Tag: meditation

Buddhism – Rinpoche – Dream 22-12-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream had after 6 AM this morning. It is out of the blue considering what I have been exploring in terms of old French manuscripts.

The dream opens in the front room – sitting room in a large home in the English home counties. The wife and I are visiting a young woman and her family. She is a younger version of Dupinder from Aussie MasterChef. In the dream context she is an ex-student of mine and early twenties. She has a nice posh English accent with only the faintest hint of Indian accent. We are there with her sister and mother and father. They are middle-upper class and moderately wealthy. They are highly educated. I say that people like her family have added a great deal to UK culture and life. Their springer spaniel dog comes in and they are worried that the dog will bite or snap at me. This is its usual behaviour with strangers. It comes over to me and I offer it my right hand in a loose fist to sniff. It is very suspicious and growls slightly. I re-offer my hand and emanate warmth along it. The dog sniffs it and then sits to lick my hand. It lets me stroke it and then lies down in front of me, close, calm and happy.

I notice some Buddhist texts on the table and small statuette of Buddha. I comment to “Dupinder” that I did not know she was Buddhist.  She says that yes they have been going to the local temple/centre on a regular basis. Her parents have been life long and as of late she and her sister have taken to it too. I ask what denomination. She says that they are Theravada and no fuss Buddhism. I explain to her that I have more than a passing interest. She boots up her lap top and shows me pictures of her centre. It is housed in a wider building run by Tibetan Buddhists as a cross denominational dharma centre. On the outside of the building I can see Tibetan writing and roman scripts. The building has been purchased using the wealth of the Tibetan Buddhist “church” in exile. I ask who oversees the project and she says that Rinpoche does. I inquire further and she says that Rinpoche, a supposed Tulku, is titular head of the dharma centre but others run it day to day. The centre is in a town just outside the north of the M25.

At this point her father interjects. He asks me if I am a Rinpoche too. He has had a sudden intuition that I am. Caught slightly off-guard I say that yes it is more than possible that I am a Rinpoche, a reincarnated lama too. He says that he suspected this from the moment he first set eyes on me and from the way his daughter has spoken of me. He says that he thinks that I should go to the dharma centre to see if I am recognised. I say that I don’t think that it works like that. Me tipping up in such a manner would not go down well. For some reason he is very happy and he invites us all down into the big conservatory to have a light vegetarian snack / dinner. There are metallic thali plates with curries in little bowls, rice and breads.

The dream ends.

Shamballa and Guardians of the Race

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Shambhala (Sanskrit: शम्भल, IAST: Śambhala), also spelled Shambala or Shamballa (Tibetan: བདེ་འབྱུང, Wylie: Bde’byung; Chinese: 香巴拉; pinyin: Xiāngbālā), is a spiritual kingdom in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Shambhala is mentioned in the Kalachakra Tantra. The Bon scriptures speak of a closely related land called Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring.

The Sanskrit name is taken from the name of a city near the Ganges, sometimes identified with Sambhal in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, as mentioned in the Hindu Puranas. The mythological relevance of the place originates with a prophecy in Vishnu Purana (4.24) according to which Shambhala will be the birthplace of Kalki, the next incarnation of Vishnu, who will usher in a new age (Satya Yuga); and the prophesied ruling Kingdom of Maitreya, the future Buddha.

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Excerpted from Wikipedia

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In the blue books opus Kuhl makes numerous mentions of Shamballa and it is referred to in the Kalachakra Tantra. The obvious Lara Croft or Indiana Jones question is where? Where can I find this mysterious place which is perhaps imbued with secrets, power and treasure?

Kuhl suggests that initiates of a certain degree { 3 and above} can go “there” as members of the blue or white lodges. Here the term lodge has perhaps been adopted for the benefit of those inculcated into freemasonry. A lodge is hardly a Himalayan notion. He suggests that Shamballa acts as a kind of planetary chakra. It is “at” Shamballa that certain members of the so-called hierarchy meet and meditate. This so-called hierarchy correlates with those Théun Mares refers to as “The Guardians of the Race”. The notion is that these beings have since the beginning of humanity been looking over us and revealing various teachings to help humanity evolve. They distribute “energies” which are both causal and facilitative.

In this school of thought beings who have taken the fourth initiation no longer have a causal body which is blown off during the act of initiation. These beings are no longer required to incarnate by the laws of material karma. If you accept such a notion, if only as a working hypothesis, it should be reasonably clear that a being who no longer needs to incarnate will be markedly different to one who must. Technically they no longer have a reincarnating Jiva or Soul. They have transcended. They are now something else.

