Secular Buddhism Australia
Adapting the Buddha's teachings to this place and time
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Resources for the heart
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Connecting
In addition to the blog we'd like to offer a means of getting involved in the Secular Buddhist community as well as resources to help people start or maintain such groups. The opportunities to get involved will include meditation/learning groups around Australia as well as events both in Australia and internationally as they arise. If you know of other meditation groups with a secular Buddhist orientation, please let us know with the form below.
ADELAIDE
Ashtree Sangha
Where: Centre Om, 7 Compton St, Adelaide
When: meet every 2nd Sunday of the month
What: 45 minute sit, discuss the sit, then go through a text.
Contact: Anna Markey on 08 8555 2588
Our teachers
Anna Markey
Anna Markey was introduced to Buddhist practice in India in 1983. She took teachings from a variety of Tibetan teachers and attended retreats with insight teacher, Christopher Titmuss, the same year. She has practised insight meditation ever since. Anna also practised for a number of years with a Zen group in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, and in the Burmese Mahasi method of practice with Patrick Kearney. For ten years she studied with Jason Siff and now works with a collective of teachers, using an experience based practice approach in her retreats and regular groups. Anna is interested in using this gentle and transformative approach to meditation and dharma to change one’s relationship to our inner and outer worlds. She also is interested in teaching meditation to children.
Where: CERES Learning Centre, Lee St, East Brunswick
When: Monday nights
Contact: http://www.melbourneinsightmeditation.org
Where: Buddhist Society of Victoria, 71-73 Darling Rd, East Malvern
When: Wednesday nights
Contact: http://www.melbourneinsightmeditation.org
SYDNEY
This link lists several insight meditation groups in the Sydney areas most of which have a reasonably secular orientation: Sydney Insight Meditators
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Basic meditation guidlines
For people who are new to meditation, the following guidelines can be useful. If you already meditate, you may want to follow the practice you are used to, or you may like to give these guidelines a try:
What happens in Dharma groups?
Guidelines for journalling
2020 Dharma Talks
This year the theme forming the basis of the dharma talks will be “Engaged Buddhism”. Within this theme we will look into how we can use our practise to respond appropriately to a world facing increasing crisis and uncertainty. How can we use the teachings and our meditation practice to engage in an active caring and wise way? How do we live? What do we do? How do we work with these emotions? How can we support our community and environment? Many questions and discussions will hopefully arise from this topic. Dharma talks will be given during the months of April, June, August, October and December.
Ashtree Sangha meets on the second Sunday of every month from February to December, upstairs at the The Om Centre, 29 Regent Street, Adelaide.
Sangha meetings run from 3 to 5pm.
**there will be no meeting in January, and we will resume on February 9th 2020**
We start with a 45 minute meditation and then an invitation for people to share some of what they remember of that meditation, with the possibility of some questions or discussion afterwards. Then people are invited to share or bring up discussion points, celebrations, difficulties or questions that have arisen from their practice over the last month or so.
Ashtree Sangha hopes to function as a support group for people's practice so this could be a time to offer that support amongst ourselves. The Buddha spoke of spiritual friendship (Kalyana Mitta) as being THE most important part of dharma practice. One's practice in daily life, or how our meditations and understanding of the teachings affect our interaction with our world and others, is a major focus of our group.
In terms of teachings, our interest lies in the early teachings of the Buddha as found in the Pali texts.
Anna Markey
Teacher
Subscribe to the Ashtree Sangha.
Australian Insight Meditation Network
Insight Meditation Australia
Secular Buddhist Network
Secular Buddhism Australia
Stephen and Martine Batchelor
Pine Street Sangha - A reflective meditation sangha in Oregan, USA
Sati Sangha - a reflective meditation sangha led by Linda Modaro
Dharmaseed
Suttacentral
Sydney Insight Meditors
The Tuwhiri Project – a dharma publishing imprint
The OM Centre where Ashtree Sangha meets, 2nd Sunday of each month
Our Facebook page
Resources for loan - a small list of Buddhist books and CDs
- Find a quiet spot to meditate where you most likely won’t be disturbed by others or by the phone. Decide how long you are going to sit (anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes) and either set an alarm or have a clock nearby to peek at on occasion.
- Sit in a comfortable posture, one that you feel you will not need to change for the duration of the sitting, either on a chair, a couch, a meditation mat or a cushion. If you find you do need to move during the meditation sitting, try to move slowly and quietly into a more comfortable posture.
- Close your eyes and bring your attention to the touch of your hands resting one on top of the other in your lap. But don’t hold your attention there. Instead, allow your mind to go where it will. If you are drawn into thoughts, feelings, memories or fantasies, let your attention go there. Your attention may at times be drawn to sounds, bodily sensations, fragrances or odours, or your breath.
- When you feel that you have been away from the contact of your hands for several minutes, you can remind yourself to come back to the hands and stay there for a few seconds before allowing your mind to wander again.
