Water Meditation

(Buddhist value: Water symbolises purity, clarity and calmness, and reminds us to cleanse our minds and attain the state of purity) Imagine that you are now pure clean water. Someone comes along and gently put you into a small bowl. The person then offers you to the Buddha. You rest happily in the bowl knowing that you have an important role to play. You symbolise purity, clarity and calmness. You remind people to practise the Buddha’s teachings, which is constantly
cleansing their minds. Water is used to clean away dirt. When everyone sees you, they are happy and joyful. This is because they are reminded that they can wash away the filth of their minds. They should wash away selfish and unkind thoughts and be clean and pure like you. The Buddha is someone free from dirty defilements like desire, ill-will and ignorance. We should all be like the Buddha, who does not have any dirt of defilements but only purity in his mind.

From - Guided Meditation for Primary Students

Guided Meditation For Primary students

Guided Meditation For Primary students Why guided meditation in the classroom? Using these meditations with children is not the same as reading stories to them. Reading is passive. Children do understand and become involved in what you are reading, but in guided meditation, they become actively involved. Reading a story and reading a meditation are different functions. Reading stories to children is a must because it helps the child to learn and spell, but meditation enables the mind to become free, to explore. Each meditation has its own distinctive theme and gives children the opportunity to experience it. They feel the love of the Buddha; radiate lovingkindness; climb mountains; collect seashells; become a bird; feel the touch of the wind on their face; and go to the moon. There are so many things they can do, and all these things must bring their imagination to the fore. Most importantly, they learn to appreciate the Dhamma more. In other words, they participate in the meditation and learn to be in touch with the source of love, strength and wisdom inside themselves.
From - Guided Meditation for Primary Students

If samadhi is decreasing, check your mind

If samadhi is decreasing, check your mind, what attitude are you practising with?Just accept that your sati-samadhi is not very good at the moment. Just accept it.You don’t have to have great sati / samadhi to be aware of what is happening now.How do you feel about your awareness not being so good? Check that too. Keep looking how the mind is feeling always. e mind is always reacting to everything.When the mind is travelling around the world that is an indication that interest in the present moment is not enough. Put more effort into staying with the present moment.Are you properly aware? Is the mind interested into what’s happening in the moment?When you are experiencing something new the mind starts thinking. at is natural, nothing to worry about. But when you are aware that the mind is thinking you must take care of it.Realise that there is not anything we can do about our emotions. ey just come and go and feel in certain ways. at’s the way it is. No need to worry just be aware.Sometimes you find yourself with a wrong attitude, and you have to sit and meditate knowing that the attitude is wrong.Just turn this attitude into you meditation object.Embraced it fully with your attention-awareness and watch it closely.at can be a very interesting experience.Be aware of greed, laziness, expecting — whatever might be there.How much greed hides in habits? It is because of greed that habits develop.Automatic reaction is always unwholesome, because it comes from habits formed by greed.(If you practise the way we practice here), it doesn’t matter
how long you have been practising for. If you are feeling very tired you are not practising the right way.Watching the mind means: knowing what is happening in the mind (emotions, thought process, story making, intentions). Without getting carried away by it.
From - Contemplation of the Mind

SAMADHI - Part 2

Power grows faster than desire. The boy who wants money to buy lead soldiers sets to work to obtain it, and by the time he has got it wants something else instead -- in all probability something just beyond his means. Such is the splendid history of all spiritual advance! One never stops to take the reward. We shall therefore not trouble at all about what any Samadhi may or may not bring as far as its results in our lives are concerned. We began this book, it will be remembered, with considerations of death. Death has now lost all meaning. The idea of death depends on those of the ego, and of time; these ideas have been destroyed; and so "Death is swallowed up in victory." We shall now only be interested in what Samadhi is in itself, and in the conditions which cause it. Let us try a final definition. Dhyana(Meditation) resembles Samadhi in many respects. There is a union of the ego and the non-ego, and a loss of the senses of time and space and causality. Duality in any form is abolished. The idea of time involves that of two consecutive things, that of space two non-coincident things, that of causality two connected things. These Dhyanic conditions contradict those of normal thought; but in Samadhi they are very much more marked than in Dhyana(Meditation). And while in the latter it seems like a simple union of two things, in the former it appears as if all things rushed together and united. One might say that in Dhyana there was still this quality latent, that the One existing was opposed to the Many non-existing; in Samadhi the Many and the One are united in a union of Existence with non-Existence. This definition is not made from reflection, but from memory. Further, it is easy to master the "trick" or "knack" of Dhyana. After a while one can get into that state without preliminary practice; and, looking at it from this point, one seems able to reconcile the two meanings of the word which we debated in the last section. From below Dhyana seems like a trance, an experience so tremendous that one cannot think of anything bigger, while from above it seems merely a state of mind as natural as any other. Frater P., before he had Samadhi, wrote of Dhyana: "Perhaps as a result of the intense control a nervous storm breaks: this we call Dhyana. Samadhi is but an expansion of this, so far as I can see." Five years later he would not take this view. He would say perhaps that Dhyana was "a flowing of the mind in one unbroken current from the ego to the non-ego without consciousness of either, accompanied by a crescent wonder and bliss." He can understand how that is the {39} natural result of Dhyana, but he cannot call Dhyana in the same way the precursor of Samadhi. Perhaps he does not really know the conditions which induce Samadhi. He can produce Dhyana at will in the course of a few minutes' work; and it often happens with apparent spontaneity: with Samadhi this is unfortunately not the case. He probably can get it at will, but could not say exactly how, or tell how long it might take him; and he could not be "sure" of getting it at all. One feels "sure" that one can walk a mile along a level road. One knows the conditions, and it would have to be a very extraordinary set of circumstances that would stop one. But thought it would be equally fair to say: "I have climbed the Matterhorn and I know I can climb it again," yet there are all sorts of more or less probable circumstances any one of which would prevent success. Now we do know this, that if thought is kept single and steady, Dhyana results. We do not know whether an intensification of this is sufficient to cause Samadhi, or whether some other circumstances are required. One is science, the other empiricism.