If you are not even partially soul infused it might be difficult to comprehend someone/something who has gone way past where you might find yourself now. It might be tempting to suggest that this is a bunch of codswallop and made up fairy tales.

To look for a physical plane manifestation of Shamballa would be a sign that one only believes in physically measurable physical materiality. The absence of stones or ruins mighty be deemed proof of the non-existence. History suggests that many things “proven” by humanity are subsequently found incomplete, inaccurate and wrong. Yet humanity remains adamant and vocal about the completeness of current “proof”. The soap box beckons. There is an in public alignment with the currently accepted dogma.

Shamballa is probably not a Disneyland style magic castle in the air…

As it is described it is an operative “sacred” thought form, a place of work and/or meditation. It is “there” that a gathering of consciousness occurs. Over a long while this thought form has been built refined and shared. One cannot construct it, imagine it, unless one is already able.

The thought form is more complex and extensive than one might imagine. Certain “areas” are available only to relatively few. One might say that physical limitations like brain and noisy mind can limit access.

The way Kuhl describes it is by analogy perhaps to some kind of temple in which there is an inner sanctuary open only to those evolved enough to enter. There can be found, depending upon the needs of the time, the three Buddhas of activity, the senior members of the hierarchy and the Sanat Kumara.

To expect a corporeal from, human shaped, points at the endless anthropomorphic ideation of humans. The one which casts God as a geezer on a cloud. Human imagination has a bit of a meat, bricks and mortar, fetish.

Not all members of the externalising hierarchy are linked or tied to Shamballa, according to Kuhl. One might take the published writings as merely a taster of a much wider plan. It is by way of, perhaps, a “for instance”.

He suggests that those working with the Shamballa impulse are developed meditatively in a particular way, trained to work therein and therewith. They may well be in a physical incarnation; there are others which are not.

The notion of a disincarnate being working on “energies” pertaining to the planet, is not currently provable, nor might it be swallowed easily by the modern omniscient scientist. These putative contemplatives are formless to mundane eye. The notion of a formless intellect or consciousness is an anathema to a neuroscientist who must publish and put dinner on the table. MRI machines cost shit loads and these must be justified. They could not measure a formless contemplative.

To accept that things which cannot be measured using the instrumentation based on The Standard Model exist, is not easy to accept. Yet dark matter and dark energy are mooted.

The more that minds construct the Shamballa thought form the more “concrete” and “real” it becomes.

If a lot of people think of “Gangnam Style” then one can be easily infected by a brain worm, which is difficult to shift. Thought forms have a non-material existence in the “aether” for want of a better word. We can easily tap into them whether we might wish to or not.

Shamballa then is by way of a meditative and intuitive “thought form” which has a non-material existence and “where” meditation and work can be carried out in a group like manner, in formation and en rapport…

“Spiritual” Journeys

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I have used inverted commas quotation mark here because I struggle a little with how words have in a sense become tainted by multiple usage and being bandied about as PR. Spiritual as a word has had its impact and meaning downgraded to the point of near meaninglessness.

I am going to attempt to put into words something which I have hesitated to do. It is close to impossible. This cannot be undertaken without emphasising just how important a few years of my childhood were in my development, in this life. One constellation in particular left its mark deep in my psyche.

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It was by its light during an English language common entrance exam that I foresaw events near two and a half decades later. It was the harbinger and the key of a volte face in life. I left the harbour alone in my coracle adrift upon the Southern ocean lit by its solace. I left Cape Town after being burned on table mountain.

Later I had another foreboding which was also to find consummation over a similar time delay. Each of these were pivotal. That foreboding prevented me making a UCAS university choice against the advice of my school teachers.

When I was young and in an English boarding school as an expat child I got to read the lessons and the prayers in church. While the others sat with parents. It was like a duck to water that I took to the lectern and the prayer “chair” deep in the nave. There I found St Francis of Assisi.

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« Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a de la haine, que je mette l’amour. »

« C’est en pardonnant qu’on est pardonné,
c’est en mourant qu’on ressuscite à l’éternelle vie. »

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This man was in tune with the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal. His words touched.

Unfortunately those with the skill of a chameleon can adopt any mask, any direction, any character they choose. Believe me I learned how to blend. And in blending one loses authentic essence.

At the end of my schooling I took general studies courses in Buddhism, cooking and Rastafarianism. Ever Jah, ever loving, ever faithful. Rastafari. I read all that I could on witchcraft and alchemy. I made “friends” with the librarian in our town.