- If you feel restless, bored, confused, discouraged, elated, sleepy, upset, anything – it is okay. You don’t have to do anything about it or, if you choose to, you can bring your attention back to the touch of your hands. But if you do, only stay with your hands for a little while, and then, if your mind wants to go back into the feelings or thoughts that you left, you can let it go there. If something else draws your attention - let it.
- When the meditation sitting is over, take a couple of minutes to mentally recall what you can of the sitting. You may also decide to journal your meditation sitting.
What happens in Dharma groups?
What does a Buddhist Dharma group do? How does this differ from a non-Buddhist meditation group?
The Buddha, like many spiritual leaders, responded to the dilemma of the human condition. We are born, we live and then we die… and within the living part of this process there is much suffering. The Buddha committed himself to working with this dilemma until he was free from the problems and sufferings that appears inherent to the human condition.
He gave a template of his discovery which is now known as the Four Noble Truths, which includes the Eight Fold Path. For some practitioners this seems simple and prescriptive. However he was clear that the path is neither. As you commit to the practice you inevitably uncover great complexity. You also may discover that a great deal is not as it seems. We are led away from following prescriptions or inflexible instructions. We are led away even from obedience to a teacher. We are led to exploring our own lives… our experience as it is.
“Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the world, the origination of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the world."
The Buddha Rohitassa Sutta AN 4.45
This… what we have here, now…this is what we work with.
Essentially, the Buddha states that we are ignorant of the way things really are. Cognitively we are deluded into seeing, knowing and perceiving our experience incorrectly. We assume things are unchanging and solid. We assume we are existing entities, independent of the rest of the world. The assumptions behind many of our ways of operating cause our problems and suffering. We are going against the stream.
So a large part of the Buddha’s teachings are focussed on encouraging us to see things as they really are… to see, know and understand. This is not so easy when we have habits, attachments, aversions and delusions. It also doesn’t help if we are surrounded by people who are not committed to a path of change.
This leads us to look at what we are doing here in our dharma group. We are taking the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path as a practise, to try to know and understand our experience. We work with various aspects of ethics, meditation and wisdom/understanding to bring about the cessation of ignorance that the Buddha was speaking of. We sit here quietly still and observant, curiously noticing, as much as we can, what is occurring. Afterwards we think back on it and see what we can remember in order to gain insight about our experience. We ask questions. What is going on here? What supports it? What am I missing? Etc. If we don’t explore and gain more clarity, our ignorance and pain continues.
In our dharma groups we discuss our daily life together… our world, in order to see into our experience, our mistakes, our dilemmas. Our world is the content of our meditations…and our meditations consist of our daily life and our world.
The fact that meditation and our daily life are not separate becomes obvious as we journal, recollect, consider and articulate what is happening.
In our dharma groups we read texts or books written by wise people in order to help us see into our experience and to inspire us to continue. We support each other in this project through discussions and through listening to the experiences of others. His example, his teachings and our community are what the Buddha encouraged us to use, as support or ‘refuge’.
Through fostering our practice in this way, our life and the life of others become less difficult and more open and free.
Anna Markey
The Buddha, like many spiritual leaders, responded to the dilemma of the human condition. We are born, we live and then we die… and within the living part of this process there is much suffering. The Buddha committed himself to working with this dilemma until he was free from the problems and sufferings that appears inherent to the human condition.
He gave a template of his discovery which is now known as the Four Noble Truths, which includes the Eight Fold Path. For some practitioners this seems simple and prescriptive. However he was clear that the path is neither. As you commit to the practice you inevitably uncover great complexity. You also may discover that a great deal is not as it seems. We are led away from following prescriptions or inflexible instructions. We are led away even from obedience to a teacher. We are led to exploring our own lives… our experience as it is.
“Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the world, the origination of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the world."
The Buddha Rohitassa Sutta AN 4.45
This… what we have here, now…this is what we work with.
Essentially, the Buddha states that we are ignorant of the way things really are. Cognitively we are deluded into seeing, knowing and perceiving our experience incorrectly. We assume things are unchanging and solid. We assume we are existing entities, independent of the rest of the world. The assumptions behind many of our ways of operating cause our problems and suffering. We are going against the stream.
So a large part of the Buddha’s teachings are focussed on encouraging us to see things as they really are… to see, know and understand. This is not so easy when we have habits, attachments, aversions and delusions. It also doesn’t help if we are surrounded by people who are not committed to a path of change.
This leads us to look at what we are doing here in our dharma group. We are taking the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path as a practise, to try to know and understand our experience. We work with various aspects of ethics, meditation and wisdom/understanding to bring about the cessation of ignorance that the Buddha was speaking of. We sit here quietly still and observant, curiously noticing, as much as we can, what is occurring. Afterwards we think back on it and see what we can remember in order to gain insight about our experience. We ask questions. What is going on here? What supports it? What am I missing? Etc. If we don’t explore and gain more clarity, our ignorance and pain continues.
In our dharma groups we discuss our daily life together… our world, in order to see into our experience, our mistakes, our dilemmas. Our world is the content of our meditations…and our meditations consist of our daily life and our world.
The fact that meditation and our daily life are not separate becomes obvious as we journal, recollect, consider and articulate what is happening.
