phil wrote:Ven. Vimalaramsi made a brief appearance at Dhamma Study Group about 6 years ago before quickly slipping away again when he didn't find a reverential audience. Judging from the things he wrote then about meditation that even this beginner could see were not in line with the Buddha's teaching (for example, going through the body to find all points of tension/pain and healing them to have pleasant feeling, which is a nice and probably even effective idea for yoga or some kind of new age therapy but is not Buddhist meditation) it is hard to believe that anything he puts out in the world is not chock full of enough dubious points to make it impossible for a venerable such as Sayadaw U Silananda to accept them, just out of the question......................
......."
I came across the following "new age therapy" .................
'He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.' [6] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.'
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html
and...............
"Quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful mental qualities, he enters and remains in the first jhana: rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought and evaluation. He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal. Just as if a skilled bathman or bathman's apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again and again with water, so that his ball of bath powder — saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within and without — would nevertheless not drip; even so, the monk permeates... this very body with the rapture and pleasure born of withdrawal. There's nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... ml#bathman