Venerable ajahn sumedho and ajahn amaro use the sounds to enter deep stages of samadhi. I dont understand how can someone listen to sound and focus as sounds is dynamic, it changes in loudness and frequency. I thought only static objects can be used to enter samadhi like kasinas.

I would like to use the inner sound to reach samadhi as my tinnitus is quite loud but it dosnt bother me, its actually quite calming. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Do your worst!

I would like to get through this a little faster, so throw your comments my way and maybe we can start a discussion

Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi. Trans. Taigen Dan Leighton.

Sit Empty of Worldly Anxiety

>If you truly appreciate a single thread your eye can suitably meet the world and its changes. Seeing clearly, do not be fooled, and the ten thousand situations cannot shroud you. Moonlight falls on the water; wind blows over the pines. Light and shadow do not confuse us; sounds or voices do not block us. The whistling wind can resonate, pervading without impediment through the various structures. Flowing along with things, harmonizing without deviation, thoroughly abandoning webs of dust, still one does not yet arrive in the original home. Put to rest the remnants of your conditioning. Sit empty of worldly anxiety, silent and bright, clear and illuminating, blank and accepting, far-reaching and responsive. Without encountering external dusts, fulfilled in your own spirit, arrive at this field and immediately recognize your ancestors.

How to Contemplate Buddha

>Contemplating your own authentic form is how to contemplate Buddha. If you can experience yourself without distractions, simply surpass partiality and go beyond conceptualizing. All buddhas and all minds reach the essential without duality. Patch-robed monks silently wander and tranquilly dwell in the empty spirit, wondrously penetrating, just as the supreme emptiness permeates this dusty kalpa. Dignified without relying on others and radiant beyond doubt, maintaining this as primary, the energy turns around and transforms all estrangement. Passing through the world responding to situations, illumination is without striving and functions without leaving traces. From the beginning the clouds leisurely release their rain, drifting past obstacles. The direct teaching is very pure and steady. Nothing can budge it. Immediately, without allowing past conditions to turn you, genuinely enact it.

Return to the Source and Serve the Ancestors

>Those who produce descendants are called ancestors. Where the stream emerges is called the source. After beholding the source and recognizing the ancestors, before your awareness can disperse, be steadfast and do not follow birth and death or past conditioning. If you do not succumb, then all beings will show the whole picture. Wake up and in turn the ground, the roots, and the dusts are clearly cast Off. Alt

It really does, I swear!

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

Renewed Interest in Kasina, Thanks to Ingram and Friends

Dan Ingram and friends have popularized the practice of fire kasina in recent times. For that I have incredible gratitude. Before Ingram's website https://firekasina.org/, there was virtually no good contemporary information on the internet about how to practice kasina meditation, nor any direct first-hand reports of the experiences of people who practice it. Speaking openly about practice instructions and experiences has been an incredible gift to the world.

Ingram and friends reference the Visuddhimagga and Vimuttimagga as their inspiration for fire kasina practice, two Buddhist commentary texts. When I read over these passages myself, I found myself confused. Part of this was because of the language being difficult to parse. It took me a while to realize a "disk" was a circle, as just one example. It definitely takes some interpretation.

Incongruent with Buddhaghosa?

But it was more than that. Ingram and friends' interpretation of watching a candle flame, then closing your eyes and looking at the afterimage, and then switching to "the murk" of closed-eye (pseudo)hallucinations seemed incongruent with the relevant passages in Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga.

Ingram et al's retreat reports are fascinating, bizarre, and inspiring, with tales of profound mystical visionary experiences and magickal happenings. What they are doing seems to work consistently, for many different practitioners, as least for those meditators on extended retreat.

Others practicing with a candle flame in daily life also reported great advances in concentration, more than with breath meditation. This is what initially inspired me to try it in the first place.

However, the further I went down this rabbit hole, the more I've become convinced that they are doing something rather different than Buddhaghosa was intending. There's no reason to only do what Buddhaghosa instructs of course, just because he wrote it. It's just that there might be another interesting avenue to explore here, in renewing kasina meditation as a living practice and not just a historical curiosity.

