Practice Aids for Level Two

Jack Risk and Master Yap Soon Yeong

 

For instruction in CFQ Meditation go to Training in CFQ Level Two: Meditation.

Level Two Powerpoints

Presentations used during Jack Risk's CFQ Level Two training sessions.

Note: Each of these pdf files is password-protected and is intended for the use of persons trained in CFQ Level Two. Please observe copyright.

Attitude in Meditation — The CFQ Virtues

Sincerity—be willing

Respect—the teachings and your teachers

Truthfulness—searching for the truth about yourself

Right understanding—karma and karmic cleansing; emptiness and suchness

Determination—staying true to your meditation practice

Purposes of Meditation

Healing

Insight, Peace, Liberation

Postures of MeditationManjushri statuette

1. Sitting Meditation

2. Standing Meditation

3. Walking Meditation

4. Reclining Meditation

 

Not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen.

Bodhidharma

Left-Right Lotus

Mantras

May all beings be well and happy.

Zhen shan mei ("Jen san may")

Triple Merger

Heavenly Pillar
Earthly Foundation
Human Harmony

Routine for Coming Out from Meditation

Internal Aspects of Qigong Movements

The Job of No-Job

Passive Aspect

Active Aspect

What Meditation Is Not

CFQ Meditation Concepts

The Thinking Mind

Your mind is not your thoughts. Thoughts are karmic projections. Our thoughts and emotions live and grow by this projection. Thoughts draw the mind up from the body, suspending it and drawing in new energy to create new memories. Memories are the source of habitual actions. They interact with life situations to create new causes and effects. As a result of this karmic formation process, our mind becomes absorbed by karma. Memories are condensed and stored in the body. The mind is unavailable to the body for healing and giving life.

If you wish to become Buddha, do not be a slave to all phenomena that are. When mind arises, the objects of mind arise. When the mind does not arise, the objects of mind do not arise. When thought does not arise, all the phenomena that are cannot harm us.

Linji

Those who wish to belong to themselves and to be truly monks [spiritual] in their inner person should lead the mind inside the body and hold it there.

St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359)

Presence

The thinking mind is the source of suffering, stress, distraction, blockage. To free our spirits from the thinking mind and to free the mind itself we need to root ourselves within the body. Meditation is not to be confused with deep thought. Meditation must never involve fantasizing, dissociating, or zoning out. Neither is meditation a matter of sitting vacantly, day dreaming, or feeling dreamy and spacey. Awareness of the body on the level of tactile feeling affords us an anchor within the body to permit us to make the switch out of the thinking mind. Liberated mind is mind that has been returned to the body. This is presence and with it comes harmony. When we are truly present karma will reveal itself — whatever stands out is karma and can be released. Continually return to feeling the body. Locate yourself within it.

This is the Now of eternity….There the soul knows all things and knows them in perfection.

Meister Eckhart

Radiance, Light, Colours, Chakras

When presence is well established the body begins to waken from its habitual torpor. Not only does our metabolism change as we enter meditative states, but the bioenergy within and around the body begins to behave in a more coherent and powerful manner. With a healthy downward flow of qi the meditator often begins to experience a sense of radiance accompanied by internal light phenomena. Chakras are naturally occurring phenomena within the body's energy system. As such, they are not to be searched for or focused on when they do present themselves. The goal is emptiness, not exhilarating experiences.

Karma and Karmic Cleansing

Meditation is work. It provides us the opportunity to free ourselves from the karmic imprint of our past experience. We tend to misidentify ourselves with the words, emotions and images that present themselves to our minds. These are phenomena generated out of the memories, recorded energetically within the body, of previous events, emotional events, in particular. Stress, trauma and negative emotions are laid down in the body as coded information. There is a definite pattern to this encoding. Successive stressors are compacted on top of previous ones, a process that leads to distortion of the body.

To free ourselves of these energetic burdens is the job of presence, deep relaxation and non-doing. As the mind begins to become reunited with the body "pieces" of karma "break off" and become liberated, exiting the body with the downward flow of qi and returning to emptiness. Past experiences can be relived as they are cleared off. Pain, which previously had only been acknowledged superficially, can be experienced directly as it is sorted out. During and after healing meditation the releases of karma can be very real — a wide variety of tactile sensations, light and energy phenomena, electrical discharges, pain, stiffness, cramps, realignments of joints and internal organs. Something that is frequently encountered is a sticky, gluey field resisting movement. All such phenomena must be met with detachment and suchness.

Meditation that does not involve a confrontation with karma is only delusion and results in the creation of new karma. Cleansing of karma is the source of healing. Through it we become freed from mental habits along with physical disorders. We feel better and our lives improve.

If you desire the great tranquility, prepare to sweat white beads.

Hakuin

Detachment

Karma entails binding, holding, strength. To let go is of the essence of meditation. Detachment means effortlessness, the letting go of attachments, releasing strength. Deep relaxation wakes the body up and initiates healing. We need to be uninvolved in whatever occurs during meditation — even the idea of letting go. Detachment is the effort of learning to be effortless. With detachment comes equanimity; with equanimity comes emptiness.

When your nature gives rise to thought, even though you sense something, remain free and unaffected by the world of objects.