In our dharma groups we read texts or books written by wise people in order to help us see into our experience and to inspire us to continue. We support each other in this project through discussions and through listening to the experiences of others. His example, his teachings and our community are what the Buddha encouraged us to use, as support or ‘refuge’.
Through fostering our practice in this way, our life and the life of others become less difficult and more open and free.
Anna Markey
Guidelines for journalling
Journalling - writing about your meditation experience – can help you to recollect your meditation sits and discuss them with your teacher.
Ashtree Sangha
Statement of Purpose
Ashtree is a Sangha – i.e. a community of people who support one another as they investigate their experiences in daily life and meditation within the framework of the Buddhadharma.
- Before writing down the sitting, write down the date and time that the sitting took place. This is helpful when referring back to the journal entry.
- There are two basic ways to begin writing it down: to make a list or to write a narrative. If you decide to make a list of the events you recall from the sitting, we suggest that you use longer descriptions than single words. You don’t need to write down the sitting in chronological order. You can start with what you remember most easily and, once you have that on paper, you can write down the other things that start to come to mind from the meditation. For those who like to have journals in chronological order, you can always rewrite the journal entry afterward, putting it in order, or mark entries in some way to give a picture of when they occurred in your sitting.
- Your descriptions do not have to be exact. They just need to be truthful. If a description doesn’t feel accurate, that is fine as long as you are being honest. We can’t hold ourselves to a strict standard of precision and accuracy in this endeavour.
- Try to keep your journal entries focused on what went on during your meditation sitting. In the course of writing things down, you might have some thoughts about an experience. You may write down these afterthoughts but, if you do, then mark them in a way that shows they did not occur during the sitting (such as putting them in parentheses).
- You will remember only a fraction of what goes on in many of your sittings. That is perfectly normal. Just write down what you can recollect. That is enough. Some journal entries may be many paragraphs long, while others may just have a couple of sentences.
Ashtree Sangha
Statement of Purpose
Ashtree is a Sangha – i.e. a community of people who support one another as they investigate their experiences in daily life and meditation within the framework of the Buddhadharma.
2020 Dharma Talks
This year the theme forming the basis of the dharma talks will be “Engaged Buddhism”. Within this theme we will look into how we can use our practise to respond appropriately to a world facing increasing crisis and uncertainty. How can we use the teachings and our meditation practice to engage in an active caring and wise way? How do we live? What do we do? How do we work with these emotions? How can we support our community and environment? Many questions and discussions will hopefully arise from this topic. Dharma talks will be given during the months of April, June, August, October and December.
Ashtree Sangha meets on the second Sunday of every month from February to December, upstairs at the The Om Centre, 29 Regent Street, Adelaide.
Sangha meetings run from 3 to 5pm.
**there will be no meeting in January, and we will resume on February 9th 2020**
We start with a 45 minute meditation and then an invitation for people to share some of what they remember of that meditation, with the possibility of some questions or discussion afterwards. Then people are invited to share or bring up discussion points, celebrations, difficulties or questions that have arisen from their practice over the last month or so.
Ashtree Sangha hopes to function as a support group for people's practice so this could be a time to offer that support amongst ourselves. The Buddha spoke of spiritual friendship (Kalyana Mitta) as being THE most important part of dharma practice. One's practice in daily life, or how our meditations and understanding of the teachings affect our interaction with our world and others, is a major focus of our group.
In terms of teachings, our interest lies in the early teachings of the Buddha as found in the Pali texts.
Anna Markey
Teacher
Subscribe to the Ashtree Sangha.
Allowing life into meditation
Regular feedback after Ashtree Sangha monthly meeting
In February we had a brief discussion on the benefit of allowing meditation as a time to contemplate and review the day’s events, interactions or dilemmas.
This may not be what you would expect or wish of your meditation practice but sometimes this “mulling-over’ just occurs anyway and often it can be interesting just to go with it. Allowing one’s mind to do as it wishes can be a useful practice. Often there’s something to be learnt or resolved… and sometimes it allows us a window into how one’s mind operates and how such thoughts and emotions are supported or how they grow. If you like, this is the first Noble Truth. There is Dukkha. There is our experience
Sometimes this ‘reviewing and mulling’ occurs in the meditation, during the transition from daily life into a more settled state, but it may also extend over a longer period of time, especially if there is an issue in your daily life that really does demand your attention. Such issues can linger in some form, unless a level of resolution or change occurs. If you journal after your meditation then you may look at the content of your replays, the emotions and ‘tone of voice’ behind them and their familiar or not so familiar qualities. What are they all about? What keeps things going? A new way of working with them can evolve. This can be where the second Noble Truth plays a part. There are many causes and conditions for our experience, that we can see into.
I think of this as ‘allowing your life into your meditations’. You are offering a space for wisdom or understanding to be gleaned … you are allowing a way of bringing a settled mind to something that has come back and maybe needs contemplating…you are just being more receptive to your experience. If you stay with the stories, contemplating them and practising outcomes and scenarios, seeing them for what they are, then maybe a solution will occur. Perhaps you will see a new way of doing something or you may do something differently next time. By giving your experience understanding, time and space, it will bring a change. This is the third Noble Truth…cessation.