The Buddhism was presented in an intellectual descriptive manner in which the various fetters were enumerated for debate. Although I understood, the manner was for me boring and definitional. I sensed beyond that which was being professed. It was during intense meditation sat in seiza at karate that I learned that I had in fact been meditating all of my childhood. I used to sit and observe. I used to wait. I was touched directly by the dreamtime out in the shimmering bush of western Queensland. The aboriginal pointing stick had cleaved something open.

And then when I went to university I mostly forgot. By the time I was doing my Ph.D. research I figured that I had found something I was good at. So maybe this was the future. I enjoyed “pissing about with lasers”. I was to an extent, life and soul of the party. It was only in the early nineties that I started to withdraw, as if driven by a deeper current, out into the hills, the mountains and the countryside. It set up a kind of imbalance. On the one hand was a “normal” life and career. On the other there was silence and quiet. My reading was more intellectual philosophy, science and philosophy of science. I noted that despite mundane academic achievement many of “the greats” struggled with non-salary paying bigger questions.

I was offered a choice. Fort Collins Colorado or Bern Switzerland. One of those would have brought me quicker into contact with things “spiritual” than the other. The Swiss francs were certain, so I saw the Berner Oberland and learned painfully of “qualität”. Something which I tried thenceforth to express.

In the mid nineties at the place of my prior foreboding I was brought to my knees. Despite writing excellent research proposals I was stymied and unfunded. A grudge held by a “competing” senior academic could kill a proposal with a mere word. I had a breakdown. The answer to life the universe and everything could no longer be found in the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. It seemed there was more. It was around then that my ambition faded and the picture of a life academic dimmed. I began to search in earnest. I opened myself up wide. Again I largely forgot and tried to rebuild a life after breakdown. For some unknown reason money for research and start-up came more easily. I was “successful” for a while.

In the very early part of this century I was tested by power. I had a taste of it and did not abuse. Like Galadriel I refused the ring and was no longer sorely tempted thereby. It was around this time that a series of what might be called micro-renunciations began. In which step-wise I renounced or was forced to renounce the accoutrements of normal life. Each one was more difficult and profound than the last. Slowly life was stripped of all that made it busy and hectic. Until in the middle of 2006 I renounced all and walked off into the metaphorical “wilderness”. Dramatic as that sounds, at face value it looked simple, at core it cleaved and parted, severed and up-ended.

I did not become a wandering mendicant with charnel grounds for abode nor skull cup for beverage. Though adrift I most certainly was. I had already learned as a child, the nature of impermanence. Strangely without accoutrement life did not cease, the world did not implode, nor did it stop.

When you are thrust  from an Outlook calendar ruled life, with hours dissected into segments, with meetings set for you, with each action seemingly accountable, into nothing. The meaning of time changes in an unalterable and irrevocable way. It is no longer a spreadsheet thing. The boxes, the rice paper walls of the day, dissolve.

At end of 2008 I left the map so to speak. I began a series of meditations which went beyond. There was nothing, despite my research skill, which I could find written. These “meditations” continued in the UK in houses close to civilisation yet separate in the English countryside. I can say that the rigor of these was high and they continued for many years. In around 2010-11 I began having Buddhist dreams.

In the early part of the century whilst still teaching physical chemistry I had a series of waking visions in which I had “om mane padme hum” tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit and with me in monastic robes. These visions were sufficiently powerful to be present whilst I was lecturing Chemical Reaction Kinetics to undergraduates in South Kensington. It was around then that I got to express my compassion for others, to care for them.

Overlaid on a “Toltec” background was a distinctly Buddhist vibe.

All the while I had a seemingly normal life as a married man doing for quite a while “A” level science private tutoring. The outer world and the inner world differed and markedly so.

To me as a member of the elephant dreaming class there is no problem with the scholastic wisdom teachings of Siddartha and the more dramatic Toltec corpus. The latter is a guide, when viewed with clarity, to the navigation of glamour and illusion. There is probably only one truth expressed via many different approaches. The Tower of Babel has a lot to answer for…

This is probably enough for today…

Expansion of Consciousness and Letting Go

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Before I get into this I will take a little diversion. It is to do with karmic “debt” which is another way of simply saying imbalance. If you take more than you give that is unbalanced and ultimately unsustainable. If we “wrong” someone we may feel guilty especially if we are socially caught in so doing, found out, reported to teacher. We may be socially required to say “sorry” even if we do not mean it. It does not change the “wrong” one iota. It is the sort of thing our mothers might require of us if we stole our sister’s Maltesers. It is a social “peace” keeping. It does not change the karma one tiny bit. Until such time we feel it in our hearts to be wrong, we will continue to accrue karmic debt from similar acts. Were the scales to fall from our eyes one fine day we might want to change our ways. We might re-orient our behaviour towards our fellow human beings, try to stop being selfish bellends and do some nice self-less stuff for a change. We would not do this for “show” or PR. Karma does not give a toss about PR. We can never undo a wrong we have meted out to someone nor can we “make it up to them”. What we can do is ensure that we do not inflict that behaviour on others.

