Types of Meditation ?

wil said:
ah...aum...the eastern I am...

So now that is a meditation or contemplation for ya...

Now if you buy the above...God spoke before he did anything else... do ya really buy it. Existed forever no beginning no end, and didn't do anything until he spoke in the metaphor?

So medidtate on that.

What was G!d doing just before he spoke?

and the millenia before that?

we humans being a blip in the time of the earth...ie if 'since he spoke was a day we came into existence what...30 seconds ago?

but in G!ds eternal existence the time since creation is a blip...

so what was the all encompassing nonanthropomorphic being doing/thinking/contemplating/meditatinig before he spoke??

meditate on that....
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Before speaking God was listening. Mrs. God was speaking and God couldn't get a word in edgewise
 
Thomas said:
I do urge you all to listen, it is truly ecumenical, and is focussed absolutely on the question of meditation.

Thomas
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Namaste Thomas,

It was a good talk, and quite ecumenical, but that has been his practice for years.

Can you agree that all traditions have value and looking within vs. without connection? To me that was stated by Paul in Galations (ecumenical) and Jesus...look niether high or low...the kingdom of heaven is in your midst.
 
i went to a Buddhist meditation class last night, was ok, but almost everything the guy talked about was in the Bible apart from re-incarnation.

Soaking Prayer for those who dont know is where you just soak in Gods presence it can be really amazing :)

soaking.com :: What Is Soaking?

WHAT IS SOAKING? To "soak" in God's presence is to rest in His love rather than to "strive" in prayer. As the person who is soaking connects with the Holy Spirit (receiving a touch from God begins to connect you with the reality of the Holy Spirit's presence), they often respond by falling or simply lying on the floor. As they rest expectantly waiting in God's presence, the Holy Spirit hovers over them to reveal more of God's love. God will also use these times to renew and repair areas of a person's life.
As the believer soaks God takes control and begins to draw their attention to His word either in the bible or through internal audible impressions or pictures they see in their mind's eye.
Soaking can be compared to making pickles. An article associated with a Classical Greek word study on the words bapto, meaning to dip, and baptidzo, meaning to immerse (where we get the word baptize), used this same analogy. The recipe called for the raw cucumber to be dipped in boiling water to blanch or sterilize, using the word bapto, which means "to dip in and out quickly." Then it called for the cucumber to be immersed, using the word baptidzo, and soaked in the brine and the pickling solution for several weeks. What happens during this soaking time is that the marinade or the pickling solution soaks deep into the flesh of the cucumber until it takes on the flavor of the pickling solution so that it no longer tastes like a raw cucumber. So just as the cucumber becomes more like the pickling solution over time, as we spend time "soaking" in God's presence we become more and more like Him.
Another analogy commonly used is the concept of a sponge being soaking in water. Think of a dry sponge and how it looks when it is completely dried out. Imagine that same sponge being soaked and completely immersed in a bowl of water. That's the concept of soaking, to be full and overflowing with the presence of God.
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GlorytoGod said:
i went to a Buddhist meditation class last night, was ok, but almost everything the guy talked about was in the Bible apart from re-incarnation.
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Crazy. That shows that all religions point to the same ultimate transcendent truth or you went to the wrong building. :p

(or did he know or suspect you were all Christians and he's insidiously trying to get you to get into Buddhism :eek:)

s.
 
Re: Types of Meditation ? Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas
In Buddhism yes, because it doesn't penetrate the veil, as it were.

What does this mean, please?

s.

anyone?:confused:
 
Thomas said:
I don't pray to learn, nor do I have any expectation of prayer.
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I like that. In zazen there is no expectation and nothing to achieve.

The method of prayer, or meditation (and there are many) I would rather call experiential disciplines, than empirical techniques?
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Ooh, I like that too. :)

s.
 
wil said:
Can you agree that all traditions have value and looking within vs. without connection?
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I would say 'looking within' is a metaphor ... you like looking 'in', but you have previously ridiculed the idea of looking 'up', for example, yet I see no contradiction between the idea of God within, of God all around, of God above, below, etc. but that there is a certain 'common sense' of symbolism and 'up' is most fitting for the Godhead:
"These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said: Father..." John 17:1.

Looking 'in' speaks of union or intimacy ... but as you reject the Christian hermenteutic as it is traditionally understood, I don't think we do agree.

From a meditative viewpoint, I would say that in looking within, the first port of call is the conscience:
"the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them" (Romans 2:15) ... This is, in a wider context, the Natural Law ... so looking within will suffice for a life of natural virtue, but if one seeks the infusion or spiration of the supernatural virtues, then one is obliged to look/go further ... beyond the self.

Thomas
 
Snoopy said:
Crazy. That shows that all religions point to the same ultimate transcendent truth or you went to the wrong building. :p
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maybe I read somewhere the the essence of all true religions is the same.


(or did he know or suspect you were all Christians and he's insidiously trying to get you to get into Buddhism :eek:)

s.
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LOL

seriously though I might repackage some of the methods with a Christian emphasis, wouldnt be hard to do :eek:
 
Snoopy said:
In Buddhism yes, because it doesn't penetrate the veil, as it were.
What does this mean, please?
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It was something of a pointed statement.

One could argue that Buddhism does not signify a 'revelation' in the sense of the transcendent making itself known to the contingent, or the Absolute to the relative. 'Enlightenment' in that sense could still remain within the operation of the unaided human intellect and reason. There is nothing 'supernatural' about the Buddha or his teachings.

