Life is like practice-integrated inquiry

2016-07-03 "Life is like practice" the nature of self

What is an integrated inquiry?

In meditation practice, the opportunity for self-awareness and self-understanding is open to us. Integrated Inquiry is a high-level first-person exercise designed to allow you to live in a sense of non-consciousness or pure awareness, to perceive how you habitually deviate from this primitive foundation, thus allowing you to penetrate the nature of your spiritual identity.

In the early stages, integrated inquiry requires you to be completely and profoundly in your mind. Whether you are sitting on a futon, or in your daily life, when you continue to explore the practice, the inquiry will be more profound and thorough. Eventually, as the practice deepens and stabilizes, it can be the basis for other relevant exercises.

In this way, you can use all of your ILP tools when conducting an integrated inquiry. These exercises can help us to understand more deeply how we cover the true nature of infinite openness and freedom because of our obsession, and it also helps us to eventually transcend the habitual behavior that deviates from the true nature.

This meditation has two meanings: absolute meaning and relative meaning. In absolute terms, it allows you to put down the thoughts and experiences of the past, living in the absence of consciousness in every moment of the present, which is not a state of stubbornness, like a withered stone, but naturally no longer confined to the ego in the face of any phenomenon. Many meditation methods focus on an object: breathing, bodily sensations, imagery, or spells. When there is no phase meditation, we no longer focus on all of these objects in order to easily dwell in the pure awareness. This practice is sometimes called "meditation" or "pure presence".

In terms of relative meaning, integrated exploration allows you to confront and understand the causes that make you habitually deviate from the purely existence, thereby eliminating these causes. In general, these specific causes are the shadow of the individual, so the integrated inquiry involves a 3-2-1 shadow process. In addition, you can use other practice methods in the ILP Toolbox, such as three-body exercises, three-faceted spirituality, and a AQAL framework to eliminate the barriers between yourself and the absolute experience.

• How to practice integrated inquiry ...

The integrated inquiry helps us to focus on the moment, neither clinging to anything that happens, nor isolating it from them. It's easy and free. If there is limited spiritual activity, we will comprehend the mystery, which will help us to identify and eliminate the very subtle and causal self-tightening (self-contraction, often referred to as "I hold") behavior.

Over time, the integrated inquiry exercise naturally passes through four stages, one or two or three of which are practiced during meditation, ranging from one minute (one minute module ①) to one hours or longer. If you are satisfied with a stage, you can go to the next stage. Phase IV requires that you continue to explore and explore your daily life, including the complete, flexible and appropriate use of any aspect of Ilp②, after you leave the cushion.

Phase one: Be prepared to live in a pure existence

This stage is cultivated for the purpose of cultivating a constant force, through breathing meditation (see above), until you are able to concentrate for five minutes stably. After doing this, you should continue to strengthen this critical power of observation on a regular or ongoing basis. You can even take five minutes to practice breathing meditation at the beginning of each integrated exploratory exercise.

If you are able to focus on a few minutes in meditation (it may take up to six months of practice!) You can stop counting after a few minutes, use your breath to take the attention of the moment, relax or stop thinking in the brain, and live in pure existence. Always ready to enter the most natural non-phase awareness state.

Relax, and be aware of the present that is always new and free. Sit down and become this existence in this novel, credible but still unknown mysterious existence.

Phase II: Exploring

When you feel comfortable with the first stage of the exercise, you may find that when you are living in a phase-free consciousness, the mind often escapes from this joyful feeling of light, and begins to become distracted and addicted to all kinds of thoughts, emotions, or perceptions.

The mind tends to escape in many different ways, hindering spiritual growth. In meditation, this usually manifests itself in thoughts, images, sensations, lethargy, and all other distractions that are experienced in meditation. If you observe these phenomena, explore them and relax your mind. You can choose short questions to help you perceive the involuntary behavior that occurs on the most subtle level. Useful questions include: "Who am I?" "What am I doing?" "Or a more humorous question," Who am I kidding? ”。 You can also be more in-depth to face the most subtle awareness activities, and asked "avoid it?" "or" retreat? ”

Inquiry is not to encourage us to analyze why the mind is absent-minded, such as "What am I avoiding?" Why? , but to allow awareness to perceive what is actually happening through this distraction, to be truly aware of it, and to let it live, while the attention naturally comes back to breath. ③

In other words, inquiry is asking: "What am I doing when my attention is not in the present?" What should I pay attention to? "The Saints give the answer:" Infinite emptiness, the automatic escape of the mind. ”

In practice, exploration is happening now. When attention comes back to the moment of breath and precipice, it is in the air. The deeper you explore, the more you can see your escape behavior, understand the subtle dynamics that produce "I hold", and take corresponding countermeasures.

As the practice progresses, the whole exercise can be carried out in the emptiness and the great mind. Then, spontaneously no longer cling to the idea.

The third stage: free use of integrated life practice tools to explore

After practicing the second phase of the integrated inquiry skillfully, the inquiry process becomes natural and true, which is that you can enter the third stage and make more explicit integration life exercises in meditation.

What are the things that often distract you from the present? Sometimes it's a shadow problem. For example, if you are always in the mood to think of a person or a situation in meditation, you can face it, talk to it, become it, and take a minute of 3-2-1④ shadow process practice.

Shadow exercises are often necessary, but you can also choose any integrated exercise to eliminate distractions.

• 3-2-1 Shadow exercises can be performed on situations that plague you.

• You can restore your spirit through physical exercises, such as breathing from the heart and guiding the cycle of life force, so that the body is full of energy, energy from the pubic, heart and head outward radiation.

• You can ask the following questions: "Avoidance?" "or" retreat? "or" Who am I? ”

• Recall the spirituality of the second-person vision by reciting the word "divine beloved" in your heart.

• You can even explore directly without resorting to external methods, just to restore your non-staining awareness.

• Finally, you can also use any of the elements of the Aqal⑤ atlas to gain insight and focus on your attention.

Are you experiencing a particular state of mind? In what context is it born? Wait a minute......

Regardless of which form you use, integrated exploration depends on how you use them. The chosen question or practice should prevent energy and attention from being distracted, and use them to remove obstacles that separate the subject and objective objects from consciousness. Continue to explore and eliminate your habitual fear on the surface of the infinite reality (which is what you are). Explore and sit in the present.

Stage four: Practicing integrated research in daily life

By mastering the integrated inquiry, you can not only use it in formal meditation, but also use it at any time in your life.

In this way, meditation is taken to the rest of the waking life, thus breaking the artificial boundaries between meditation and daily activities. As consciousness becomes freer and more fully penetrated into your waking experience, it will naturally appear in dreams and deep sleep states.

This is a completely flexible and integrated approach, but also a very advanced exercise. You start by avoiding involuntary distractions, not in phase, living in the moment, living in the moment. If you fall into an object or subject-to-subject confrontation, or to one's own or other thoughts, you can explore with any integrated exercise that best allows you to gain the freedom of attention and energy. Whichever method you choose, the point is to do it completely, until you get out of the restrictive evasion, regain your sense of the present, and dwell in the present. Then, continue to live in the realm of liberation.

① a minute, self-awareness exercises, feeling the sense of awareness

② Integrated Living Practice (Integral life Practice)

③ See "Life is like practice" P40

④ It is important to note that this exercise differs from the "marked" (labeling) Zen (another popular meditation method that identifies the different experiences that are taking place: thoughts, memories, daydreaming, pain, hemp, etc.). You're actually asking a question, and then just looking at what happens when you live in the moment of awareness.

⑤ all quadrants, all levels (all quadrants,all levels)

---selected from "Life Is like practice"

Life is like practice-integrated inquiry