This ‘reviewing and mulling’ can be a place where ethics is brought into your practice…where your daily life really intersects with your meditation and feeds what the Buddha considered to be the path towards liberation. The aspects of the 8-fold path that he spoke of involve ethics, wisdom and meditation. What may appear as an indulgent or repetitive stewing over the days previous conversations and events, can offer a good opportunity to review and therefore learn about your views, thoughts, speech, actions and aspects of livelihood. Here we work with the fourth Noble Truth.
SO the invitation is to really be a little more forgiving and perhaps more receptive and curious with those times when your life comes into your meditation practice.
Anna Markey
March 2013
Download PDF version, 131 kB
Talks
2017 talks
"A conversation on settling" with Nelly, Anna and Linda (MP4, 3.2 GB)
"A conversation on settling" with Nelly, Anna and Linda (MP4, 3.2 GB)
2016 Other talks
Download talks by Anna Markey on Dependent Arising:
Dependent Arising of Views (20160718)
Dependent Arising of Language (20160926)
Download talks by Anna Markey on Dependent Arising:
Dependent Arising of Views (20160718)
Dependent Arising of Language (20160926)
2016 March Glenbarr Retreat
Download talks by Anna Markey at this retreat:
1 Back to basics
2 You just cant go wrong
3 Mindfulness, conc and other mind states
4 How to get rid of things
Download talks by Anna Markey at this retreat:
1 Back to basics
2 You just cant go wrong
3 Mindfulness, conc and other mind states
4 How to get rid of things
2014 April Glenbarr retreat
Download talks by Anna Markey at this retreat:
Dharma in daily life
Dependant Arising and the implications
Changing our relationship with the mind
Download talks by Anna Markey at this retreat:
Dharma in daily life
Dependant Arising and the implications
Changing our relationship with the mind
2013 September Glenbarr retreat
Download talks by Anna Markey at this retreat:
Remembering
Seeing things for what they are
Habits and the unexamined
Expectations and assumptions
Download talks by Anna Markey at this retreat:
Remembering
Seeing things for what they are
Habits and the unexamined
Expectations and assumptions
December 7th, 2014
WHY RECOLLECT by Jason Siff
There are meditation practices that may seem similar to Recollective Awareness Meditation. What most of these practices don’t have is the practice of recollecting the meditation sitting afterward, mainly because they teach that everything of value happens in the meditation sitting or in the present moment. Proponents of those meditation practices may even believe that recollecting one’s meditative experience is not constructive. In response to that belief, I have written down five reasons why I believe recollecting one’s meditation sittings is not only constructive, but also essential for developing an open (unstructured) meditation practice.
1. When we intentionally recollect what occurred during a meditation sitting, our memory of what happened during it improves. Not only that, we can then value the kinds of positive experiences that meditation brings, such as periods of calmness, clarity, greater tolerance of difficult emotions, and insights into how the mind operates. This way of remembering positive developments in our meditation practice can create more trust and confidence in the meditative process, as well as greater recognition of these positive experiences when they arise.
2. We make things out of our meditative experiences. That is natural. We experience a deep state of peace and turn it into an ultimate state of mind that we now want to be in all of the time. On the other end of the spectrum, we feel sad, lonely, and forlorn, and then worry about slipping into depression. By recollecting our experiences in meditation and either writing them down or talking about them with a teacher (or in a group), we may become more aware of what we have made out of our experiences and be able to question these narratives. If we don’t recall the narratives that are created in meditation, then we will most likely be subject to them; but if we do recall them and look into them, then we may become interested in exploring them further and find ourselves believing in them less and less.
3. We tend to use particular words and phrases to describe our experiences. We may be able to catch ourselves using particular labels while meditating, but for the most part, we won’t become fully aware of how much credence we give to these labels until we begin writing down our sittings. The meditation journal itself can be investigated to see how often we use certain words and phrases, and we may even notice that we have difficulty articulating some types of experience but not others. When we have more detailed descriptions of our meditative experiences in our own words, we can then know what we know about them and what we still have doubts and questions about. Until then, we are operating on the assumption that our experiences somehow match or conform to the labels we have used to categorize them. And that is not a place of self-knowledge, at least of the depth and breadth needed to comprehend what keeps certain thoughts, feelings, habits, behaviors, and intentions alive and active.
4. In an open meditation practice, such as Recollective Awareness Meditation, we can slip into tranquil states that have a sleep-like or trance-like quality. When we emerge from these states, we may not be able to remember much, even though we may have felt somewhat aware of what was going on during them. Recollecting what can be easily recalled about these experiences can aid in the development of more awake and aware tranquil states. The kind of recollection that is done with these hard-to-recall experiences is to start with something that can be easily remembered. We might be able to recall if there were any images, sounds, words, thoughts, or bodily sensations; and on occasion we may even sense that there was some kind of subtle vibration, texture, or mood present during parts of the sitting. Most likely, only bits and pieces will be recollected, and that is enough.