Hui Neng

You should strive to acquire three things:
freedom from anxiety,
preserve a pure consciousness,
detach yourselves from all things and give yourselves wholly to God

St. Simeon the New Theologian (949–1022)

 

Hakuin Enso

Enso by Hakuin.

Emptiness

Complete presence is to be completely open, empty, with no separation between ourselves and the universe. Emptiness and nothingness are not the same thing. Emptiness implies the fullness of radiant experience and joy that awaits us when our minds are untrammelled. From a Buddhist perspective, all things are impermanent. There are no enduring essences, no "self identity." To understand this is to see clearly.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Emptiness is not separate from form,
Form is not separate from emptiness.
Whatever is form is emptiness,
Whatever is emptiness is form.

Heart Sutra

Emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.

Nagarjuna.

Right view is to see in a penetrating way the mark of emptiness of all phenomena. You see that nothing is real in the way you thought it was….

Linji

Suchness

To experience things as they really are is suchness. Most of our lives are spent in ignorance of what is going on in the present. Our minds are either diverted to the future in planning, dreading etc. or they are stuck in repeating thoughts and feelings we have already experienced thousands of times. To be truly in the present is to be non-dual — not pulled into the past or the future, not reacting to things with attraction or repulsion, not experiencing ourselves as separate from what we experience, not living in anxiety. To live with this simple, peaceful and open mind is to open the way to liberation and nirvana.

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices,
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

Ryokan

Ordinary Mind

Learn to live simply. Free yourself of desires. Live in the moment. Do not aspire beyond yourself or have ambitions that drive your longing and determination. Let all that is not essential go. Be willing to be ordinary.

The more you look for something, the farther away you are from it, the more you are off the mark.

Linji

The Way is the ordinary mind…It is luminous and clear…Do not doubt anymore, do not be mistaken anymore…When the mind does maintain this insight, nature and appearance are not two different things.

Linji

Sitting Without Thinking

Once, when Master Yaoshan Weiyan was sitting in zazen, a monk asked him, “When you are sitting immovably, about what do you think?”
The master replied, “I think about not thinking.”
The monk responded, “How does one think about not-thinking?”
The Master replied, “Without thinking.”

Yaoshan's Answer

Levels of Consciousness

1. The Nine Levels of Consciousness According to Yogacara (Mind Only) Philosophy

Map of Consciousness

Vijñana: consciousness.

Tathagata: a name for the Buddha; one who has come forth from suchness i.e. is one with reality-as-it-is.

Garbha: womb.

Tathagatagarbha: womb of the tathagata i.e. Buddha nature, reality as opposed to mental conditioning; the potential for enlightenment inherent in all sentient beings.

2. The First Eight Levels of Consciousness as They Relate to Sense Organs

 
  Organ Consciousness Type of Cognition
1. Eye Visual Sight
2. Ear Auditory Hearing
3. Nose Olfactory Smell
4. Tongue Gustatory Taste
5. Body/Skin Tactile Touch
6. Mano Mind Discernment of objects, cogitation, emotions
7. Manas Ego Volition, deliberation, self-awareness, self-advancement, self-protection
8. Alaya Warehouse, store Karmic accumulation and projection (memory)

3. Interaction of Levels of Consciousness Normally and During Meditation

The normal process of human consciousness (karma creation)

  1. The body's five senses (1-5) are the source of our knowledge. (The Buddha says any knowledge beyond this is mere fantasy or speculation.)
  2. Perceiving objects involves a process of separating, distancing ourselves from them — so that we can appropriate them as ours.
  3. Our Thoughts and Emotions (6) come from perceptions (1–5) but even more from the Storehouse (8) where Karma accumulates on the basis of past experience.
  4. Our thoughts and emotions include our perceptions but are largely shaped by the memories, habitual thoughts and latent tendencies that are projected by karma, as these are filtered through our ego needs (7).
  5. These thoughts and emotions dominate our awareness — we are slaves to our karma.
  6. Thoughts and emotions are strengthened by new energy, coming from the surrounding Emptiness, and, in turn, create new Karma (8).
  7. Portions of Mind are bonded to the new karmic deposits that are being laid down in this process of creating karma. In this way Mind is progressively lost to the body and unavailable for health and healing.

How we can intervene by means of meditation (non-doing)

  1. Circumvent the Discriminating Mind (6) by taking the awareness down to Bodily Feeling (5). Establish Presence there and maintain it.
  2. Allow Radiance to develop in and beyond the body-mind.
  3. Practicing Detachment and Letting Go permits Suchness to arise. (Suchness means to apprehend things as they really are, not as they are inverted through appropriation.)
  4. Thoughts and Emotions are weakened and dissipate.
  5. Fragments of Karma (8) are dislodged and turned into Light as they dissolve into Emptiness.
  6. The Mind becomes liberated. Liberated Mind is the source of health and healing. It is also the source of our entrance into pure, undefiled Cosmic Consciousness (9).

Advancement in Meditation

Reasons for Non-Advancement in Meditation

Stages of Advancement in Meditation

Phenomena Typical of the Beginner Stage

Phenomena Typical of the Intermediate Stage

Phenomena Typical of the Advanced Stage

May all beings be well and happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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