Essential Skills of Meditation

The Five Essential Skills

  • focusing
  • knowing
  • voluntary (intentional) mental actions
  • balancing
  • energy

Focusing

Focus has scope, which can be narrow or wide. The object of focus or concentration can be single or multiple.

Knowing

  • Knowing Objects: what you see (a phenomenon), the cause of it and (synthesis of) both.
  • Knowing Methods: by observation, by insight

Examples:

  • Knowing Object: the cause of it includes the viewer, which further includes the viewpoint, beliefs, whether a contradiction exists, the limit of viewer’s mind (mental level), mind balance and whether mind being reliable.
  • Knowing by observation: phenomena
  • Knowing by insight: patterns in phenomena, relation between phenomena, cause and seeing from different viewpoints.

Phenomena Example

  • your body (e.g. breath, posture, actions, body parts, elements)
  • your mind (e.g. thoughts, urges, likes, dislikes)
  • self, life, world, …

Patterns

Referring to repetition of phenomena, especial repetition of phenomena that are in a causal relation, for example:

  • Your in-breath and your out-breath.
  • Eating meal results in experiencing full sensation in your stomach.
  • Pressing a switch results in a light is turned on.

Obstacles to Dependable State of Mind

The mind is prevented from operating properly and becomes unreliable when any one of the following conditions occurs in the mind:

  • Contradiction in knowing (believing one knows what one doesn’t know) – prevents the mind from operating properly and leading to a critical error.
  • Likes (craving, desire) – makes the mind biased.
  • Dislikes (anger, aversion) – makes the mind biased.
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