Motivating Mind - part 1

Motivating mind is that mind-idea that arises as you are practising and makes you feel that you must attend immediately to some kind of job, before it’s too late, or because this is the best time, or before you forget and so on.is is one of the most devastating weapons in the destructive mind’s arsenal. Very effective in dragging you right away from the practice. Can you feel its powerful force?You must be aware and take care of it as soon as you encounter it. Watch it until it disappears. Even when it seems to have gone at the back of the mind it is still there and it will come to the front again. You want it to go for good. (Back and front of the mind are just concepts).e easier and simpler you lifestyle is, the easier it is to keep your mindfulness. Mindfulness keeps your life simple and easy, you make less mistakes, in life and you suffer less.Meditating is knowing what is going on, being mindful. Not about trying to stop what is going on, or trying to have an experience that is not there.e most basic and important factor in meditation is to be in the present moment and have no thoughts or words about what you are knowing; this is paramattha.Whatever happens in the moment is your object.e mind cannot remain without an object to attend to, when it’s not knowing anything, it tends to think and that tires the mind.

Cittanupassana

Cittanupassana I am not going to write pages about it but only briefly define it, as you are expected to be familiar with the subject. If you are not, it’ll benefit you to do some of your own investigating before going any further.Cittanupassana is the ‘Contemplation of the Consciousness’ as mentioned in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, or as most people understand it simply, ‘the watching of the mind.’In the Mahasatipatthana sutta e Buddha teaches the Four Foundations of Mindfulness:Contemplation of the body (Kayanupassana),Contemplation of Feelings (Vedananupassana),Contemplation of Consciousness (Cittanupassana) andContemplation of Mental Objects (Dhammanupassana).But what is Contemplation of the Consciousness in practical terms? How is one to approach and work with the mind in a way that leads to ‘Liberation through Wisdom?’is is the question this book will try to address to the fullest.‘If you know your mind then you can use the mind to look at your body and your feelings. e body you know with your mind, the feelings you know with your mind.It is basic to this form of meditation that you must know mind and body, but the mind is more important. at’s why it’s emphasized here.’

SAMADHI - Part 1

MORE rubbish has been written about Samadhi than enough; we must endeavour to avoid adding to the heap. Even Patanjali, who is extraordinarily clear and practical in most things, begins to rave when he talks of it. Even if what he said were true he should not have mentioned it; because it does not sound true, and we should make no statement that is "a priori" improbable without being prepared to back it up with the fullest proofs. But it is more than likely that his commentators have misunderstood him. The most reasonable statement, of any acknowledged authority, is that of Vajna Valkya, who says: "By Pranayama impurities of the body are thrown out; by Dharana the impurities of the mind; by Pratyahara the impurities of attachment; and by Samadhi is taken off everything that hides the lordship of the soul." There is a modest statement in good literary form. If we can only do as well as that! In the first place, what is the meaning of the term? Etymologically, "Sam" is the Greek {in Greek alphabet: sigma-upsilon-nu--} the English prefix "syn-" meaning "together with." "Adhi" means "Lord," and a reasonable translation of the whole word would be "Union with God," the exact term used by Christian mystics to describe their attainment. Now there is great confusion, because the Buddhists use the word Samadhi to mean something entirely different, the mere faculty of attention. Thus, with them, to think of a cat is to "make Samadhi" on that cat. They use the word Jhana to describe mystic states. This is excessively misleading, for as we saw in the last section, Dhyana(Meditation) is a preliminary of Samadhi, and of course Jhana is merely the wretched plebeian Pali corruption of it. There are many kinds of Samadhi.<> "Some authors consider Atmadarshana, the Universe as a single phenomenon without conditions, to be the first real Samadhi." If we accept this, we must relegate many less exalted states to the class of Dhyana. Patanjali enumerates a number of these states: to perform these on different things gives different magical powers; or so he says. These need not be
debated here. Any one who wants magic powers can get them in dozens of different ways.
from - THE WAY OF ATTAINMENT OF GENIUS