5. Recollecting the meditation sitting afterward is done instead of trying to do a specific meditation technique or apply a strategy. Instead of trying to do a technique to create some kind of tranquility, we allow the mind to find its own way of settling down, and then after the meditation sitting we recollect how that came about. The same holds true for other aspects of our meditation sittings, such as how we went through some difficult emotions, a long stretch of repetitive thoughts, a period of boredom, agitation, or confusion. Only by recollecting how we went through such experiences will we know the choices that were made and how they came about, thus informing us as to how the meditative process works in our meditation practice—it is not just letting go and trusting in a flow, but a complex process of navigating our dynamic and delicate inner world.
Jason Siff
New Recordings Available
Why Recollect 1-3
Insight Meditation Center Berkeley, Nov. 2014
Processing of psychological material is not often seen as something one does in meditation, and yet most meditators do a fair bit of internal processing of emotions, memories, and plans when they sit. With Recollective Awareness, where all of a person’s thoughts and emotions are allowed, such psychological processing occurs quite frequently, and will often lead to greater self-acceptance and new insights. But it can also lead to something that is definitely in the realm of meditation: calm, focused, and clear states of mind. It even engenders these “optimal” states of mind in the service of processing and looking more deeply into the causes and conditions of certain psychological issues, whereas such states in more traditional forms of meditation are utilized to focus on prescribed objects of meditation or follow a set progression of deepening concentration.
In my theory of meditative processes, I sketch out a progression that some meditators may experience. It starts with how one begins a meditation sitting. In this case, it is carrying the thoughts and emotions that one experiences into the meditation sitting. There is no stopping of those thoughts and emotions in order to focus on the breath, take refuge in the Triple Gem, think thoughts of loving-kindness, or any such preparatory practice. One just adopts one’s meditation posture and allows what was going on before the sitting to continue. By doing so, one is immediately open to one’s thoughts and emotions, usually getting caught up in them. This way of orienting oneself to one’s inner world at the beginning of the sitting will naturally lead to going along with anything that beckons for attention, and will facilitate a kind and gentle way of relating to oneself, especially since there is nothing else one is supposed to be doing (such as bringing one’s attention to the breath).
Someone who is just embarking on this way of meditating may find the thoughts and emotions going on for some time in the first sitting or two, but I would caution about being discouraged by this. For there may also be times when the thinking dies down or a particular emotion subsides, and a period of being calmer and less preoccupied follows, even for just a short while. At such times, one may find one’s attention going to the breath, bodily sensations, sounds, light, images, colors, or anything else that might arise.
At some point, one may notice that instead of getting caught up in the thoughts and emotions regarding a particular issue, one is looking at the thought and emotions and uncovering different things about it. Here is an example from a meditator’s journal: I became curious about familiar processes, the way in through awareness of tension in the body and then opening into associated conditions. What emerged was acknowledgement of desperation, a whole mode of desperation and its various associations and conditions, current and developmental. It was associated with a specific pattern of physical tension, especially across the upper back and neck and into the rib cage as well as the jaw and cheeks in the face. Then tensions in the belly that went lower in the body spreading to the buttocks and legs. Desperate about money, finances, what to do, how to develop a meditation community, buying a Christmas tree, canceling the party, work issues: a process of suppressing desperate survival emotions in order to participate in the world. Opening and allowing and arriving at this desperation, this fear. In the process, deepening calm and silence and much more space between thoughts and stories. Not completely dropping desperation, but much more aware of it and much calmer.
There may not be a realization or insight at this point, but there is a way the material is getting processed so that an insight might be possible. If one looks for insights early on in processing emotional states, such as “desperation,” then one may be pushing oneself toward quickly ending the processing. But if one gives oneself time to process further in meditation (and also outside of meditation), then something that one hadn’t known or acknowledged before about oneself can come to light. The meditator’s journal continues: Seeing how other people cannot provide this security, I recognized something about the practice itself providing it, being a true home, but what about it? Doubts/curiosity/wanting to understand... sensing I wasn’t quite getting it somehow, not quite articulating it... seeing it is not a thing to understand but a trustworthy process of deepening understanding... and one shared with others. Recognizing that this is something I need to cultivate more in my life, wanting to, needing to—this emerging through questions of how to navigate current life that are both arising through the desperation and then settling deeper than the desperation where I also recognized trustworthy directions in life. This emerged in a more crystalized form after I had stopped meditating and sat down to journal the practice, for I dropped into the meditation again and there was the desperation again and it shaped in the form of the inner traumatized child.... not feeling safe at all... and the sense of myself as trustworthy adult responding, addressing my parents briefly, reprimanding them on their emotional deprivation of me in childhood, hearing “their assent” to my way of seeing them. I did not spend much time on these familiar processes that are slowly evolving over time—instead discovering how refuge is what I described above, these processes of understanding within myself and shared with others, that this is refuge, this is safety, this is the direction that needs, and, is worthy of, cultivation.
