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Saturn's Nod has expressed some objection to my short post made in response to hir. That's fair, and as my response contained both an apology and some thoughts on the purpose of this thread, I'm going to post it here:
Frankly, I was hoping to draw your attention to my statement in the first post, essentially the mission statement for the thread. As you say you went to Google to figure out what the hell I was talking about, I'm not sure if you read it or if I was clear. In that post, I pointed out the danger of exploding the boundaries the "meditation" category and indicated my readiness to zealously patrol those boundaries for the sake of the thread's cogency, even to the point of risking over-exclusion. The point of my (admittedly sardonic) "voices of the mountain" post was to show that you'd essentially done what I was hoping wouldn't happen, listing and very briefly describing a grab bag of vaguely contemplative activities. My intention was to alert you to this so as to galvanize you into avoiding it in future thread posts. I had no intention to put you off posting, and I'm sorry if that was the result. I should realize, especially given the recent pillorying of our most noted tough love guru, that sometimes more sensitivity is required. Also, Giant Haystacks seems to really like the post, so I may just be off base here altogether. Either way, I sincerely apologize for the approach I took.
Now, just to clarify, I don't think there's anything wrong with contemplative dance or art or what have you. I certainly believe that these can be meditative activities, and talking about them in the thread is great as it may turn others onto them and enrich their practice. However, my wish is that within the context of the "Let's Talk Shop" thread, if one is going to discuss activities which diverge from "pure meditation" in the traditional sense, but which include meditative elements, the post will focus on how those elements inform and influence the practice. Forgive me, but I feel like your post was mainly a superficial description of your practices and limited its discussion of the meditative elements to nebulous mentions of your creative right brain, connecting with the "web of all beings," and being "taught". There were parts I thought were spot-on and very useful, as they touched on your actual inner processes as you did these activities--for instance, your mention that it has to be fun to coax out your creativity. Excellent point, I think, and useful for meditators. I was just hoping that a little goading might spur you to expand the discussion of these genuine insights into your unique and interesting contemplative practice.
(GH, I actually do have what might be an answer to your question about visualizing shapes. In the Theravada at least, meditation on visual objects is usually begun with an actual physical representation of the object placed in front of you. Although you close your eyes when meditating on the breath, you want the eyes open when the object is visual. The accepted wisdom here is that after a while, the brain will begin to generate what's called the practice sign, an exact visualized replica of the object which exists in your mind's eye without effort on your part. When this happens, simply close your eyes and continue your meditation with the practice sign as your object rather than the actual physical thing.) |
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