asking because the italicized part seems to emphasize a difference from day, goenka-style concentration meditation where you are specifically focusing on the physical sensation of the breath passing across the skin under your nostril
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Replying to @The_Lagrangian
Yeah, quite different. Shi-né is open-ended (nebulous) in a way Goenka-style samatha isn’t. I’ll defer details here to
@_awbery_ who can answer more authoritatively and accurately than me1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness @The_Lagrangian
It’s the phenomenon of awareness that you find, rather than look for - it’s an elusive experience in that when you actively look for it it’s hard to find. Finding presence of awareness in the movement of the breath isn’t shi-ne itself, it’s still preparatory.
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Maintaining awareness without actively concentrating on something is difficult, because normally being aware involves having a focus. That’s why many meditations (including anapana in Goenka’s tradition that you mentioned) use focused concentration to help maintain awareness.
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Shi-ne per se (as taught in the Four Naljors) doesn’t do that, but because it’s difficult to find presence of awareness without referential focus (mental or physical hooks), there are preparatory states that still make use of reference.
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Rather than looking for the phenomenon, experientially it’s more like it ‘comes upon you’ when you follow the method - which is remaining uninvolved with all the hooks, mental and physical.
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You can’t do all that at first, so you start by remaining uninvolved with the cognitive hooks, using the movement of the breath as the supportive domain, the field of reference in which to find awareness.
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So it’s like you allow the breath to define the space in which your awareness occurs. Once you’ve found the presence of awareness there, and that’s familiar and consistent, at that point you can start to let go of the breath as defining the space of your awareness.
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Then you just relax so that there’s presence of awareness without hooking into any specific foci, mental, energetic or physical. At that point it’s Shi-ne practice.
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This thread helped me, thanks. "Presence of awareness" has been a problem for me, and metaphors involving lakes, clouds, fish jumping, etc. haven't been a big help.
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Just got a detailed explanation of the fish from @_awbery_ which made way more sense of it than I’d had before. Maybe someday they’ll write it up
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