In this kind of processing, there may be no “Ahah!” moment, but rather a gradual building up of an understanding, one that seems to arise again and gets worked on as it is applied to the issue at hand. Though spontaneous realizations or “epiphanies” may also occur, they are less frequent, and one may still have to go through a process of applying the understanding to the issue and seeing if it makes sense from various angles. Such an exploration does seem to produce a new, more refined and intelligent narrative of the issues that have been processed, one that is more firmly based on having gone through the psychological issue within one’s meditative process rather than having thought it through or having it interpreted by another person.
Recollective Awareness meditation does help people question narratives that are faulty and dysfunctional. If that were all it did, it would be worth doing. But it also helps people find narratives that are more accurate, authentic, and beneficial. Isn’t that something meditation should be able to help us with? Isn’t that what a mature search for truth is about? Not looking for some transcendent or ultimate reality to change everything, but rather looking within at what is true about one’s psyche and what kind of life is truly beneficial.
Jason SiffDownload PDF version, 141 kB
WHY RECOLLECT by Jason Siff
There are meditation practices that may seem similar to Recollective Awareness Meditation. What most of these practices don’t have is the practice of recollecting the meditation sitting afterward, mainly because they teach that everything of value happens in the meditation sitting or in the present moment. Proponents of those meditation practices may even believe that recollecting one’s meditative experience is not constructive. In response to that belief, I have written down five reasons why I believe recollecting one’s meditation sittings is not only constructive, but also essential for developing an open (unstructured) meditation practice.
1. When we intentionally recollect what occurred during a meditation sitting, our memory of what happened during it improves. Not only that, we can then value the kinds of positive experiences that meditation brings, such as periods of calmness, clarity, greater tolerance of difficult emotions, and insights into how the mind operates. This way of remembering positive developments in our meditation practice can create more trust and confidence in the meditative process, as well as greater recognition of these positive experiences when they arise.
2. We make things out of our meditative experiences. That is natural. We experience a deep state of peace and turn it into an ultimate state of mind that we now want to be in all of the time. On the other end of the spectrum, we feel sad, lonely, and forlorn, and then worry about slipping into depression. By recollecting our experiences in meditation and either writing them down or talking about them with a teacher (or in a group), we may become more aware of what we have made out of our experiences and be able to question these narratives. If we don’t recall the narratives that are created in meditation, then we will most likely be subject to them; but if we do recall them and look into them, then we may become interested in exploring them further and find ourselves believing in them less and less.
3. We tend to use particular words and phrases to describe our experiences. We may be able to catch ourselves using particular labels while meditating, but for the most part, we won’t become fully aware of how much credence we give to these labels until we begin writing down our sittings. The meditation journal itself can be investigated to see how often we use certain words and phrases, and we may even notice that we have difficulty articulating some types of experience but not others. When we have more detailed descriptions of our meditative experiences in our own words, we can then know what we know about them and what we still have doubts and questions about. Until then, we are operating on the assumption that our experiences somehow match or conform to the labels we have used to categorize them. And that is not a place of self-knowledge, at least of the depth and breadth needed to comprehend what keeps certain thoughts, feelings, habits, behaviors, and intentions alive and active.
4. In an open meditation practice, such as Recollective Awareness Meditation, we can slip into tranquil states that have a sleep-like or trance-like quality. When we emerge from these states, we may not be able to remember much, even though we may have felt somewhat aware of what was going on during them. Recollecting what can be easily recalled about these experiences can aid in the development of more awake and aware tranquil states. The kind of recollection that is done with these hard-to-recall experiences is to start with something that can be easily remembered. We might be able to recall if there were any images, sounds, words, thoughts, or bodily sensations; and on occasion we may even sense that there was some kind of subtle vibration, texture, or mood present during parts of the sitting. Most likely, only bits and pieces will be recollected, and that is enough.
5. Recollecting the meditation sitting afterward is done instead of trying to do a specific meditation technique or apply a strategy. Instead of trying to do a technique to create some kind of tranquility, we allow the mind to find its own way of settling down, and then after the meditation sitting we recollect how that came about. The same holds true for other aspects of our meditation sittings, such as how we went through some difficult emotions, a long stretch of repetitive thoughts, a period of boredom, agitation, or confusion. Only by recollecting how we went through such experiences will we know the choices that were made and how they came about, thus informing us as to how the meditative process works in our meditation practice—it is not just letting go and trusting in a flow, but a complex process of navigating our dynamic and delicate inner world.
Jason Siff
New Recordings Available
Why Recollect 1-3
Insight Meditation Center Berkeley, Nov. 2014
Inner processing in meditation
Processing of psychological material is not often seen as something one does in meditation, and yet most meditators do a fair bit of internal processing of emotions, memories, and plans when they sit. With Recollective Awareness, where all of a person’s thoughts and emotions are allowed, such psychological processing occurs quite frequently, and will often lead to greater self-acceptance and new insights. But it can also lead to something that is definitely in the realm of meditation: calm, focused, and clear states of mind. It even engenders these “optimal” states of mind in the service of processing and looking more deeply into the causes and conditions of certain psychological issues, whereas such states in more traditional forms of meditation are utilized to focus on prescribed objects of meditation or follow a set progression of deepening concentration.
