The Less Dust the More Trust: Participating In The Shamatha Project, Meditation And Science
418
The Less Dust the More Trust: Participating In The Shamatha Project, Meditation And Science
418eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781782796572 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hunt, John Publishing |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 418 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of guided meditations
List of illustrations
Prologue B. Alan Wallace PhD 1
Acknowledgements 6
Introduction 8
Once upon a time 9
"The less dust, the more trust" 10
On my way 12
What you will find in this book 13
Chapters overview 15
Mindfulness and the mysteries of the mind 19
Chapter 1 The Project, the research, and some, outcomes 22
1.1 The Shamatha Project, an outline 22
1.2 Inspirations, preliminaries 26
1.3 Meditation expedition: overview, daily life 29
Breath, whole body practice - guided meditation 30
Setting, people 32
Program 36
Silence 37
1.4 Science: a brief overview of biomarkers, assessments and tests 39
An attention lest with EEC: first and third person perspective 43
Blood, spit and tears 46
1.5 Follow-up and some outcomes 50
Transforming the body-mind 51
An ongoing project 57
Chapter 2 Attention meditations 59
2.1 Some basic shamatha notions and instructions 60
Posture 60
Object of mindfulness, introspection 62
2.2 Breath meditations, tactile sensations: soothing the body 63
Breath in the abdomen - guided meditation 63
Breath at the apertures of the nostrils - guided meditation 65
2.3 Mind: the space of the mind, and what arises in it 67
Settling the mind in its natural stale - guided meditation 67
2.4 Awareness: shamatha without a sign, illuminating awareness 71
Awareness of awareness - guided meditation 71
2.5 Some shamatha questions and answers 73
Ascertaining awareness, stability and vividness of attention 74
Development, discovery and grasping 76
Substrate consciousness 78
Nine stages of meditative concentration 79
Winch practice to do? 83
Nyam 85
2.6 Some basic Buddhist background 86
Chapter 3 Qualities of the Heart and Tonglen 94
3.1 Four Heartful Qualities 95
3.2 Genuine happiness 99
Loving Kindness - guided meditation 99
3.3 Tonglen and state terror 102
3.4 Heart meditation integrations 104
Equanimity and Tonglen - guided meditation 104
3.5 Extra: Lucid Dreaming and Dream Yoga 108
3.6 More matters of the Heart 111
Dust and trust, heartful explorations 111
Right from the Heart: four working hypotheses 113
Heart for in integrative views 116
Chapter 4 Shamatha in Buddhism as it developed in Tibet 119
4.1 Exploring shamatha meditations 120
Northern Buddhism, Essence, and energy dynamics 120
Shamatha and vipashyana in Northern Buddhism 123
4.2 Shamatha practice and the nine stages on the Elephant Path 124
Disentangling from mind - guided meditation 130
4.3 Attaining substrate consciousness and achieving shamatha 131
4.4 The vital role of shamatha 135
4.5 Mindfulness and introspection 137
Musings on mindfulness 139
Chapter 5 Three months of sitting with Settling 142
5.1 Evolving practice, impressions from empirical data 143
5.2 First month meditation practice: object, subject, and monitoring 144
Meditation turbulence, first month: nyam, lessons in diving 147
5.3 Second month meditation practice 150
Meditation turbulence, second month: "I do things wrong, so I exist" 158
Settling the mind: no preference for calm or active ? guided meditation 164
5.4 Third month meditation practice 166
Meditation turbulence, third month', "yo-yoing" and "whiplash" 168
5.5 Just Sitting 172
Chapter 6 Settling the mind and "tasting" the texts 174
6.1 Basic instructions by Dzogchen master Lerab Lingpa 175
Lerab Lingpa's Settling the mind - guided meditation 176
Some comments to the text Lerab Lingpa 177
6.2 Dzogchen master Düdjom Lingpa: The Vajra Essence 182
Some comments to the text Düdjom Lingpa 187
