I enjoy the way you engage the heart. So many speak from the head and I don't feel what they say. My experience about techniques, schools is precisely this point - you have to open where you are stuck and the inner teacher is the guide, it has to be this way.

the "bad" aspects of Shinzen Young's style of teaching are what attracted me in the first place :) ~C

to be able to speak about the "bad things" the way you do, thats something. i think that is the real path, to be truly open and truthful and genuine :)

What a marvelous and freeing perspective. A reminder of how fixed ideas can hold you back from making progress. Shinzen's scientific approach greatly appeals to me. The weaknesses he points out in his own approach count as strengths for me!

I think the journey is like a labyrinth. I love Shinzen's ability to see non-duality beyond his tradition(s).

@yoyohop

3 жыл бұрын

That also was Carl Jung's opinion; the path to self realization was a circuitous maze, symbolized by the mandala.

:):) me too, in terms of his using more secular languange. But not in terms of his precise techinque. I use a more flexible approach, just don't relate to that part right now. I find his tapes of lectures that I have many of different than these clips--- more broadly explanatory. He has helped me have a saner philosophy of life. now I can move into pain instead of away from it, and dissolve it. I like to alternate Vipassana with emotional release work.

The best path is the one that works for the individual. Some folks like Zen, some like Vajrayana, and some like Vipassana; each of those have different schools within them. That can change, as is taught in the Dharma. I have recently met a man who was Theravada for over 65 years, having lived that time in Thailand and is now practising Vietnamese Zen. Another person I met (a Tibetan monk) has now started to practise Zen. I also know a 30-year Zen practitioner who has started to study Nyingma Vajrayana. Understanding non-duality helps to see that all paths are valid.

@squamish4244

Жыл бұрын

Achaan Chan (Jack Kornfield's teacher) said that if someone had spent a year at his monastery and had not yet experienced satori, then he didn't know what they were doing there. I really like statements like that. It gives us a number we can actually work with. There is so little of this in Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism seems to work better for certain individuals because their teachers give them direct transmission i.e. a glimpse of enlightenment to inspire them on the path, a huge motivating factor for practice. Nevertheless, the staggering advance of AI and neuroscience is about to blow the lid off Buddhism, because this is a case where Buddhism must adapt, not the other way around. It must adapt, or it will die, and quickly. Jack Kornfield had a talk with Sam Altman on AI and Buddhism (Sam meditates) a few weeks ago. AI and biotechnology will change everything, and the spiritual path must learn to adapt so it can both guide these incredible forces in the right direction AND become enormously more innovative and efficient as we learn in detail exactly what happens in the brains of enlightened people and how to reverse engineer that in the rest of us. And if we don't find a way to produce mass enlightenment, I do not believe society will be able to handle the power being handed to us. We will destroy ourselves or create some dystopian hellscape.

In some cases I have found it may be "better" to be flexible in my approach in communication, however I have only realised the outcome after the event (as I think is most peoples experience of time unfolding - I'm working on this! ;-) and sometimes I think it may have been better to maintain a less fluid approach in order to direct an understanding.

This I simply consider learning and I never really "know" because I don't know what would've happened in that particular situation had I chosen another way. I simply take a more refined understanding with me to the next situation. So it appears that I learn while aiming to help another learn! I accept what happens, happens. This collapses frustration. I do my best at every given moment! What do you think?

I think, from my perception of my experience, in hindsight, "bad" aspects maybe considered "bad" for some people or some of the time, but "good" for others or at other times. eg. using secular language may help those who do not fully understand what is meant by some more overtly "spiritual" language. This may even be appropriate to help individuals build a foundation for understanding of "spiritual" language.

I very much enjoy your videos, Shinzen - thank you so much. However, the audio quality is sometimes a little poor, as is the case with this one. I wonder if it might be worth you looking into this?

1. Allow everything to be as it is as the foundation of your meditation (adyashanti style) , 2. Questioning all beliefs and ideas about who you are, what is true etc. with meditative self inquiry and reading non dual or advaita books( adya style) 3. And meditate by focusing on change , especially "focus on gone" ( shinzen style ) . Maybe some optional yoga (hatha maybe ) to encourage bodily tensions to come up and dissolve or speed up the dissolution process, not really important or necessary tho . . Thats the best and quickest path for everybody who is really ready to dissolve in the truth of reality and actually find out what is true, call me arrogant or ignorant for making such a change but im convinced mindfulness and breath meditation and all that other shit is a very inferior and inefficient method in comparison. Assuming your goal is to wake up and realize the truth of reality. If you just want to manipulate your experience and calm down a little or feel better asap or whatever that's a different story . Its one thing to have a comfortable and luxurious prison cell, it is an entirely different thing to break out of the prison and roam completely free .

@schroonsjozef

7 жыл бұрын

As I have anxiety, I often get caught up in stories that seem impossible to let go. When doing a choiceless awareness meditation, letting my mind roam free completely hasn't worked quite so well. Therefore Shinzen's more complex meditation seems to be working better. Can you give me a hint on how to let go of these stories doing choiceless awareness? I'd really want to give this type of meditation a go since most people who claim to be enlightened (such as Adyashanti, Loch Kelly, Eckhart Tolle, Sayadaw U Tejaniya etc.) are using this technique.