Kasina as Mental Imagery

After contemplating the relevant passages of the Visuddhimagga, my current view is that the kasina "learning sign" is a stable visualized (imagined) mental image (rather than a retinal afterimage), and **the "counterpart sign" is when

Hi all. The purpose of this post is to outline hakalau and discuss what it is, how to do it, what it does, and a few practices that go well with it. This is mostly going to be from personal experience (I have no authority, am not authorized to teach anything - you are ultimately responsible for what you do). Hakalau is a mainstay practice for me. It seems almost too simple to do anything but through consistent practice I've noticed that it has a subtle or sometimes not-so-subtle effect every single time.

What hakalau is:

Hakalau is a form of meditation that consists of briefly inclining the eyes upwards and soaking in all the details of a point, then easily allowing the field of view to expand so that you're seeing a splotch of visual information around the point, and you want to roll with this spreading out until you're seeing the whole field of vision at once, and then hang out here as long as you can. This is an all day practice. Don't force it, but once you get the skill down you can shift into it whenever you want. I've seen it advised not to do this while driving although I've avoided accidents by holding it loosely in the car. Use your own judgement.

How to do it:

The method above works. But to go into more detail: inclining the eyes upward can actually make a substantial difference, but you want to do this with virtually no effort, just lifting them up a little bit naturally and seeing the upper region of your vision, especially on the cushion although this isn't always practical in waking life. You want to avoid straining the eyes and also drop whatever actice effort you might be putting into focusing them. If they focus naturally and rest on anything in the center or even off center, that's ok, just make sure to hold the edges of the field of view in awareness.

Alternatively you can take in the circle of vision in front of you as opposed to reaching out into the sides and just soak that in and try to hold all of the details and keep the gestalt in view. Try to allow whatever is seen to reveal itself rather than trying to focus on visual objects.

You can also bring in the other senses and open up to as much of experience as possible. Feel your body, however it naturally appears, hear the sounds around you. Take in yourself as you appear.

What does this do?

Hakalau is soothing and trips up the thinking mind.

You can experiment and try bringing up something with a negative charge, not too overwhelming but enough that you feel it. Then go in

They’re on standbi

Buenosdillas

Pilot on me!!

Dear Awakened Souls,

I am a self-realized yogi and I have written an article for the awakened ones that have learned the art of extracting pleasure from their inner soul not from the objects of senses (stuck in momentary satisfaction). For the full awakening deep spiritual understanding is required only that unties the knots in your subtle body and only then the Anand may kosha loosens and the spiritual immortal liquid called "bliss" surfaces on the physical body. Happy awakening.

Source

The diagram above presents the 25 internal elements as 1.God consciousness 2. Nature 3. Intellect 4. Ego 5. Mind+10 organs 6. 5 Subtle elements 7. 5 Great elements.

Note: Active practitioners for the turiya state will benefit the most from this knowledge.

Energy radiated from god consciousness powers the nature and its three modes that are sattva rajas and tamas present in you and out in the universe. They are the building blocks of the physical universe. Sattva radiates light, infinite energy, blissfulness, weightlessness, stability and peace. Rajas radiates sorrow, violence, activity, instability and all movements. Tamas radiates darkness, dullness, violence, heaviness and ignorance. God consciousness and nature both of them are infinite. The difference between them is that the nature functions in perfection unconsciously like a programmed robot that does as programmed where as god consciousness is infinite energy as well as infinite bliss that cannot be harnessed without the equilibrium between the 3 modes of nature in you. You could think of god consciousness as fire and nature as heat radiated through that fire, both of them are linked but there is an immense difference between them. Fire generates heat similarly god consciousness generates nature. How external and internal nature functions is realized only upon equanimity between the 3 modes present in you. God consciousness divides existence into two, real and unreal. Real is that which is limitless or imperishable that is the god particle, purusha or individual consciousness present in you and unreal is that which is limited and perishable i.e. worldly substances, worldly knowledge, this physical universe, physical body. Taking unreal as real and real as unreal creates wrong knowledge that is what un-links internal and external nature and crea

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

Good afternoon. I thought that I could make another contribution to this subreddit by writing about a topic that is near and dear to me. Thus, I present to you my essay on the history and culture of Javanese Buddhism in Indonesia.

I wrote this essay with a non-Buddhist audience in mind, so the used of complicated terminology is minimal. However, there is a separate section which explains the Buddhist terminology in my writing, which the readers can use. There is also a section where I list the references that I have used for my essay, which you can check out for further reading if you are interested. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask me.

