welcome to the group. I hope the ongoing discussion is helpful to you.
metta,
Yong Peng.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Apr 7, 2005 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: Welcome to Pali
Greetings to all. On the advice of the moderator, I'm
introducing myself to the group. I am indeed fortunate
to have stumbled upon this group. I used to meditate,
off and on, when I was young(er), but stopped
completely over twenty years ago due to meditation
always triggering bad headaches. However, I have just
recently come to the understanding (developed slowly
over a period of years) that a desire for liberation,
no matter how sincere and intense, can only get you so
far, even with the assistance of formerly reliable
spiritual aids. Once you hit that brick wall, it's
either stagnation and endless frustration or find
something that works, so I was determined to begin
meditating again. I was very lucky to recently come
across the MahaSatipatthana Sutta, which made me
realize that I had a serious misunderstanding
regarding what meditation is about. As a result of
being introduced to Vipassana meditation, I can now
meditate without the previous headache problem
arising. I found it a bit irritating that, in spite of
reading Buddhist literature on and off for 35 years,
not only had I never before come across this Sutta,
but not even a reference to it. On the other hand, if
you take the muffins out of the oven prematurely, they
won't taste very good. I've been meditating daily
since November, and have come to realize, on a direct
experiential level, the critical importance of having
not even a trace of skeptical doubt about the
necessity of meditation. Otherwise, you simply can't
survive those sessions where you feel so mentally
and/or physically agitated that you want to run out of
the room screaming. So I guess you could say that
those twenty years in the desert served the function
of chipping away at that doubt until it was completely
gone. However, for reasons I won't bother going into,
I found the translation of certain sections of the
MahaSatipatthana Sutta that I read to be suspect. This
is why I am now very interested in learning Pali, if
that is possible at my age. I have no idea at the
moment as to how easy or difficult it may be to learn
Pali, but if I could learn enough by the age of 60 to
be able to read this Sutta in the original, I would
indeed be delighted.