6.3 Diaries, and the texts Lerab Lingpa Düdjom Lingpa 194
6.4 Lerab Lingpa: nothing can harm the mind 196
6.5 Düdjom Lingpa: intolerable pain 197
Body-energy 198
Paranoia as a sign of progress 199
Clarity, cognizance, joy 201
6.6 Contextualizing experiences, then and now 201
Chapter 7 Settling the mind, Mahamudra and Dzogchen 205
7.1 Some names, notions and context for the practice 206
Settling the mind, releasing grasping - guided meditation 207
7.2 Settling the mind: mind and awareness 209
7.3 Shamatha, awareness and vantage point 211
Perspectives 213
7.4 Shamatha practice in Essential context 217
7.5 Mind practice, on the way: transcending and including 219
Ways of practicing, teaching and learning 224
Chapter 8 Contemplative and psychological views 229
8.1 Various ways of being in the world 230
A few words about namings 230
A Buddhist view: The Wheel of Life 230
Compassion for ourselves doing the practices - guided meditation 240
A Western-psychological view: the Diagnostic Statistical Manual 242
8.2 Musings: Buddhist and Western-psychological manifestations 243
8.3 Defensive patterns in workings of the mind: avoiding what's here 246
About the use of terminology 247
A Western-psychological view: seven levels of defensive functioning 249
A Buddhist view: The Four Maras 256
8.4 Musings: Western-psychological and Buddhist ways in self-limitation 258
Connecting with Settling the mind practice 259
8.5 Development and discovery, states and stages 262
Chapter 9 Psychological turbulence and self-healing 267
9.1 Variation on a theme: body-mind turbulence, falling on head 268
9.2 Settling the mind and "falling out of habitual conditionings" 272
Mind: the union of stillness and motion - guided meditation 273
9.3 The energetic dynamics of selfhood 276
Contraction, relaxation and re-orientation 278
Emergence and emergency 282
9.4 About Settling the mind and therapeutic effects 285
Deeper layers of the psyche revealing 289
A Tibetan view on mental turbulence and health 291
A fundamental re-orientation on what is health 292
9.5 Summarizing special contributions of Settling the mind practice 293
Settling the mind and attention practices 294
Settling the mind, connecting concentration and insight meditation 295
Settling the mind, self-healing and therapeutic qualities 296
Chapter 10 Contemplation and science, some considerations 298
10.1 About a map and five attentional abilities 299
10.2 Meditation and baselines 302
10.3 Crucial Heart Qualities 307
Compassion, expanding the scope - guided meditation 308
10.4 Research on two basic types of meditation 311
Focused Attention 311
Open Monitoring 312
10.5 A model protocol for meditation research 317
Settling the mind in its natural state, a structured description 318
10.6 Two shamatha pilot-explorations, some impressions 323
"Settling the mind questionnaire" 324
"After shamatha retreat questionnaire" 327
Chapter 11 Applications, integrations: shamatha in society 333
11.1 Back to the working hypotheses: observing our minds 334
11.2 Wholesome effects for every human being, irrespective of worldview 335
11.3 Coping with turbulence, signs of progress, signals for worry 338
11.4 Consciousness and collaboration between contemplatives and scientists 339
An alternative stance for a new amplified science 341
11.5 Concentration-calm and possible practical applications in society 343
Shamatha in psychiatry, meditation guidance, and the dying process 344
Compassion and dying - guided meditation 350
11.6 In a larger evolutionary context 352
Chapter 12 On human flourishing: continuing the project 356
12.1 The most compassionate thing we can do 357
Empathelic Joy - guided meditation 357
A spirit of emergence, and nadi-plasticity 359
12.2 A new round of follow-up for the Shamatha Project, six years later 361
12.3 "Settling" the "mind" in its "natural state" 363
12.4 Doing what needs to be done, just being 365
Four aspects 366
Notes 369
References 379
Select Index 393