Open Awareness Meditation

I recently attended a "Mindful Awareness & Serenity" workshop session with Bhante Aggacitta over the weekend.  One of the key takeaway from the workshop is open awareness or dynamic serenity. It is best to do this meditation with eyes open using the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and contact to be aware of the present moment. We can be aware of present objects through the five senses. However, the mind (sixth sense) can take in past, present, and future objects.  Because the monkey mind can propel us into daydreaming, we can make use of this meditation to help anchor our mind to the present moment. Here are the tips to ensure that happens - free & easy, touch & go. Free & easy means letting the mind go free to wander from one sense base to another, with both the mind & body totally relaxed. Touch & go means moving on and not hanging on to any of the five senses. Another interpretation mens see & see only, hear & hear only.... and so on. Which also means no labelling of any of the five senses, or the mind can easily wander off to create stray thoughts to frustrate our meditation practice. Do not allow the mind to pull our consciousness back to the past or dwell on the imaginery future because thinking of the past & future is just a delusion.       

How to be in Total Relaxation

Mindfulness of breathing means the whole body is "breathing" in a concerted way. The result is total relaxation and you will feel very comfortable, very much like being in a blissful state. To achieve this, you will have to 1) still or quieten your mind to shut out stray thoughts. Bring your awareness to back to your body is one way to do this. 2) challenge yourself to relax your body more and more. Be in a comfortable position to ensure your body is upright with your spine straightened. Even then, you can feel your body getting softer and softer. 3) when your mind is relatively still and your body relaxed, you will find that your breathing will become more and more gentle to the extent that you will feel very little air through your nostrils.  All three factors support one another. In the process, you can sometimes feel the energy build-up in your aura expanding outwards and upwards. That is also the time when you can feel the bliss.  You can use this blissful state to heal your body. Visualise energy downpour coming down from above to permeate your whole body and when you exhale, visualise the used-up energy coming out from the pores of your skin. And to sustain the bliss, you need mindfulness to keep the momentum going. This bliss is not something money can buy. It is free and you can tap on it whenever you want, provided the above three conditions are met.

Understanding the Purpose of Meditation

Meditation seems to touted as a panadol to help combat today's stressful lifestyle. Mindfulness is another hot topic being taught to many people to achieve focus. Sometimes it makes you wonder how many people truly benefited from doing meditation and practising mindfulness. First, know exactly why you want to meditate. Is it to relax the body or your mind, or both ? Second, know how to do it well. For this you will need to find a good meditation teacher who can impart you with the right skills and techniques. Whatever it may be, you must to be in a state of peace and calm before you meditate, and also be peaceful and calm after you meditate. For themore spiritually inclined folks, please also invoke The Triple Gem for their guidance, help and protection. The above diagram aims to summarise some of the key points to help you achieve a more fruitful meditation session. Just remember that total relaxation is key. My next post will show the close connection of having a quiet mind, a relaxed body, and subtle breathing to make the difference, so that you will truly enjoy your meditation, and not to become stressed and frustrated in the process.    

The Danger of Pursuing Materialistic Pleasures

Many people seek enjoyment to gratify their five sense bases (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). This brings temporary moments of mundane happiness which satisfy the craving for pleasurable sensations. Eventually a person will have a stronger desire to have more and more which leads to clinging (attachment). This forms a strong habit (addiction) to propel a person to a continous cycle of rebirth due to the strong energy stream of consciousness. I would like to point out that it is absolutely okay to harbour ambitions to be successful in life to acquire wealth and enjoy material comforts. However, the balancing act is to know how to enjoy wealth and comfort without being soiled by them. In fact, it is a great blessing to have both material and spiritual wealth at the same time. Why ? So that you have no financial worries (burden) to pursue spiritual development. In addition, you can also put your wealth to good use in doing service and tithing to generate good karma for yourself and your family members.  During the time of the Buddha, there were kings and noblemen that managed to attain the first stage of spiritual enlightenment without having to renounce. So there is hope for us all !    

        

Different Spiritual Progress by Different People

Everyone of us is different. We have our own karmic debts to pay, lessons to learn, and defilements to get rid off. Learning the dharma is one thing, but applying what you have learnt in your daily life is another. Accepting and understanding the Buddha's teachings well is a first good step as it leads to having the right view and accurate perception. Next is adhering to the precepts and living life according to the noble eightfold path.  If you do this diligently, you would have generated some good karma or merits for yourself as a form of benefit. But of course if you can also supplement the learning of the dharma by doing dana and practicing meditation would be a good bonus. This is assuming you are meditating well under the guidance of a good teacher. This is because it is only through meditation would you be able to "see" or realise dharma to develop the factors of enlightenment. Else, it would just be an academic understanding by just studying the dharma and leading a wholesome and upright life.  Being good is not good enough. You will have to purify your mind through meditation. 

How to Develop Wisdom

Unlike conventional wisdom which normally equates to intellectual knowledge, the wisdom that the Buddha advocates is intuitive wisdom. In the science of energy healing, the chakra responsible for intuitive wisdom is the forehead chakra. It is not determined by how intelligent you are, how smart you are in terms of IQ or EQ, or how high is your academic or professional qualifications.  Here, the purpose of wisdom is direct knowledge or full understanding  that leads a disciple to see, realise, and taste dhamma towards the goal of total liberation or nibbana, That is the eradication of all mental defilements and letting go of all attachments. Else the craving energy will lead to many rounds of rebirth and suffering. To help develop your wisdom, there are four things which you need to do, and they are 1) associate with the wise e.g noble friends or members of the sangha; 2) listening to good dhamma to gain the right understanding of the three universal truths and the eightfold path etc, ; 3) careful attention or mindfulness; and 4) behave in accordance with the dhamma e.g. adhering to the five or eight precepts.

Kalyana Mitta

It was said that Buddha once mentioned having a noble friend(s) is not half, but the whole of a person's spiritual life. Choose your friends wisely. They either help you or hinder you on your spiritual path.  Associate with friends who adhere to the five/eight precepts, impart wholesome values, cultivate virtues and have good character development. Their highly positive energies will help uplift you to pursue loftier goals and aspirations. On the other hand, associating with the wrong company can drag you down by influencing you with mental defilements, unkind speech and unwholesome deeds. Such negative energies can further be compounded by indulging with vices. Hence, one has to use one's wisdom and discernment whether to continue associating with the right group of company. However choosing and dropping friends might be easy, but you cannot easily do that for family members and relatives. When it comes to such situations, do not judge or criticise others as we are all evolving at different rate. Perhaps the best thing is to continue to socialise but reduce your frequency of engagement. And for those of you who know about energy work, just do some cleansing and energising should put you in good steed.