Say for example you were to slag me off. You could never undo that. What you could do is make a general effort not to repeat this behaviour, not to inflict it on others. You could strive to be generally more positive and less derogatory. You could balance out your unpleasantness by being more pleasant generally. In so doing you would start to balance your books with the universe. There is no requirement to do anything in respect of me, rather a more general debt to the universe. I personally am unlikely to feel aggrieved or owed. So to try to make it up to me would be silly and probably disingenuous.

Here we have an example of a consciousness expanded away from the petty and personal to the wider and universal. At the moment it seems Trump takes everything personally and vindictively so. His focus is centered on him and does not have a wider universal view. It is all about his personality and his sense of self. He feels hard done by a lot of the time and is prone to playing angry victim.

This sense of victimhood is shared by vast tracts of humanity; they bemoan that life is unfair and complain that things are not as they should be. They imagine life a burden forced upon them. They try to have life on their own terms. If they don’t like how they look they will pay a plastic surgeon to surgically disfigure them. Their consciousness is not expanded beyond their perception of how the meat looks. They are fixated on something arguably silly.

In the blue books opus the Tibetan discusses initiation as a sequential expansion of consciousness, here diagrammatically represented.

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In the diagram, the scale is reconfigured at the end of each open cone. The diameters represent the breadth of consciousness and width of inclusiveness. Each successive cone is an order of magnitude increase in breadth of consciousness. The scale is perhaps logarithmic.

According to the text the consciousness of a fifth degree initiate differs very markedly from your normal common or garden human. What might concern them is not the same as the house home heart wallet and genitals of normal people. Normal people worry about a host of mundane things which in the wider evolutionary scheme do not matter very much. Your much sought after promotion in job is of no consequence in terms of your spiritual evolution.

If you think of a snake as it grows and evolves it has a tendency to shed its skin so that it, no longer constrained, can grow. A similar view can be had here. As a person evolves the ways and thought patterns of the old life must be shed. Let go of. So that a newer nascent consciousness can expand unburdened by the habits {bad} of the past. The fresh new skin does not need the scaly old ways to constrain it. This letting go can mean relationships which drag you down or they can simply need recalibrating. Old habits die hard and these are the detritus that needs letting go of.

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Being obsessed  with little trite details can prevent the expansion of consciousness. One needs to move from the petty and personal to more universal and joined up. To recognise there is but one life to which we all pertain.

To the would be initiate expansion of consciousness and spiritual evolution are the only goals of merit. They seek to rise above the mundane and not remain trapped in the mire which is often petty and of a deeply personal nature.

Letting go is vital in order to enable expansion of consciousness. Mental skin, rigid self-image must be shed again and again.

You cannot expand your consciousness by keeping the same view of the world you currently have. It acts as barrier to evolution, a ghetto wall which keeps you constrained.

Letting go is a truly vital component to the expansion of consciousness. Letting go vivifies.

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Bodhisattva

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This from Britannica on line.

Click here

bodhisattva, in Buddhism, one who seeks awakening (bodhi)—hence, an individual on the path to becoming a buddha.

Pali: bodhisatta (“one whose goal is awakening”)

In early Indian Buddhism and in some later traditions—including Theravada, at present the major form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and other parts of Southeast Asia—the term bodhisattva was used primarily to refer to the Buddha Shakyamuni (as Gautama Siddhartha is known) in his former lives. The stories of his lives, the Jatakas, portray the efforts of the bodhisattva to cultivate the qualities, including morality, self-sacrifice, and wisdom, which will define him as a buddha. Later, and especially in the Mahayana tradition—the major form of Buddhism in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan—it was thought that anyone who made the aspiration to awakening (bodhicittotpada)—vowing, often in a communal ritual context, to become a buddha—is therefore a bodhisattva. According to Mahayana teachings, throughout the history of the universe, which had no beginning, many have committed themselves to becoming buddhas. As a result, the universe is filled with a broad range of potential buddhas, from those just setting out on the path of buddhahood to those who have spent lifetimes in training and have thereby acquired supernatural powers. These “celestial” bodhisattvas are functionally equivalent to buddhas in their wisdom, compassion, and powers: their compassion motivates them to assist ordinary beings, their wisdom informs them how best to do so, and their accumulated powers enable them to act in miraculous ways.

