation retreat is…[Read more]

In response to Blake’s posts:

someone has probably thought of this already, but I have an idea on how to better pair students and teachers. Create a list of spiritual obstacles and strengths. Have teachers rank each on a scale from 1 to 10, based on how strong each item was near the beginning of their practice. This would theoretically allow…[Read more]

No issues at the moment. The temporary intensification has subsided. At this point you should assume no issues unless I post back here.

I would prefer it if people do not reply to this thread, unless they are answering my question. Given my health, responding to a notification that I have received a reply by checking on the thread is not a trivial matter.

As a piece of feedback: I do not recall ever acquiring any unasked for advice on this forum that consists of anything I have…[Read more]

Q&A: How to maintain practice in one’s daily life

Hello Darlene,

I would 1st like to point out that because I meditate while lying down, I have yet to have any body movements on a cushion.

During meditation, the body movements usually consist of my feet hitting each other as if my legs were trying to clap.

Outside of meditation, usually my legs start moving back and forth as if I had to pee,…[Read more]

This week I had a significant decrease in body movements during daily life and meditation. I believe the reason I had a temporary increase in body movements was because switching to a different approach to meditation required a temporary increase in effort.

Thus far, I have had an increase in movements during meditation, but not during daily life. That said, last time I returned to TMI it took a month before the daily life body movements got bad.

Another update:

after discussing some of the violent body movements I have had in my legs with a Lama, she told me they were a symptom that I was putting too much effort into my practice. After relaxing the effort in my practice the body movements have reduced substantially.
As a side note: I’m going to try adding TMI elements back into my…[Read more]

Another update:

the involuntary body movements started to intensify to the point where they would last from 30 minutes to a few hours. I tried removing all TMI elements from my practice and the duration and intensity of the body movements have dropped down again. It would appear that TMI raises my energy levels too quickly.
As a side note, it…[Read more]

To provide an update on my experience of involuntary body movements:

After abandoning TMI practice the involuntary body movements calmed down a lot. About 8 weeks ago, however, I decided that at this point in my spiritual development I am better off focusing on preparatory practices than on actual Dzogchen. After a few weeks of this the…[Read more]

In response to Darlene asking about Dzogchen practice:

Dzogchen has a reputation for being near impossible to learn without a teacher. For that reason, instead of trying to explain Dzogchen on my own and running the risk of spreading misconceptions I have decided to provide links to useful…[Read more]

In response to Blake’s post:
no, that is not what I’m saying at all. Before explaining though, there’s something I need to clarify. Before a person is qualified to practice Dzogchen it is absolutely necessary that they have had a temporary experience of the non-duality of emptiness and form and the ability to reenter that non-dual state. The…[Read more]

Given my health, posting on here is rather inconvenient. The result is that it will take time for me to respond to your posts.

In response to the question on dispassion.
Because I’ve never had access to a Dzogchen teacher I am highly unqualified to speak of Dzogchen. I am even more unqualified to discuss the end results. That said, I will try to…[Read more]

In terms of dealing with strong emotions, I have personally found it extremely helpful to try to get skilled at detecting a state of mind before it has collapsed my mindfulness. The way I learned how to do this is to study the impacts of the various emotions on my state of mind and body sensations. Each time I did this, I could detect the emotion…[Read more]

Hello Meshe,
thanks for the clarification – I think we were in agreement on Dzogchen to begin with, but are merely used to different notations. What I meant by what I wrote earlier, was that trying to take methods out of Dzogchen or Tantra and combining them with TMI without knowing what you are doing, or understanding the systems you are b…[Read more]

Dzogchen does not end in dispassion.