So I've read my way through about half of the Pali cannon. I keep finding where the Buddha instructs on the four frames of reference. "...holding oneself upright, bringing mindfulness to the fore..." and then there is a note that "fore" is literally "the front of the chest&q...

The question remains. Have others in deep meditation felt it was distantly familiar?

Yes, but why is it familiar?

Let's not focus on the psychedelics. That was almost 20 years ago and I only brought it up due to a similarity in sensation and to the fact that along with religious experience, sickness, and meditation, it is an alteration of consciousness. Let us also not dismiss such experiences as "la la&qu...

The stillness. The breath. The sense of light, more felt than seen, afloat in a field of consciousness that I cannot say is myself or other. I have been here before, but it is distant, elusive, like a dream just remembered and slipped away. I cannot pin it down. I was a very spiritual Christian once...

"you'll just know" I expect to be the Answer. Personally I beleive access consciousness, since not mentioned by the Buddha, to be the weak beginnings of the first jhanna that later comentators felt the need to distinguish from full jhanna emersion.
How do you know when it's jhanna?

Does anyone else cry during meditation? When it's going really good and I am locked in on pleasure and rapture and I've turned away from the "concerns of a householder", it just opens up for me. Not everytime, but it is almost a measure I can go by as to the intensity of the experience. At...

In the context of the four frames of reference, where mental fabrications are defined as feelings, are they meant to be emotions of all complexities or simply pleasing, displeasing, and neutral? Are fabrications the same as formations, and do all mental constructs, (memory, concepts, social construc...

I am not a vegetarian. As I meditate my thoughts go to harmlessness and I wrestle with the question of the need to forswear meat in order to be harmless. If i think "what if I try not eating meat?', then the question of wearing leather arises. I know that meat was not forbidden as long as it wa...

This has helped me greatly in my meditation, especially the part on directed thought towards renunciation, non-aversion, and harmlessness. However I am having problems with harmlessness. I am not a vegetarian. As I meditate my thoughts go to harmlessness and I wrestle with the question of the need t...

All qualities and skills of people have some basis in the physical world. Any meditator is doing so with a physical neural base that is in part genetically determined. The phenotype or actual manifestation of form is the brain they actually end up with through interaction of genes and environment. T...

I have taken it as meaning that the mind roams when dissatisfied. In order to steady the mind one must often allow those thoughts connected with stress, connected with the world, to play themselves out, if not finding a solution, at least letting that thought scream itself out until it has nothing n...

Within the four frames of reference, the third frame. Breathing in sensitive to the mind, breathing out sensitive to the mind. Breathing in satisfying the mind, breathing out satisfying the mind. Breathing in steadying the mind, breathing out steadying the mind. Breathing in releasing the mind, brea...

What is meant by satisfying the mind? How do you interpret this, and how to you achieve this satisfaction?