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Avalokiteshvara

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Bodhisattvas are common figures in Buddhist literature and art. A striking theme in popular literature is that of the concealed greatness of the bodhisattvas. In numerous stories ordinary or even distinctly humble individuals are revealed to be great bodhisattvas who have assumed common forms to save others. The lesson of these tales is that, because one can never distinguish between paupers and divinities, one must treat all others as the latter. In popular folklore bodhisattvas appear as something like saviour deities, a role they acquired both through the evolution of earlier ideas and through fusion with already existing local gods.

Buddhism: Celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas

A particularly important mythology in East Asia is that of Dharmakara. According to the Pure Land Sutra, Dharmakara was a bodhisattva whose vows were realized when he became the Buddha Amitabha. Pan-Buddhist bodhisattvas include Maitreya, who will succeed Shakyamuni as the next buddha in this world, and Avalokiteshvara, known in Tibet as Spyan ras gzigs (Chenrezi), in China as Guanyin (Kuan-yin), and in Japan as Kannon. Although all bodhisattvas act compassionately, Avalokiteshvara is considered the embodiment of the abstract principle of compassion. Bodhisattvas of more localized importance include Tārā in Tibet and Jizō in Japan.

Being Off the Map

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In general people have a fairly fixed idea about how the world is, how people behave and what is expected. Which is a nice way of saying that people are prejudiced. The fact that I resigned my job at a decent university without any other, better job to go to, was for many a non sequitur. They could not get their head around it. It did not compute. Some invented some imaginary scandal to explain it, scandal ever being bread and butter in perfidious Albion.

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People do not associate words on perception and meditation with a smoking skinhead bovver-boy. Nor do they image that a piss artist front row rugby player can chant in deep voice. People are set in their ways and their minds are a tad concrete.

I quite like having more than one working explanation for any given situation. I do not have to settle in any absolute way for which one is “right”. Modern education insists on getting the socially accepted “right” answer to exam questions. Students want to learn how to produce and parrot the “right” answer so as to get “A” levels and degrees. People are trained to think in an absolute binary right-wrong way.

The most logical explanation from a socio-political point of view is that I am simply a burn-out who could not hack it with the big boys, the big cheeses.

Another explanation is that I am off the map. I differ significantly in orientation from most. I just don’t fit. I am a square peg which cannot be hammered into a round hole. No drama. People have long been wary of things which have not been mapped out.

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This means that only the foolhardy might seek to touch me with a barge pole. I could be infectious. Association with me could be career threatening.

I have been told by others that people do not want to be seen associating with me in public.

There is no incentive in a “what-is-in-it-for-me” sense to interact with me in any way, whether meaningful or otherwise.

I will likely remain off the map, uncharted.

People can choose to choose whatever it is they want to choose. Their choice is their choice. I have no wish to influence. If they make poor choices that is not my problem. I never advised them and they never sought my advice. People need to learn in whichever way helps them to learn.

This notion of standing back, non-interference, is neutral. It is nether life enhancing nor life destructive. It is an approach which does not make sense to others who wish to interact, to impinge, to affect and to influence. Some cannot resist trying to guide the lives of others and bend them to their will.

Non-interference is a direct consequence of emptiness, lack of will or ambition, is not on the map of modern ways of living. It is not there in “opportunity” land. After all “opportunities” should and must be seized!!

Why?

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New Age – New Humanity

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In the occult and esoteric literature there is promise of a New Age. This New Age will be radically different from the Woodstock – Wellness type of age. The change in human consciousness is mooted upward away from gonadic-emotional-concrete mind towards a fully intuitional or Soular consciousness. Such an age promises the understanding and perhaps attainment of The One Life. To get there it must cross the deserts of separative thinking. It must get past the we, me and mine towards a more global citizenship and to a wider ours. The old ways will not surrender easily. They will burn fiercely as they refuse to let go. Burn being the separation by fire and munition. They will burn for quite a while. People will justify death and fire to themselves.