This post will be divided into several sections:

1. Background – Buddhism in Ancient Java
2. The Islamic and Colonial Periods – Hibernation and Reawakening
3. Jinarakkhita – reviving an “Indonesian” Buddhism and protecting it from 1965
4. Post-1965 Spread, Decline in early 2000’s
5. Rise of social media, organisational support, and resurgent Javanese identity
6. Conclusions
7. References
8. Glossary of Buddhist Terminology

1. Background – Buddhism in Ancient Java

During ancient times, Java had been famous as an international centre of Buddhism. A Chinese monk who lived in the 600’s records that he had gone to a land called “Heling” 訶陵, possibly a transliteration of “Walaing” or “Kalingga”, located in Java. He had come to study Buddhist texts and translate them into Chinese (Supomo, 2006). Another example: a stone inscription in Java, dated 782 AD, tells us that a monk from what is now Bangladesh had come to Java to inaugurate a statue of a Buddhist deity Bodhisattva Manjusri (Casparis, 2000). Likewise, Java also sent monks to foreign countries. A Javanese monk named “Bianhong” 辨弘 was recorded to have arrived in Chang’an, the capital of the Chinese Tang Dynasty, in 780 AD [(Woordward, 2009).](http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-BJ011/bj01

When I got home, they were still there.

I won't be doing that today!

You take away their little brooms

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

There hasn't been a post all year!

Why

It’s pronounced “Noel.”

After all his first name is No-vac

What, then, is Chinese rap?

Edit:

Notable mentions from the comments:

• Spanish/Swedish/Swiss/Serbian hits

• French/Finnish art

• Country/Canadian rap

• Chinese/Country/Canadian rock

• Turkish/Tunisian/Taiwanese rap

There hasn't been a single post this year!

(Happy 2022 from New Zealand)

Nothing, it just waved

"I followed Dr. Greer's activities with enthusiasm since 2001 when he established the Disclosure Project. I read his books, watched his interviews and listened to his meditation CD's. I liked everything the man seemed to be about and shared his views on the need to inform the public about the presence of extraterrestrial visitors on Earth, the importance of establishing peaceful contact with these visitors, in developing free or low cost overunity energy technologies that would clean the planet, eliminate conflict between nations, and bring about a dignified quality of life and abundance to people all over the world. I still share these goals.

So it was with great excitement that I signed up for a CSETI presentation and a one day workshop with Dr. Greer that took place on November 13 and 14, 2009 in Costa Mesa, California to experience and learn CSETI's contact protocol and to determine whether it would be worthwhile enrolling in a week long CSETI outing with Dr. Greer.

Surprisingly, my pre-conceived opinion about Dr. Greer's character began to disintegrate as I listened to his presentation. It was disheartening to discover he is excessively fascinated with himself, prone to indulge in name dropping and in bragging about his fantastic 'high end' and/or 'in the know' contacts and connections, not to mention the multitude of outlandish remarks he makes with a straight face, such as his impact on the rogue MAJESTIC secret government. So much so, that according to him, he "rejected a TWO BILLION dollars payout to shut up and abandon the ET disclosure issue".

Needless to say, that night I left the auditorium less enthusiastic about what Dr. Greer is all about. But it was not until the workshop and the outing next day that my opinion about him really changed - unfortunately for the worst.

Again, during the workshop Dr. Greer devoted some time to self admiration while attempting to appear humble by saying, "I'm just a country doctor from North Carolina". By then, I was becoming quite uncomfortable about him but as the workshop progressed my discomfort turned into dismay as I watched how rudely he treated some attendees who asked valid questions or made harmless remarks but whose timing or subject he deemed "inappropriate". I was truly shocked and could not believe my ears and eyes as I watched him lash at them with such scornful contempt. It was so bad that I wondered if this man was consciously trying to chase

[Removed]

Bob

So that I could frequently say, "I am going to walk 5 miles now."

Edit: My most popular post on Reddit! 😀 Thank you for the awards.

Just to clarify, 12345678

Me grabbing a soda from my (what I thought was) half full 12pk...

Notices there's only 2;

Me: "Awe man... This is a damn bird box!" Her: "What the hell does that mean?!" Me: (Pulls both cans out & shows them to her) "It's only got Toucans."

I'm not ashamed to admit the look on her face was glorious.

I was just sitting there doing nothing.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "