The Yoga of One Pointedness Mindfulness Meditation and the Jhanas

By Carl Webster

This book is an introduction to mindfulness and meditation and a guide for those who wish to include a focus on states of concentration known as the Jhanas. The text emphasises the importance of physical and emotional awareness in mindfulness and the development of one-pointed concentration to facilitate the experience of more expanded states of consciousness in meditation. The author relates his own story in finding and pursuing the spiritual path and offers a graded and gradually deepening approach (including exercises) to mindfulness and meditation informed by Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga Philosophy and Psychotherapy. The One Pointed Meditation App is available from Google Play.
Carl Webster is a Psychologist and Psychotherapist in Sydney, Australia. He practises mahamudra meditation and began meditating in 1972. He has worked as an Iyengar yoga teacher, shiatsu therapist, acupuncturist, journalist and probation officer and is a singer-songwriter. His website is www.carlwebstercounselling.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Webster
• Release date: Oct 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370101924

Carl Webster

Carl Webster is a psychologist and psychotherapist located in Sydney Australia. For more details please go to his websiter at [e-mail]

Book preview

The Yoga of One Pointedness

Mindfulness

Meditation

and the

Jhanas

By

Carl Webster

Carl Webster is a psychologist and psychotherapist in private practise in Sydney and Corrimal, NSW, Australia, working with couples and individuals. He has previously taught Iyengar Yoga, practised Chinese Medicine and been a journalist, bus driver and probation officer. He meditates regularly, is a singer songwriter and a lover of nature. He can be contacted via his website at www.carlwebstercounselling.com / [e-mail]. Photography is by Carl.

The One Pointed Meditation App (from Google Play) is available providing guided meditations.

This book draws on the work of many yogis, mystics and teachers from a number of traditions and I wish to pay my deep respect and gratitude to all of them. In particular I would like to acknowledge my gratitude for being touched, inspired and having been helped to learn all that I know (and don’t know) spiritually from the following: Nellie my grandmother, Lao Tsu, Gautama the Buddha, Patanjali, BKS Iyengar, DT Suzuki, Milarepa, Jamgon Kongtrul the first, Chogyam Trungpa, Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, Ken Wilber and others. In meditating and writing on the jhanas I owe a great debt to the following for their commentaries and practise of the Buddhadharma, Leigh Brassington, Shaila Catherine and Daniel Goldman. Thanks also to my editor Christine Rakvin.

Copyright Carl Webster 2017.

The Yoga of One Pointedness

Mindfulness, Meditation and the Jhanas

Title ID: 7405060

ISBN-13: 978-1974039678

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 The ground or starting point

Chapter 3 Beginning Practise

Chapter 4 Mindfulness

Chapter 5 Connecting Mind and Body

Chapter 6 Going Deeper

Chapter 7 Concentration and the Jhanas

Chapter 8 Insight

Chapter 9 Conclusion

Preface

My wife recently asked me, What do you get out of meditating?

It’s a very interesting question as it is looking for a definite, ‘what’ answer and wants a specific answer. But of course meditation and the spiritual path do not lend themselves easily to a specific answer. My actual answer at the time was to say that meditation helped me get in touch with an aspect of mind (for which I meant consciousness) that was bigger and not limited to my rational, normal, thinking mind. I long ago gave up the idea of enlightenment as being a different or separate reality to that which we normally experience. I don’t think it’s different, (as far as I know at this stage) but it is bigger, more spacious, more connected and definitely indefinable. It’s also hard to say that I always find the practise of meditation rewarding, in that it always makes me feel more relaxed, or better, or wiser or more compassionate In fact I find the practise, while generally absorbing in a good way while I am doing it, also challenging as it requires me to become more aware of the wide range of thoughts, feelings, judgements and obsessions that, like everyone else, I do have on a daily basis.

The aspect that is different I believe on a daily basis, is that I generally have a greater degree of self conscious awareness during the day which helps me be in touch with my body, my feelings and my thoughts and can help me getting too hung up on worries or obsessions. For example I am much better now at recognising when my mind is getting caught up in self criticism and I can more easily simply dismiss the criticism. With regards to obsessiveness, be it about feeling angry about something or someone or thinking about food, sex or other sensual pleasures, I can generally accept the fact I am obsessing and then step back mentally and relax about it. I still occasionally need to express my anger either alone or to someone and my body seems to need to occasionally indulge itself. Once in a while I may get emotionally triggered, feel anxious, needy or just want to hide under the doona and I will let myself do that without thinking that it’s a sign of failure.

Going back to the indefinable, meditation also seems to give me a strong sense of feeling connected. Connected to yourself I suppose? asked my wife, to which I agreed but it’s a much larger sense of connection than that. In fact the more I feel that indefinable sense of connection that comes with meditation, the more I feel connected with other people, with the natural world, the earth, the sky and again in some indefinable way the universe. This isn’t always a pleasurable experience but rather an awareness which seems to be able to more easily encompass both the pleasurable and the painful. I certainly enjoy meeting and being with people where there is a strong connection, but at the same time I am aware quite strongly when there is a lack of connection, or when others are feeling disconnected or in pain. Certainly my experiences and learning in first engaging with and then continuing to study and practise psychotherapy have strongly helped my ability to assess connections with and in other people, but meditation has taught me to expand my frame of reference and perception to include quite subtle and energetic interactions that go on around me. In gestalt theory this is called ‘the field’ - the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual environment with which we are continually interacting.

In relation to the actual experience of meditation, I can say that there have been different stages or aspects to my practise. When I began with an introductory Zen course in mindfulness I was largely caught up with thoughts and concepts of wondering what it was I supposed to be doing whilst meditating. I think I first began to really relax and learn one pointedness when I was taught savasana (lying down relaxation) and the yoga of breathing or pranayama by B.K.S. Iyengar in Pune, India. He gave the most wonderful instruction which was to look inside with the ears! This instruction beautifully takes the emphasis off the dominant frontal cortex of the brain and allows the mind to learn sensitivity to the inner world of mind and body. In some ways I think I am still looking inside with the ears some 40 years later. When I discovered Vajrayana Buddhism via the writings of Chogyam Trungpa I began to work with focussing on meditations to do with compassion and emptiness and also developed a more devotional attitude which helped in letting go the desire for spiritual achievement and success.

Through the writings and teaching of Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche I learnt the value of eyes open meditation which forced me again and again to confront the tendency of getting caught up in the conceptual mind and instead return to a relaxed, mindful awareness of the present moment. Lastly and most recently with study and practise of the jhanas my meditation has deepened even more powerfully into my body and is helping me surrender into a deeper, more absorbed state of being.

So to again ask myself what do I get out of meditation? As many Buddhist teachers have said, it is important when pursuing any goal to gain some understanding of what is involved in getting there. For me the study of yoga and Buddhism have provided me both the ground or context for meditation, the pathways along which to travel and the viewpoints or goals to aim for. Both yoga and Buddhism have tremendous richness and depth in their teachings, but essentially they are both vehicles for actual practise, for doing daily exercises which cultivate awareness and train mind and body. It is those practises which I can honestly say have transformed my life, given me courage and strength to persist in adversity, humility to acknowledge and accept my faults and a sense of open heartedness which more often than not allows me to fully embrace my daily life and relationships. In essence meditation is about engaging in an ongoing practise and discipline which affirms the experience of being fully present in the here and now of everyday life. I commend it to you.

Feel free to skip My Story if you want to go straight to the core of the book.

MY STORY

I was first introduced to a form of one pointed meditation by my grandmother when I was quite young. Born in the era of Queen Victoria, she had worked as a school teacher and was firm but kind. She read to me from a very early age and we would play cards and board games. Another game we played was to hold eye contact together for as long as we could and the loser was the one who broke the eye contact. It was humorous, confronting but done with an attitude of complete acceptance. I gradually got better at it and on reflection I think it helped my willpower and also gave me confidence to just be with myself and another person. Holding one’s attention on an object is a traditional starting point of meditation and for me it was eye contact with my grandmother.

My grandmother also fired my imagination with a range of Bible stories mainly from the Old Testament. I especially enjoyed the story of Daniel and the lions’ den, where the hero Daniel is cast into a pit of lions to die. In the morning however he is still alive and claims that his God had sent an angel to close the mouths of the lions. In later life I drew parallels between this story and the classical Greek mythical story of Theseus and the Minotaur, where Theseus has to enter a labyrinth and kill the minotaur. Divine intervention is not credited here but rather feminine wisdom as Theseus is given a ball of wool by Ariadne. As he enters the labyrinth he unwinds the wool and then is able to trace his way back to the entrance. Both these stories point to the notion of confronting fear and danger, entering into the unknown, overcoming the danger and emerging back into the light. They also suggest the possibility of connecting or being supported by some form of spiritual or feminine power. In the same way that cultivating our ability for one pointedness initially involves focusing on an external object, the next step is making the journey inwards to focus on the body, our feelings and deeper or higher aspects of consciousness.

Another aspect I

Reviews for The Yoga of One Pointedness Mindfulness Meditation and the Jhanas

[Bradley Smith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Focused and heartfelt describes the experience of deepening meditation in practice.