Two Meditation Questions

[Viveka]

@Gus

I am a beginning meditator, and in several ways I do not care for the turn that this discussion has taken. All I sought was beginner-level help from an EBT perspective. I think I’ve gotten that.

I’m glad you got the answer to your question

If you are interested there are many guided meditations on the BSWA web site, as well as resources on meditation. This may assist in building skill and confidence. There are also many other skilled teaching on-line. Just try to access those from reputable masters.

Buddhist Teachings Meditation Podcast Video Buddhism Free Talks

meditation | Buddhist Society of Western Australia

And here are the search results for meditation resources here in the forum

https://discourse.suttacentral.net/search?q=meditation%20resources

[Sumanatissa]

As I see, a guided meditation retreat will definitely help you.
You may try a place close to you from this website:
https://www.dhamma.org/en/locations/directory
Sukhi Hotu !

[Gus]

By a happy coincidence, I attended a meditation retreat at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia just this past weekend. It was one of the best experiences of my life. While I’d already solved both of the problems I asked about in the original post, I was also able to learn a lot of new things about meditation while there. And of course I had lots of time to practice in a wonderfully peaceful environment.

[Sumanatissa]

Really great. These retreats were the cause and reason for my fair underdstanding of the path with first hand personal experience.
Sukhi Hotu!

[Ryan]

Ajahn Brahm’s book “Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond” has by far the best explanation of the anapanasati sutta that I’ve read, as well as offers his thoughts on the practice. You may be interested in reading it.

[Gillian]

@Gus

For a layman, what is the correct relationship between ethics and meditation? The Canon often seems to describe meditation as occurring after the cultivation of noble ethics. It’s intended primarily (though not exclusively) for monks and nuns. Yes, MN 51 among others shows that early lay Buddhists also meditated in similar ways. But laymen are seldom if ever instructed in meditation in the Canon, so… what would an early Buddhist approach to this question look like?

Ideally this may be simplest: “The Canon often seems to describe meditation as occurring after the cultivation of noble ethics,” but I prefer to thing it as a logical connection rather than a temporal one. For this laywoman the process has been a bit cyclical, so it didn’t really matter that my first steps on the path were through rather intense meditation. I eventually realised that the sila which I thought was pretty good (after all I followed the 10 commandments) needed a bit of an overhaul to support further progress. So the cycle becomes a spiral and the journey continues.

I’m so glad to hear that your residential retreat was such a good experience.