Coming from a tradition where prayer is addressed to someone, this sounds like it has no object at all. Is the attending itself the whole thing for you?
Meditation - We are already in state of meditation....
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We are always in meditation.
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Coming from a tradition where prayer is addressed to someone, this sounds like it has no object at all. Is the attending itself the whole thing for you?
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We are always in meditation.
The universal definition of meditation is giving importance to experiences.
There are two types of meditation. Mainly, people know about only one type of meditation: concentration on a single thing. For example, concentrating on breathing, concentrating on the center of the eyes, or concentrating on thoughts, etc. From this, we can clearly see that we are giving importance to one experience, due to which we become more and more aware of that particular experience. This type of meditation is known as "dot meditation." So, our universal definition applies here.
Now let's talk about unheard meditation—probably the majority of you have never heard about it. It is the most uncommon and toughest meditation. In this meditation, you give importance to all experiences. For example, you sum up all experiences—from breathing to the center of the eyes, thoughts, etc.—and by doing this, your awareness becomes significant. From this, we can clearly see that we are now giving importance to many experiences at one time. This is called "whole" or "completeness meditation."
We can also clearly see that we are already in meditation, especially this completeness meditation. Then the question arises: why are we not that much aware? The answer is simple: because our concentration jumps from one thing to another, and we don't sum up our experiences at one time. For example, we don't completely give importance to many experiences simultaneously; we jump from one to another. We don't continuously watch all of them at the same time. This is the reason why we aren't aware. But truth be told, it's not like we are completely unaware. We are pretty much aware of every experience—from breathing to thoughts—it's just that we jump from one to the other and do not stay completely on every experience at the same time.
This meditation is helpful for boosting awareness. The yogi and a disciple of the path of knowledge use this to gain knowledge of oneness or remain in oneness. So, normal people can use it to increase their awareness, and a student of the path of knowledge or the path of spirituality can use this to gain knowledge of oneness or stay in oneness.
We can clearly see one thing for sure: it's just that where we place our importance changes here—nothing else. The rest of the things will automatically follow. So, my suggestion will be: if you want to experience oneness, you can practice this meditation, which is known as the "meditation of completeness" or "sum-up meditation." It has other names too, like the "meditation of beauty." Note that here, beauty and completeness are the same.
Thoughts
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Coming from a tradition where prayer is addressed to someone, this sounds like it has no object at all. Is the attending itself the whole thing for you?
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Oneness carries a lot of weight in the last section. Experiencing your own faculties as unified and being one with everything are different claims. Do you hold the second literally?
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Every theory of attention eventually lands on the finding that we should pay more attention. Yours at least concedes we already are.
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Something very modern about a meditation whose product is awareness rather than surrender. The older traditions wanted the watcher dissolved, we want it running at higher resolution.
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The scatter you describe is also what the attention economy is paid to produce. Then the cure gets sold back to us as a practice.
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We had a version of this at worship nights, be aware of everything in the room at once. Mostly it made me aware of how hard I was trying.
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Dot meditation and completeness meditation are not terms I have met in the Pali or Sanskrit material, though the split resembles samatha and vipassana. Are these your own coinages?
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The Fathers had a word for the narrow kind, prosoche, watchfulness, and the hesychasts stayed with it rather than widening. Evagrius treated the scatter you describe as a symptom of something else.
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congrats to all of us, apparently we have been meditating this whole time. i would like my certificate
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I do a slow scan most mornings, breath then hands then whatever is going on outside, and it always stays a sequence. When you hold them all at once, does it feel wide or does it feel loud?
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