05/12/2023
Post 1
Samadhi and it's place in Insight Practise:
Practise this week will be based on Samádhi and insight using the book here from Rob Burbea. We will be working to crate Mettá and Citta as a grounding for our practise.
Here is the first page of the chapter from Rob Burbea
"vital to our path and of uncountable benefit is the quality of samadhi.
This word samādhi is susually translated as 'concentration', but in many respects that does not convey the fullness, or the beauty, of what it really means. Therefore we shall keep it in the original language throughout this book.
For samādhi involves more than just holding the attention fixed on an object with a minimum of wavering. And it certainly does not necessarily imply a spatially narrowed focus of the mind on a small area. Instead here we will emphasize that what characterizes states of samādhi is some degree of collectedness and unification of mind and body in a sense of well-being. Included in any such state will also be some degree of harmonization of the internal energies of the mind and body. Steadiness of mind, then, is only one part of that.
Such a unification in well-being can come about in many ways. In this book we will embrace in our meaning of samādhi both states that have arisen through holding the attention on one object, as well as those that have arisen through insight ways of looking.
And we will also include both states where the attention is more narrowly focused on one object, and those where the awareness is more open. This chapter, however, primarily explores some more general aspects of those practices that do involve holding the attention to one thing (for example, the breath, mettä, or body) as a way of developing samādhi.
And although, as the Buddha did, we can certainly delineate a range of discrete states of samādhi (the jhānas), in this present context let us rather view it mostly as a continuum: of depth of meditation, of well-being, of non- entanglement, and of refinement of consciousness.
To be continued