For this new age an entirely new and evolving human vehicle is predicted one which is no longer so rigidly at face value heterosexual in the traditional and socio-political sense. The new humans will be configured differently. I take the whole so-called current “gender” debate as a hint, a precursor of what is to come. In time when fully Soul conscious, the entire notion of gender will no longer be important or something to soap box about. Gender roles will become historical. People will procreate according to the apparatus at birth, they will not feel out of place.  They will not feel the need to claim any gonadic based notion of gender. Which is illusory on the timescale of Soul. There will be more fluidity. The entire framework for living we currently have will become old-fashioned, a historical artefact.

The incoming beings of different make up will at first be few and far between. Their number will grow as more incarnating Souls require them. There will be oppression. Their lives will not be easy. The process will be decades even centuries long.

The transition to the new age will not be quick or painless…

The Dreamers of Mankind are Group Conscious…

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At the level of the reincarnating Soul or dreamer humanity is group conscious. It is aware of other Souls or dreamers who are on the same wavelength or colour. This is soul to soul. The incarnate being may not be fully or even partially conscious at the soul level being wrapped up in the “personality” of the meaty vehicle and its desires and worries. This so-called personality is the separative notion of self, focused on by modern psychology. As yet soul-centred psychology has not come into being. The “self” may be mentally polarised, emotionally polarised or gonad obsessed. It may prefer ideas and concepts, drama and emotional manipulation, or think only about sex and shagging. The soul or the dreamer is a level of consciousness which is true intuition, the inner-tuition of the real incarnating you, the soul, the dreamer. It seeks life after life to fully infuse the vehicle and its personality into which it is born. Its journey is home to the ONE source.

An IDF soldier firing into a crowd of people queuing for food in Gaza may be killing someone whose soul is the same colour as his, who belongs to the same group of souls. Literally he kills his brother or sister. This he justifies to him or herself.

In this context my soul ray or colour is indigo-blue, the second “ray”, which means that I pertain to the elephant dreaming class in Toltec nomenclature. There are people on the same wavelength, at the level of dreamer, as me, incarnate in bodies all over the world. They may be Aboriginal, Russian or Arab or Jew. They may be Nigerian or Chinese, they may even at a push, be English. The vehicle matters not to the soul. You may drive a Honda, a Peugeot or even a Chevrolet. The driver can change “cars” from life to life. That way one gets to experience different mundane circumstance and traditions. It is all about learning.

At this level of the soul, the heart, we are the same colour, we have similar sound and a basic urge to love-wisdom. It is possible via meditation and/or dreaming practice to ascertain to which group of souls you belong, to which dreaming class you pertain.

Of course even a rainbow verbalised as Richard of York etc. is a model. The colours of the rainbow do not care for our mundane descriptors, they merge into each other, without seam or boundary. The dreaming classes are defined for clarity but abut gently. Separation and division along with comparison are faculties of human mind, lower mind at that. The dreamers of the rainbow blend into a symphony of colour where each tone, each nuance of shade and vibrancy adds to the whole, the One Life in its human aspect.

Ever since humans started killing each other the practice of fratricide has plagued this planet!!

It continues to this day…

Slowly more people will sense this innate interconnectedness, they will feel it. They will know in heart that we are but one humanity and not a bunch of angry petty warring primitives. It will take a long time. Already there are tens of thousands who sense this.

The dreamers of mankind are group conscious and it is their challenge to manifest this consciousness fully onto the physical material plane, on the planet we call earth!!

Dhyāna

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From Wikipedia

In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna (Sanskrit) or jhāna (Pāḷi) is the training of the mind, commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses to sense-impressions, and leading to a “state of perfect equanimity and awareness (upekkhā-sati-parisuddhi).” Dhyāna may have been the core practice of pre-sectarian Buddhism, in combination with several related practices which together lead to perfected mindfulness and detachment and are fully realized with the practice of dhyana.

In the later commentarial tradition, which has survived in present-day Theravāda, dhyāna is equated with “concentration,” a state of one-pointed absorption in which there is a diminished awareness of the surroundings. In the contemporary Theravāda-based Vipassana movement, this absorbed state of mind is regarded as unnecessary and even non-beneficial for awakening, which has to be reached by mindfulness of the body and vipassanā (insight into impermanence). Since the 1980s, scholars and practitioners have started to question this equation, arguing for a more comprehensive and integrated understanding and approach, based on the oldest descriptions of dhyāna in the suttas.

In Chán and Zen, the names of which Buddhist traditions are the Chinese and Japanese pronunciations, respectively, of dhyāna, dhyāna is the central practice, which is ultimately based on Sarvastivāda meditation practices, and has been transmitted since the beginning of the Common Era.