In my theory of meditative processes, I sketch out a progression that some meditators may experience. It starts with how one begins a meditation sitting. In this case, it is carrying the thoughts and emotions that one experiences into the meditation sitting. There is no stopping of those thoughts and emotions in order to focus on the breath, take refuge in the Triple Gem, think thoughts of loving-kindness, or any such preparatory practice. One just adopts one’s meditation posture and allows what was going on before the sitting to continue. By doing so, one is immediately open to one’s thoughts and emotions, usually getting caught up in them. This way of orienting oneself to one’s inner world at the beginning of the sitting will naturally lead to going along with anything that beckons for attention, and will facilitate a kind and gentle way of relating to oneself, especially since there is nothing else one is supposed to be doing (such as bringing one’s attention to the breath).
Someone who is just embarking on this way of meditating may find the thoughts and emotions going on for some time in the first sitting or two, but I would caution about being discouraged by this. For there may also be times when the thinking dies down or a particular emotion subsides, and a period of being calmer and less preoccupied follows, even for just a short while. At such times, one may find one’s attention going to the breath, bodily sensations, sounds, light, images, colors, or anything else that might arise.
At some point, one may notice that instead of getting caught up in the thoughts and emotions regarding a particular issue, one is looking at the thought and emotions and uncovering different things about it. Here is an example from a meditator’s journal: I became curious about familiar processes, the way in through awareness of tension in the body and then opening into associated conditions. What emerged was acknowledgement of desperation, a whole mode of desperation and its various associations and conditions, current and developmental. It was associated with a specific pattern of physical tension, especially across the upper back and neck and into the rib cage as well as the jaw and cheeks in the face. Then tensions in the belly that went lower in the body spreading to the buttocks and legs. Desperate about money, finances, what to do, how to develop a meditation community, buying a Christmas tree, canceling the party, work issues: a process of suppressing desperate survival emotions in order to participate in the world. Opening and allowing and arriving at this desperation, this fear. In the process, deepening calm and silence and much more space between thoughts and stories. Not completely dropping desperation, but much more aware of it and much calmer.
There may not be a realization or insight at this point, but there is a way the material is getting processed so that an insight might be possible. If one looks for insights early on in processing emotional states, such as “desperation,” then one may be pushing oneself toward quickly ending the processing. But if one gives oneself time to process further in meditation (and also outside of meditation), then something that one hadn’t known or acknowledged before about oneself can come to light. The meditator’s journal continues: Seeing how other people cannot provide this security, I recognized something about the practice itself providing it, being a true home, but what about it? Doubts/curiosity/wanting to understand... sensing I wasn’t quite getting it somehow, not quite articulating it... seeing it is not a thing to understand but a trustworthy process of deepening understanding... and one shared with others. Recognizing that this is something I need to cultivate more in my life, wanting to, needing to—this emerging through questions of how to navigate current life that are both arising through the desperation and then settling deeper than the desperation where I also recognized trustworthy directions in life. This emerged in a more crystalized form after I had stopped meditating and sat down to journal the practice, for I dropped into the meditation again and there was the desperation again and it shaped in the form of the inner traumatized child.... not feeling safe at all... and the sense of myself as trustworthy adult responding, addressing my parents briefly, reprimanding them on their emotional deprivation of me in childhood, hearing “their assent” to my way of seeing them. I did not spend much time on these familiar processes that are slowly evolving over time—instead discovering how refuge is what I described above, these processes of understanding within myself and shared with others, that this is refuge, this is safety, this is the direction that needs, and, is worthy of, cultivation.
In this kind of processing, there may be no “Ahah!” moment, but rather a gradual building up of an understanding, one that seems to arise again and gets worked on as it is applied to the issue at hand. Though spontaneous realizations or “epiphanies” may also occur, they are less frequent, and one may still have to go through a process of applying the understanding to the issue and seeing if it makes sense from various angles. Such an exploration does seem to produce a new, more refined and intelligent narrative of the issues that have been processed, one that is more firmly based on having gone through the psychological issue within one’s meditative process rather than having thought it through or having it interpreted by another person.
Recollective Awareness meditation does help people question narratives that are faulty and dysfunctional. If that were all it did, it would be worth doing. But it also helps people find narratives that are more accurate, authentic, and beneficial. Isn’t that something meditation should be able to help us with? Isn’t that what a mature search for truth is about? Not looking for some transcendent or ultimate reality to change everything, but rather looking within at what is true about one’s psyche and what kind of life is truly beneficial.
Jason SiffDownload PDF version, 141 kB
Control
Regular feedback after Ashtree Sangha monthly meeting
As we spoke of our meditations in this meeting one of the topics that arose was that of control. It’s easy to see how we assume that we should be in control of our body/mind. This is often held up as being our aim by some teachers or traditions. Meditation can then either become a place that accentuates our lack of control and therefore leads to disappointment, judgement or unkindness to ourselves, or becomes a battlefield to gain this control or a place where control is gained.
