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That was a pretty profound thing you wrote Michael. I always notice when I feel “full of qi” . That is, when qi in my lower tan tien feels full and their is a high vibration and all of the channels are getting fed(or atleast they are getting more nourishment than normal) That at that time my monkey mind is silent.
So, that makes sense if it is the shen making noise it’s like members of your family yelling at their mother they are hungry and when they all get fed they are peacull, quiet.
Very interesting. I guess that’s why I don’t just do zen and take the let everything go maxim. Something keeps returning to shen theory as being the truth.
Thanks for all the responses. However, I’m still wrestling with my central issue.
Just to be clear on a few things I said before, I DO understand the value of the watching the breath method — and I practice it. My issue is not that I can’t calm my mind while watching the breath.
My issue is how to maintain focus when I’m doing a more “intricate” HT meditaton and — perhaps more importantly — how concerned to be about that lack of focus.
As I said before, if your entire goal is a zen-orientated “empty mind by watching the breath” meditation, then it’s pretty simple. If your mind wanders, just go back to your breath and YOU ARE RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU WANT TO BE.
Contrast this with, for instance, fusion, where your mind wanders while you were deep into mixing various energies in a pakua. In this instance, you really CAN’T snap back to where you want to be by watching the breath. Rather, you have to SOMEHOW snap back into step 15 of your 22 step fusion meditation process.
In those instances, I find it hard to feel like I’m right back in the midst of it the moment I stop chasing my random thought. Rather I feel like my cauldron is not cooking like it was, my pearls of energy are weak, I’ve lost touch with my liver, etc. Then I have the issue of just pushing on from the (weak) point of return, or going back a few steps and trying to build up energy again. You can see how if your mind wanders 6 or 8 times (or more) during a 30 minute meditation, it can build up to be quite a problem.
Perhaps the answer is I just shouldn’t worry about this so much. That I should just go back to where I left off when chasing the random thought and trust that the practice is working on an energetic level even if I don’t “feel” like I’m cooking as good as I was before my mind wandered. Perhaps more trust and less moment-to-moment critique is in order.
I just wondered if people have had similar frustrations and what they did to pull themselves back into an (intricate) practice like fusion.
Regarding chi kung and other movement forms, my experience is a bit more like somolor’s post above, in that, once I learn the practice, the monkey mind tends to act up again while doing the form. Not all the time though — I also agree with Chris (voice) that when you are “following the body” the mind tends to quiet. In any event, chi kung, like following the breath, are ways to quiet the mind prior to, after or in preparation for the more intricate HT meditations. My issue, as mentioned above, is how to handle mind wandering during the HT meditation.
OK, I think I’ve beaten a dead horse enough for one day. Any comments are appreciated.
> the more intricate HT meditations >
Paquas, collection pts, etc. I dropped all that stuff a while back.
Now I just hang out in the tan tiens, the deep-centers, the central channel, and the vast spaces that that it bridges to. I find that when I do that, the rest of the stuff goes along for the ride nicely.
I mean, I also do some more physical work, and some breath qi gong – but when it comes to meditation: the above.
Trunk
If your mind wanders only 6 to 8 times in a 30 minute time period…wow! I am always parts of me are being attracted to this or that in the outer world. And that is fine – I don’t want to lose those parts, or cut them off because I certainly need them. And, it isn’t just the brain that gets those attractions, sometimes the wandering part is in the ear, the throat, the cock etc.
So, I include that wandering area by soaking it in the energy that is primary in my deep body consciousness. So, if I become aware that I have drifted into thought, I allow the thought part to become soaked with the deeper energies I feel in the lower dan tien. I do that by allowing the thinking area to tune into the frequency of the lower dan tien (resonate) and then allowing those energies to gush out of the centers of the parts of the thinking area. But, you might just want to move the energies to the thinking area – whatever is your way. But, having the energy come from the center of the thinking area insures that it is truly included, and that I am not just “sugar coating” it, but really transforming it.
I am calling this soaking, but that is not because it is watery but because it is fluid jingy. The soaking can be of jingy wood, fire, metal, earth or water energies. For me at least, the jingyness is dense fluid, and thus the term soaking, though imbuing might be a better (but more abstract) term.
Finally, I agree with Keith about dropping the details of meditations and being more in the center. The details keep my brain too busy. After sometime doing something, though, an idea will appear to me what to do, and I do it. And when I do do things, I do it with the smallest possible suggestion – like when I am doing something very delicate like threading a needle, or when my tongue glides over the suggested opening of my wife’s flower.
Chris
Hey Chris.
I wonder if you could talk more about your “soaking” technique. I’m not really sure I get it. What do you do exactly?
Do you look at your random thought and kind of mentally move it into your cauldron (like, “Oh, yes, here I am thinking about the bills, let me just picture them dropping into the pot . . . “)?
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