Insight Practice

Concentration Breakthrough

The Secret Sauce I just finished a 2.5 hour meditation that consisted of a brief practice of repentance and Bodhicitta in the beginning followed by Anapanasati. The session was preceded by 1.5 hours of Kinhin, 0.5 of Bhramari pranayama, 0.5 of Chandali mudra. At the tail end of meditation my attention got hooked on itself…

Insight Practice

Investigation of The Brain In Self Inquiry Meditation

Ramping Up The Practice As I prepare for the beginning of the group meditation course in February, I have been reading the 3 books with the theory and the practice from the teacher. I already started practicing the first base energetic practice called kinhin as well as the 2 Buddhist meditations of Cattaro Satipatthana and…

Theory

Finding The Teaching of True Dharma

Stumbling Onto Gold Recently I was recommended a practitioner and a teacher of meditation based on Buddhist, Daoist, and Yoga traditions. In teaching Dharma, he emphasizes that true Dharma is the same in all the spiritual paths. The knowledge may use different words but ultimately, they all talk about the same things. I already started…

Theory

Kriya Yoga – Change of Paths

Discipleship Unease The third course in the Kriya Yoga initiation program that I have been taking was on the topic of discipleship. It described the nature of the relationship between Yogananda and his disciples as that of divine love. It was specifically mentioned that the concept of discipleship is much more common and understood in…

Theory

AtR Stage 1

I finished going through the resources of stage 1 in the Awakening to Reality blog along with the related chapter in the practice guide. At this point I realize I may need to spend quite some time in this stage without rushing to study the materials of the next stages just yet. All the pointers…

Theory

Chan Practice Speedrun

As part of Stage 1 study in AtR, I got to overview the fundamentals of Chan Buddhism. Chan is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that developed in China during the Tang dynasty, later spreading to Japan (where it became Zen), Korea (Seon), and Vietnam (Thiền). Its philosophy focuses on meditation, direct insight into one’s nature,…

Practice

Ramana Maharshi’s Self-Enquiry: Nan Yar?

Juggling Priorities and Spiritual Practice I have been busy with several different priorities lately, so my study of resources in AtR has been slow, and I am still covering my bases in stage 1. Even though I am pretty sure I got the “I am” through several pointers and techniques I have already explored, I…

Practice Theory

Kriya Yoga: Course #2

Deepening My Understanding A couple of weeks ago, I finished the second course of Kriya Yoga. It has been very impactful on both my practice and understanding of yoga philosophy. Many things started falling into place in terms of my understanding of the world, my purpose, the mechanism of meditation, etc. From the results I’ve…

Theory

Awakening: The Disambiguation

The terms ‘awakening’ and ‘enlightenment’ are often used in a very loose way where they mean a range of things which depends on the experience and knowledge of each individual using the term. In this sub I have seen colloquial uses of the terms, metaphorical, allegorical, etc. This post intends to zero in on more…