If such is the case ... and I use that qualifier if ... then the 'actual transcendent' remains hidden, or in the language of symbolism 'beyond the veil', and what is arrived at, or not spoken of, is a 'speculative transcendent'. Nothing is said, because nothing can be said. In such case Buddhism can then be likened to a philosophical system, based on all the available data of human experience, but about the beyond-human, it can say nothing.

I tend to believe however that the Enlightenment does signify an order of revelation.

Thomas
 
Thomas said:
I tend to believe however that the Enlightenment does signify an order of revelation.

Thomas
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The Dali Lama says that you know when you are enlightened as everyone you see you see as enlightened.

Eckardt Tolle says if you wish to obtain enlightenment, quit putting it as a goal. As the point of entry can never be in the future but only in the now.
 
Thomas said:
One could argue that Buddhism does not signify a 'revelation' in the sense of the transcendent making itself known to the contingent, or the Absolute to the relative. 'Enlightenment' in that sense could still remain within the operation of the unaided human intellect and reason. There is nothing 'supernatural' about the Buddha or his teachings.

If such is the case ... and I use that qualifier if ... then the 'actual transcendent' remains hidden, or in the language of symbolism 'beyond the veil', and what is arrived at, or not spoken of, is a 'speculative transcendent'. Nothing is said, because nothing can be said. In such case Buddhism can then be likened to a philosophical system, based on all the available data of human experience, but about the beyond-human, it can say nothing.

I tend to believe however that the Enlightenment does signify an order of revelation.

Thomas
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Thank you for your reply Thomas. :)

Aside from my own limited, misguided, incomplete understanding (!) you made a reference to “Buddhist orthodoxy.” I think it might be difficult to agree on what this might be, given the nature of Buddhism. For example, Nichiren Buddhism is based upon the Lotus Sutra. Theravadan Buddhism does not accept such sutras. Therefore the orthodoxy of Nichiren Buddhism is presumably unrelated to that of Theravadan? – making it difficult or even impossible to speak of “Buddhist orthodoxy?” With no single text or authority (body or person) Buddhism is a disparate creature around the globe.

So any stumbling comment that I might make regarding the transcendent would only be coming from my understanding, gained through Soto Zen; which I may attempt given time! More generally, I have seen Theravadan Buddhism referred to as psychological Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism referred to as transcendent Buddhism.

s.
 
Snoopy said:
Aside from my own limited, misguided, incomplete understanding (!) you made a reference to “Buddhist orthodoxy.” I think it might be difficult to agree on what this might be, given the nature of Buddhism.
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Probably right ... I'm no expert.

Thomas
 
Thomas said:
In Buddhism yes, because it doesn't penetrate the veil, as it were. Christianity does, revealing the "Other" as neither nothing, nor empty.
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You believe the Buddha nature is "nothing" or "empty"?
 
Addendum to my above post:

Netti-Netti said:
Yes, there is an empirical self that is a witness to all these temporary goings on. But there is also an "Absolute, Eternal True Self," the true Buddha Self:
Many venerable saints and scholars have argued for the Self in the past and do so in the present. Great teachers of the Tibetan Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya schools have and do argue that such a view (i.e. the reality of an essential, deathless Self) is fundamental to the practice of the Buddhist path and the attainment of Enlightenment.
​
Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Netti-Netti said:
You believe the Buddha nature is "nothing" or "empty"?
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No.

But I have no clear understanding of how Buddhism defines the 'self' — as I understand it, it's not the same as the 'self' of the Abrahamics, the 'person'.

Thomas
 
Thomas,

I would be interested to hear what you have noticed about 'self' apart from doctrine. Just your own ideas and musings about what we call "me", just in the spirit of inquiry.
 
Paladin said:
I would be interested to hear what you have noticed about 'self' apart from doctrine. Just your own ideas and musings about what we call "me", just in the spirit of inquiry.
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I take my understanding of self primarily from the investigation of Thomist metaphysics that began in the last century, focussing on Aquinas' Neoplatonism rather than his Aristotelianism.

In the Christian tradition, the self is a concrete existential being, and the first point is that it exists, as Boethius said, as "an individual substance of a rational nature" ... from then we get into the Thomist dimension of 'being-in-relation", in that every being defines itself in relation to other being around it, and other being around it locates that being in time and space (We both say 'I', but the 'I' of which I speak is irreducibly me, whereas the 'I' of which you speak is irreducibly you ... not me ... )

This goes way off the meditation topic ... if it's going to be pursued, it should be elsewhere, I think.

None of it is apart from doctrine, however. The self as I see it is Trinity-shaped ...

Thomas
 
Yes it does seem to digress. I guess what I was going for was a personal account rather than a doctrinal one for that would put it all right back into a contemplative inquiry.
Thanks for your indulgence Thomas :)
 
Thomas said:
No.

But I have no clear understanding of how Buddhism defines the 'self' — as I understand it, it's not the same as the 'self' of the Abrahamics, the 'person'.

Thomas
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Try this for size :)

What Is the Self: What Buddhism Teaches About the Self

If that means you’re in danger of any clarity, you’ve heard of upaya? Well…
in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra it appears (to me) that the right medicine, the right teaching depends on the person (upaya; expedient means). So a person attached to the idea of self is taught the fallacy of this. The person attached to the idea of no-self is taught the fallacy of this...



s.



 
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