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Re: Seeing the hindrances as stress, helps the mind let go of them

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:11 pm
by mikenz66
Saengnapha wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:28 am Mike, the first thing I notice is the odd word selection of Sujato's translation and the use of a term like 'placing the mind and keeping it connected'. English is my native language and I have no idea what this means. I can surmise, but I cannot be sure. Nanamoli translates as 'accompanied by applied and sustained thought'. This is understandable in plain English and goes along with definitions of vitakka and vicara as an accompaniment to the first jhana.
If you like the translation "applied and sustained thought", that's fine. It seems to me to be a hangover from old translations.
Saengnapha wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:28 am Can you understand why I am so critical of some of these translations and how much varying interpretation they can promote?
Well, you seem have a different interetation of many things than what I am used to...
Saengnapha wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:28 am Mike, what do you think Sujato means by 'placing the mind'? Is this an 'Aussie' thing? lol.
I don't know about is being an "Aussie thing". I'm from New Zealand. :tongue:

The expression that Sujato uses:
while placing the mind and keeping it connected.
Is does sound a little clumsy, but it describes how many teachers and commentators understand vitakka and vicara, as placing the mind on the meditation object, and sustaining that application.

:heart:
Mike

Re: Seeing the hindrances as stress, helps the mind let go of them

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:28 pm
by auto
Saengnapha wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 4:37 am
This is where we seem to go off on many tangents as to what right effort, dliigence, and striving really mean. This discussion is posted in the Samatha topic. The practice of samatha is about the focus on a meditation object such as the breath. When you focus on the breath, you begin to draw in the attention away from exterior phenomenon and into the body, with the breath as the main focus. It is not about the stopping of thinking although that does tend to happen. What tends to happen is one of two things. Either the attention gets lost in thinking and forgets about the breath or the attention tends to fixate on feelings or some other internal phenomena. Moving the attention back to the breath is not about a rigid concentration and an attempt to either stop thinking or forcing the attention back to the breath. It is simply a relaxation out of an habitual activity like thinking and back on the breath, again and again, until there is a relaxed focus and balance of body, feeling, and the mental processes. This culminates in jhana and samadhi. It is not about analysis and reasoning. In samatha practice, analysis and reasoning are not engaged in. But, this does not lead to real wisdom as satipatthana practice does. Samatha is about calming the citta, the agitation. Penetrating insight comes later through satipatthana and the analysis and reasoning that is possible with equanimity present as its basis.
Samantha is tranquilization of mind. If you sit then there rises hindrances, what try to force you to do things instead of sitting. There is energy imbalance what you need balance from your side.
So how it is that before it is so nice and easy to sit, but after a while it is storm. There is fundametal difference, i don't go sit to eliminate hindrances, they will arise during a sit.
The OP long quote there, if you are endowed by virtue then you will be mindful of the fore, fore is what is written on that second paragraph there.

The tranquil state is the version of the peace what is after the storm, and you won't wait it till storm subsides, you switch to the other side by magga phala.
The concentration what comes is you can use any sensation what arises from an object as a concentration. Not like you look at object and call it concetration, that is kamma nimitta, the very start. Sensation is a concetration itself or may i say concentrated.