Etymology

Dhyāna, from Proto-Indo-European root *√dheie-, “to see, to look,” “to show.” Developed into Sanskrit root √dhī and n. dhī, which in the earliest layer of text of the Vedas refers to “imaginative vision” and associated with goddess Saraswati with powers of knowledge, wisdom and poetic eloquence. This term developed into the variant √dhyā, “to contemplate, meditate, think”, from which dhyāna is derived.

According to Buddhaghosa (5th century CE Theravāda exegete), the term jhāna (Skt. dhyāna) is derived from the verb jhayati, “to think or meditate,” while the verb jhapeti, “to burn up,” explicates its function, namely burning up opposing states, burning up or destroying “the mental defilements preventing […] the development of serenity and insight.”

Commonly translated as meditation, and often equated with “concentration,” though meditation may refer to a wider scala of exercises for bhāvanā, development. Dhyāna can also mean “attention, thought, reflection.”

The jhānas

The Pāḷi canon describes four progressive states of jhāna called rūpa jhāna (“form jhāna“), and four additional meditative states called arūpa (“without form”).

Preceding practices

Meditation and contemplation are preceded by several practices, which are fully realized with the practice of dhyāna. As described in the Noble Eightfold Path, right view leads to leaving the household life and becoming a wandering monk. Sīla (morality) comprises the rules for right conduct. Right effort, or the four right efforts, aim to prevent the arising of unwholesome states, and to generate wholesome states. This includes indriya samvara (sense restraint), controlling the response to sensual perceptions, not giving in to lust and aversion but simply noticing the objects of perception as they appear. Right effort and mindfulness calm the mind-body complex, releasing unwholesome states and habitual patterns, and encouraging the development of wholesome states and non-automatic responses. By following these cumulative steps and practices, the mind becomes set, almost naturally, for the practice of dhyāna. The practice of dhyāna reinforces the development of wholesome states, leading to upekkhā (equanimity) and mindfulness.

The rūpa jhānas

Qualities of the rūpa jhānas

The practice of dhyāna is aided by ānāpānasati, mindfulness of breathing. The Suttapiṭaka and the Agamas describe four stages of rūpa jhāna. Rūpa refers to the material realm, in a neutral stance, as different from the kāma realm (lust, desire) and the arūpa-realm (non-material realm). Each jhāna is characterised by a set of qualities which are present in that jhāna.

  • First dhyāna: the first dhyāna can be entered when one is secluded from sensuality and unskillful qualities, due to withdrawal and right effort. There is pīti (“rapture”) and non-sensual sukha (“pleasure”) as the result of seclusion, while vitarka-vicara (“discursive thought”) continues.
  • Second dhyāna: there is pīti (“rapture”) and non-sensual sukha (“pleasure”) as the result of concentration (samadhi-ji, “born of samadhi”); ekaggata (unification of awareness) free from vitarka-vicara (“discursive thought”); sampasadana (“inner tranquility”).
  • Third dhyāna: upekkhā (equanimous; “affective detachment”), mindful, and alert, and senses pleasure with the body.
  • Fourth dhyāna: upekkhāsatipārisuddhi (purity of equanimity and mindfulness); neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Traditionally, the fourth jhāna is seen as the beginning of attaining psychic powers (abhijñā).

The arūpas

Grouped into the jhāna-scheme are four meditative states referred to in the early texts as arūpas. These are also referred to in commentarial literature as immaterial/formless jhānas (arūpajhānas), also translated as The Formless Dimensions, to be distinguished from the first four jhānas (rūpa jhānas). In the Buddhist canonical texts, the word “jhāna” is never explicitly used to denote them; they are instead referred to as āyatana. However, they are sometimes mentioned in sequence after the first four jhānas (other texts, e.g. MN 121, treat them as a distinct set of attainments) and thus came to be treated by later exegetes as jhānas. The immaterial are related to, or derived from, yogic meditation, while the jhānas proper are related to the cultivation of the mind. The state of complete dwelling in emptiness is reached when the eighth jhāna is transcended.

The four arūpas are:

  • fifth jhāna: infinite space (Pāḷi ākāsānañcāyatana, Skt. ākāśānantyāyatana),
  • sixth jhāna: infinite consciousness (Pāḷi viññāṇañcāyatana, Skt. vijñānānantyāyatana),
  • seventh jhāna: infinite nothingness (Pāḷi ākiñcaññāyatana, Skt. ākiṃcanyāyatana),
  • eighth jhāna: neither perception nor non-perception (Pāḷi nevasaññānāsaññāyatana, Skt. naivasaṃjñānāsaṃjñāyatana).

