From: Dmytro Ivakhnenko
Message: 4794
Date: 2016-09-26
In the Vimuttimagga, Upatissa says that the nimitta of the breath can be extended from the tip of the nose, from it being established at the glabella, forehead, head, until the whole body is pervaded. However, this is the nimitta, not the physical breath.
"Let the refined breath in the brain spread to the lower parts of the body."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/inmind.html
The bright white nimitta is useful to the body and mind: It's a pure breath that can cleanse the blood in the body, reducing or eliminating feelings of physical pain. When you have this white light as large as the head, bring it down to The Fifth Base, the center of the chest.
So try thinking of the breath instead as the energy flow in the body, as a full body process.
...
What happens if you conceive your immediate experience of the body in a different way, as a field of primary breath energy, with the solidity simply a label attached to certain aspects of the breath?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/deperception.html
Ajahn Lee mentions in the book Keeping the Breath in Mind that males should follow the breath through the right side, while females through the left side. This has not to do with different nervous systems as Ajahn Geoff notes, but with the energy channels or nadi of yogic and tantric traditions, and also the Chi of Chinese medicine and Taoism.
Best,
NyanatusitaDear Ven. and Dmytro,
Now that you mention the "tantric Theravada" practices of focusing on the chakras, I'm wondering about Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo's meditation instructions (Keeping the Breath in Mind and Lessons in Samādhi) where he talks about focusing on the Five Bases: tip of the nose, centre of the forehead (ūrṇā?), top of the head (uṣṇīṣa?), centre of the brain and heart area. Is any of this canonical? as I'm not familiar with it, or even from Buddhaghosa? or is it "tantric"?
Mettā,
Bryan
From: "Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2016 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Nimitta
Such mantric invocations allow to reconstruct gradual transformation of Dhamma practice.Dear Bhante,Thank you very much!
If we'd imagine a slow degradation of medicine as a body of knowledge, it will gradually dissipate into various medicine-men practices, with techniques being transmitted without any theoretical explanations or methodological context.
Medicine-man would don a white mask and shout: "Give me a lancet, assistant! Give me a lancet!" And he may do something useful like pulling a tooth with handmade tools, holding them in fire beforehand for some mystical reasons.
After a long period of time, with techniques often becoming dangerous due to incorrect transmission, they would have been lost or banned.
I can easily imagine a slow transfromation of abstract, heuristic factor-based methodology, with diagnostics, to more embodied, specific (and hence commonly understandable) methodology, focusing on body centers, and then to mantric invocations.
As for SOAS manuscripts digitization, Erich Kesse currently makes the funding case. He'd appreciate testimonials on usage of this manuscript, so that he would be able to include them in funding case.
https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff91157.php
Best wishes,
Dmytro
2016-09-25 8:16 GMT+03:00 Nyanatusita nyanatusita@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>:
Dear Dmytro,
Giving some more thought to the odd contents of kammatthana manuals such as the one translated as Manual of a Mystic, it seems to me that they are not to be taken as instruction treatises that are to be read and studied like the Visuddhimagga, but rather as mantric invocation treatises that are to be recited.
In Thailand, where these works originated from, there is a strong belief in the power of mantras. The sound of the syllables in words such as araha.m, and the way they are arranged and rearranged, are believed to have a special power. In the Manual of a Mystic one finds this when the yogavacara is to recite the word 'araham' as preparation. It seems to me that the passages starting with Okaasa and 'May perception of these things arise in me' (medhammasaññaapaaturahotu as translated in the Manual of a Mystic) and "Thus aspiring, let him produce ... Thus aspiring ... will appear to him' are magic mantric invocations that lead to immediate results.
I have personal experience with some of these teachings. One teacher in northern Thailand, a monk with yantra tatoos, whose disciples I met, is teaching the entering of 'spheres' by way of focussing on chakras on the forehead, throat and heart while araham and buddho are to be recited, depending on the chakra.
Because of these magic and esoteric elements, these kind of practices are sometimes called Khmer Tantric Theravada.
Best,
Nyanatusita
On 9/24/2016 9:12 PM, Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy] wrote:
DmytroBest wishes,More amazing surpises coming up, - Mr. Kesse wrote me that the Internet Archive has launched a project in the United Kingdom to digitize all of the palm leaf manuscripts in British collections, with emphasis on Pali manuscripts. It is currently digitising the holdings of the British Library, with SOAS holdings hopefully following in the future.I would very much appreciate being surprised once again by generous help of someone who knows Sinhala well enough to tell me an abstract of precious knowledge this manuscript contains.And, surprise, it's not written in Cyrillic alphabet.And, surprise, Mr. Erich Kesse, Digital Library Project Officer, digitized the manuscript in half an hour:Dear Pali friends,Having found a description of Kasiṇa-bhāvanā manuscript in the University of London SOAS library, with all my self-assuredness, I straightforwardly wrote to SOAS.
http://digital.soas.ac.uk/AA00 000305