In being invited to let go of that wish for control, we can see that it’s easier said than done. The drive for control can become a habit… maybe even in layers of subtlety, which may take a while to see and let go of. Yet again, something to “Unlearn”!
However we may not be convinced that control needs to be let go of. We are human beings with intellect and choices. Being in control of something seems useful. What of “right effort”? How else do we achieve our aims?
If we go to the suttas we see that even the discussion “right effort” is framed by the Buddha as being a process of seeing what works and what doesn’t, and fostering that which seems useful and letting go of that which isn’t. To foster that which is useful involves actually being with your experience long enough to see it as it really is, become familiar with the raw face of it… what brings it about?… what are the results? What maintains it? Despite the long lists given in the suttas, the invitation is to not learn these lists off by heart but to actually notice if you experience such qualities in your meditations. This cannot occur if you shun them. Be with your thoughts and emotions. Allow them to flow as they wish in order to see their dependently arisen qualities. We often need to look back on the process after the fact, as it’s difficult to ‘be aware’ during so many of our mind states/feelings etc. Bringing awareness to them at the time often stops or changes them.
In the Satipattana Sutta, Buddha speaks of being with your body/feelings/thought/conditioned experiences, to “the extent necessary for knowledge and remembrance”. This phase is repeated for each foundation. To me this invites internal discernment as opposed to ‘control’. The ‘extent necessary’, will vary each time.
This isn’t totally a prescriptive process. It’s a question of what’s useful or not useful for you. You modify the process when it’s no longer useful or if it’s distressing, overwhelming, or too intense for YOU - not another person or teacher. Experiment! These are not rules, they are invitations. How can we be both kind AND wise within our own experience and body/mind? How can we see and know what is causing such distress, boredom, angst, and how it fades away? How can we be with our experience and be at peace at the same time? You might have different questions to these. Use them in your practice. This is employing curiosity, not control! Curiosity has neither attachment nor aversion. Control employs both.
Anna Markey
March 2003
(Download PDF version, 131 kB)
As we spoke of our meditations in this meeting one of the topics that arose was that of control. It’s easy to see how we assume that we should be in control of our body/mind. This is often held up as being our aim by some teachers or traditions. Meditation can then either become a place that accentuates our lack of control and therefore leads to disappointment, judgement or unkindness to ourselves, or becomes a battlefield to gain this control or a place where control is gained.
In being invited to let go of that wish for control, we can see that it’s easier said than done. The drive for control can become a habit… maybe even in layers of subtlety, which may take a while to see and let go of. Yet again, something to “Unlearn”!
However we may not be convinced that control needs to be let go of. We are human beings with intellect and choices. Being in control of something seems useful. What of “right effort”? How else do we achieve our aims?
If we go to the suttas we see that even the discussion “right effort” is framed by the Buddha as being a process of seeing what works and what doesn’t, and fostering that which seems useful and letting go of that which isn’t. To foster that which is useful involves actually being with your experience long enough to see it as it really is, become familiar with the raw face of it… what brings it about?… what are the results? What maintains it? Despite the long lists given in the suttas, the invitation is to not learn these lists off by heart but to actually notice if you experience such qualities in your meditations. This cannot occur if you shun them. Be with your thoughts and emotions. Allow them to flow as they wish in order to see their dependently arisen qualities. We often need to look back on the process after the fact, as it’s difficult to ‘be aware’ during so many of our mind states/feelings etc. Bringing awareness to them at the time often stops or changes them.
In the Satipattana Sutta, Buddha speaks of being with your body/feelings/thought/conditioned experiences, to “the extent necessary for knowledge and remembrance”. This phase is repeated for each foundation. To me this invites internal discernment as opposed to ‘control’. The ‘extent necessary’, will vary each time.
This isn’t totally a prescriptive process. It’s a question of what’s useful or not useful for you. You modify the process when it’s no longer useful or if it’s distressing, overwhelming, or too intense for YOU - not another person or teacher. Experiment! These are not rules, they are invitations. How can we be both kind AND wise within our own experience and body/mind? How can we see and know what is causing such distress, boredom, angst, and how it fades away? How can we be with our experience and be at peace at the same time? You might have different questions to these. Use them in your practice. This is employing curiosity, not control! Curiosity has neither attachment nor aversion. Control employs both.
Anna Markey
March 2003
(Download PDF version, 131 kB)
Links
Australian Insight Meditation Network
Insight Meditation Australia
Secular Buddhist Network
Secular Buddhism Australia
Stephen and Martine Batchelor
Pine Street Sangha - A reflective meditation sangha in Oregan, USA
Sati Sangha - a reflective meditation sangha led by Linda Modaro
Dharmaseed
Suttacentral
Sydney Insight Meditors
The Tuwhiri Project – a dharma publishing imprint
The OM Centre where Ashtree Sangha meets, 2nd Sunday of each month
Our Facebook page
Resources for loan - a small list of Buddhist books and CDs
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