Although the “Dimension of Nothingness” and the “Dimension of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception” are included in the list of nine jhānas taught by the Buddha they are not included in the Noble Eightfold Path. Noble Truth number eight is sammā samādhi (Right Concentration), and only the first four jhānas are considered “Right Concentration.” If he takes a disciple through all the jhānas, the emphasis is on the “Cessation of Feelings and Perceptions” rather than stopping short at the “Dimension of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception”.

Nirodha-samāpatti

Beyond the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception lies a state called nirodha samāpatti, the “cessation of perception, feelings and consciousness”. Only in commentarial and scholarly literature, this is sometimes called the “ninth jhāna“

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And from Wikipédia

Dhyāna

Dhyāna (sanskrit : ध्यान (devanāgarī) ; pali : झान, romanisation, jhāna ; chinois simplifié : 禅 ; chinois traditionnel : 禪 ; pinyin : chán ; coréen : 선, translit. : seon ; zen (禅) ; vietnamien : thiền ; tibétain : བསམ་གཏན, Wylie : bsam gtan, THL : Samten) est un terme sanskrit qui correspond dans les Yoga Sūtra de Patañjali au septième membre (aṅga) du Yoga. Ce terme désigne des états de concentration cultivés dans l’hindouisme, le bouddhisme, et le jaïnisme. Il est souvent traduit par « absorption », bien qu’étymologiquement il signifie simplement méditation ou contemplation. Le terme méditation est utilisé aujourd’hui comme un mot désignant de nombreuses techniques en occident, il s’apparente à la vigilance en psychologie ou en philosophie. Historiquement et pour le sous-continent indien, dhyana en est le plus proche.

Patañjali, le compilateur des Yoga Sūtra, en fait une étape préliminaire du samādhi. Les deux termes sont interchangés pour désigner ces états de conscience « transcendants ». Par exemple, les traductions Ch’an en chinois, Sŏn en coréeen, Thiền en vietnamien et Zen en japonais sont des noms d’écoles de dhyāna bouddhistes, dérivées les unes des autres, où dhyāna prend ce sens fort de samādhi.

On rencontre plus souvent, en bouddhisme, le terme pāli jhāna, parce que les enseignements qui y sont liés sont plutôt une préoccupation de l’école Theravāda.

Therāvada

Atteindre les jhānas correspond au développement de la tranquillité et de la sagesse (voir Samatha bhavana). On distingue cinq jhānas de la forme ou de la sphère physique pure, et quatre jhanas dans la méditation sur les royaumes immatériels. Anapanasati est la principale technique d’accès aux jhānas, la méditation metta en est une autre. Ces jhānas sont différenciés en fonction des « facteurs » qui les caractérisent :

  • Application initiale (mouvement de l’esprit vers l’objet de méditation) : vitakka ;
  • Application soutenue (saisie de l’objet par l’esprit) : vicāra ;
  • Joie, ravissement : piti ;
  • Bonheur : sukha ;
  • Concentration en un point : ekaggata ;
  • Équanimité : upekkha.

Pour être atteints, les jhānas nécessitent la suppression de cinq empêchements :

  • le désir des sens (kāmacchanda) ;
  • la colère ou l’animosité (vyāpāda) ;
  • la paresse ou la torpeur (thīna-middha) ;
  • l’agitation ou le remords (uddhacca-kukkucca) ;
  • le doute (vicikicchā).

Les cinq jhānas du monde de la forme comportent tous des facteurs différents ; leur nombre est souvent réduit à quatre (en ne tenant pas compte d’un état intermédiaire entre le premier et le deuxième, dépourvu de vitakka, mais avec un reste de vicāra) :

  1. premier dhyâna : vitakka, vicāra, piti, sukha et ekaggata (le monde des cinq sens est complètement transcendé) ;
  2. deuxième dhyâna : piti, sukha et ekaggata (il n’y a plus d’action, de mouvement du mental, sont seulement ressentis la joie et le bonheur).
  3. troisième dhyâna : sukha et ekaggata (seul le bonheur demeure).
  4. quatrième dhyâna : upekkha et ekaggata (pure équanimité, il y a arrêt temporaire de la respiration dans cet état).

Ces deux facteurs, équanimité et concentration, resteront présents dans les 4 jhānas du sans-forme ou non physiques.

Les quatre royaumes immatériels de la méditation sont :

  1. la sphère de l’espace infini
  2. la sphère de la conscience infinie
  3. la sphère du néant
  4. la sphère sans perception et sans non-perception