okay chackraman, I watched the first vid, with Chogyam Trungpa...
u want comments... here's mine... and please forgive me in advance if I offend u, as that is not my plan...
first things first...
this video must be old, as chogyam is very young here... he says almost nothing, and is just being made a fool of... I've read a few of chogyams books, and I found him to be both knowledgable and insightful... I have no knowledge at all of Krsnamurti, and this video has unfortunately not inspired me to find out more about him... he just seems like another guru type, and I generally try to avoid them...
but regardless, to examine what Krsnamurti is saying...
I agree with him when he says a lot of what passes itself off as meditation is "not meditation at all", and I also agree with him when he says "meditation is false"... as it often is... yes, ppl meditate to avoid "stuff", but that is the fault of the practitioner, not the practise...
I don't think Krsnamurti understands what buddhist meditation is, and why it is...
buddhist meditation, samatha, cessation meditation, is practised for a reason, and that reason is not avoidance...
working from the premise that we are all ignorant, heavily conditioned beings, struggling in an ocean of misery (samsara, which is the product of (sam) completely, (sa) ones own (ra) desires) meditation allows you to appreciate that this misery we experience is just a product and something u make for urself...
when we meditate, we do not chant mantras, or special words given to us by the guru, we do not visualise the bodhisattvas doing their bodhisattva thing in seventh heaven, we are instead aiming to find some stillness within us, find a little space between the constant discursive rambling narrations of the mind, and this is not because we are trying to imitate others, or because we are hoping to avoid something, we do this because samatha meditation enables us to cut through the roots of delusion, find some unsullied space within the consciousness stream and then, in theory, we can start to begin to think for ourselves, independent of the information which has been presented to us as fact and which we have been churning around in our heads for years...
samatha meditation is about letting go, letting go of the constant thinking, the constant revolve of the same old tired ideas which circulate within our minds, in the hope that something new can arise... and that new thing? its enlightenment...
Krnsamurti asks- what are the implications of meditation, and why should we do it..?
meditation, proper meditation, samatha, involves the cessation of thought... it is not the aim to spend ur life in meditation, staring at the wall thinking of nothing, as all u will become is a dullard this way, but instead it should be a daily practise of no longer than ten minutes and involves just not thinking...
yeah, not thinking, easy, isnt it..? well, no, actually, its bloody hard...
... we would be okay if we thought about good stuff, great new ideas, interesting new schemes, fantastic inventions, but we don't... we think instead of snatches of song lyrics, tell ourselves how good and bad we are, reexamine the themes and ideas presented to us which we have already considered and concluded several times over, and we dont even approach these ideas with a fresh mind, we just stick to the same old grooves...
samatha meditation is then, a means to exit the grooves...
without seeing the grooves, we do not know they exist... without trying to exit the grooves, we will never change our opinions about anything... if we are not prepared for change, then all we do is stagnate... hardly enlightening, is it, stagnation?
ppl should try samatha, for a few minutes a day, every day... they will find it really difficult, and they will find that, initially, it seems to make things worse, u have more thoughts, not less, and they are more intrusive than before...
however, if u presevere, u will find it becomes easier to ignore urself... after all, that which u are ignoring does not actually exist... u, as an individual entity, does not exist... u, the individual, are just an assortment of other ppl's ideas... this is what it means to "give up the ego"- its not self destruction, but something far more profound...
oh! and I should also add- meditation by itself is not enough... to just sit and not think is pointless unless u understand why ur doing it, and I think thats where a lot of ppl go wrong- they approach it wrong, they meditate becuase they think its part of it, without understanding why its a part of it...
hope that makes sense...