@dakota1014

7 жыл бұрын

My last sentence I meant to say * or whatever then thats a different story *

@dakota1014

7 жыл бұрын

+Jos Schroons those stories coming up aren't necessarily a bad thing , they are probably just unconscious shit from your past that you buried and avoided all your life that's coming up to.the surface and it has to work it self out . But the fact they are coming up is good , you want that stuff to come up, you don't want to keep it buried and Carry it with you all your life . Just try to observe it neutrally without believing it or resisting it. Watch adyashanti hour interview call true meditation on KZread also, the walks through a good guided meditation

@schroonsjozef

7 жыл бұрын

Well the problem is that the story is unconscious. I'm not aware what exactly is going on, but I do know that something is going on because I can see it in my behavior, I shut down and get really quiet in front of people when this happens. Then I worry about my quietness and how I'm not acting normal, which is something I can consciously observe but just observing that doesn't help. The only thing that breaks me out of that right now is focusing intently on the present moment using Shinzen's see, hear, feel technique. Doing that even for only a minute changes my entire state. I'll give that adya video a look right now, thanks so much :)

@dakota1014

7 жыл бұрын

+Jos Schroons you probaly new to meditation so it's fine to keep doing the mediation you have to help get your attention out of your mind , so you can keep doing that and getting better at it. Just don't end up doing only that one style for the rest of your life and neglecting all the other aspects of spirituality . After a while switch and try a more open natural effortless type style , you can even add 10-30 minutes of do nothing at the end of your current practice if you want

No clue, but Chan comes pretty close. Mostly because I never had the inner visual and audio, but I think Chan could be adapted to be more flexible.

"All of these paths are not very good...they can be vastly improved upon." This is a suspicion I have harboured for some time now. Why, if Buddhism is indeed a 'science of mind', are we not seeing the kind of progress and innovation in the field that many of the other sciences have experienced in far shorter timeframes? Why are we content with enlightened people being the exception rather than the norm after ~3,000 years?

@richardperez6407

3 жыл бұрын

The problem is you can't teach or be taught enlightenment. You simply can't or they will Think they know. These things are way beyond words. The only thing a teacher can do is guide and give insight, all else that is needed is honest dedication.

@squamish4244

Жыл бұрын

@@richardperez6407 Even so - where are the results? If the paths cannot produce results, they will die out. Shinzen takes the opposite tack to many modern teachers. He is all about demystifying the spiritual path, "taking the mist of out mysticism". What actually works, how long will it take, how well will it work, which path works better for which people? We are all different, with different histories, traumas and nervous systems. You can't ignore that. Even in the BEST Zen schools in Japan, only 1 in 20 students got enlightened. (I'm assuming that is 'full' enlightenment, a few major satoris and then final realization.) That would be like if 1 in 20 people at Harvard, Yale or Princeton graduated summa cum laude, and hardly anyone did anywhere else. Can you imagine? Who would get blamed? The teachers and the teaching system, of course. Not the students, who busted their asses just as hard back in the day at Zen as they do in grad school now, and even harder, meditating until their buttocks bled or they suffered psychotic breaks or committed suicide. (This all happened, a lot.) So I am of Shinzen's school of thought. And now AI and neuroscience are unravelling the mysteries of the brain and enlightenment with lightning speed. So that may change a lot of people's views of enlightenment. I have suffered from OCD since I was 16, a breakdown at 27, doctor-caused addiction at 28, hellish energetic problems. I have only made it through due to the very best energy healers, neurofeedback, psychedelic therapy and more. Otherwise, I would have committed suicide a long time ago. Traditional practice failed me. It was not enough. And meditating improperly, without a guide, too intensely, resulted in another massive breakdown. You cannot do this with a constant, competent teacher and technical expertise. You cannot do it alone unless you are one of the very rare few with extraordinary karma or fortune. Unfortunately, often those are the ones who end up teaching and becoming very popular, like Mooji, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira, and they think their experience will apply to everyone else. It does not.

sounds like any marriage, first attraction then abhorring, isn't it?!

I said nothing about the validity of the method or "path," that he advocates. I'm familiar with different schools of Buddhism and with many teachers. I was saying that Shinzen, as a person, is not an articulate speaker, he has no skill with language. Thus, to my mind, he falls short as a teacher.

@squamish4244

8 жыл бұрын

+Carol Ondrey I actually find him to be the *most* articulate teacher I've ever come across. So I guess we just plain disagree.

@edymasta

8 жыл бұрын

its all about getting the message across and rationalizing it

@reedwatson1599

8 жыл бұрын

This seems to me a bizarre and/or arbitrary desirable to assess a teacher by. Do you find Zen koans "articulate"?

@squamish4244

7 жыл бұрын

No, but they aren't supposed to be. How to use them, however, needs to be articulated in order for koans to work. I judge teachers on a pragmatic level - how well do they communicate what you need to do in order to progress? If they can't do that, they are not articulate enough.

My, this fellow is stunningly inarticulate. If he indeed knows anything at all, he seems to be incapable of describing it.

@squamish4244

8 жыл бұрын

+Carol Ondrey Actually, I find his path to be the most articulate of all the teachers I have found. None of this neo-Advaita "Just let go" gobbledegook. What works, what doesn't, and all of the paths we have now pretty much suck anyway. Which they do.