Do You Struggle to Close Your Eyes While You Meditate? One Researcher Has The Answer
Here’s how one researcher is planning on making your meditation practice restful and relaxing.
A researcher in Chicago, Illinois, is hoping to solve a problem that has been impacting meditators around the world: keeping their eyes closed while meditating. Dr. Larry Joyce, Head of Research at the Meta Institute for Innovative Contemplative Technology Advancement, describes how sitting in his first meditation class made him aware of this issue.
“I remember the first time I ever sat down to meditate and I remember feeling so restless; It felt impossible to keep my eyes closed. I thought I was doing something wrong until I looked around the room and saw that no one else was closing their eyes,”
Dr. Larry Joyce
“I remember the first time I ever sat down to meditate and I remember feeling so restless; It felt impossible to keep my eyes closed. I thought I was doing something wrong until I looked around the room and saw that no one else was closing their eyes,” Dr. Joyce says. “It’s really what motivated me to create MedMa.”
MedMa, an abbreviation of “meditation mask,” is a device that consists of multiple, microscopic weights enclosed in silk fabric that provide a slight pressure on the eyelids when placed over the eyes. The device also includes a lightweight band that wraps around the meditator’s head to ensure the device stays in place during your meditation session.
Participants in the study have reported that they’ve been able to keep their eyes closed for 7-8 hours and describe feeling refreshed when they open their eyes.
While Dr. Joyce is still running pilot studies to prove the effectiveness of the device, he says it could change the way we meditate, forever.
“Participants in the study have reported that they’ve been able to keep their eyes closed for 7-8 hours and describe feeling refreshed when they open their eyes,” Dr. Joyce reports. One participant, Stephen Feron, told Mindful how using this device has helped him cultivate a daily mindfulness practice.
“Whenever a meditation teacher would start off the practice by telling me to close my eyes, it just felt impossible. I would sit right in front of them with my eyes wide open,” Feron says. “But ever since I started using MedMa, I’ve been able to close my eyes and engage in practice. Sometimes, I lie down while meditating, with the mask over my head, and just close my eyes for a few hours.”
Dr. Joyce is hoping to make MedMa available for meditators everywhere by April 1st, 2022 and hopes that the device can help everyone feel like they can enjoy the benefits of a restful meditation session.
In a strange twist, a significant contingent from a control group of participants who were permitted to keep their eyes open during meditation sessions declared that they thought meditating with their eyes open was just fine and decided to organize to promote the practice. This group—the Soft and Gently Downward Gaze Coalition—is launching its own start-up to pilot SoftGoggles: meditation glasses that are simply eyeglass frames with no lenses. Their slogan: just because you see it doesn’t mean you have to keep thinking about it.
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RBRTH-I like the way Thanissaro Bhikkhu frames it: take it on as a working hypothesis. If you live your life as if it's true, how does it change and deepen your practice?
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Was a monk 7 years in the Tibetan tradition. Know very little but I feel reincarnation deeply in my heart. No direct realization, just a deep feeling it’s the utter truth. Reincarnation becomes so obvious if you look closely. Here’s a way to think about it. Logically, there’s only 2 options. There can’t really be a third. It’s one life, one body, one death. Or it’s external limitless lives and eternal limitless body’s & deaths, without end. It can’t be the third option of some arbitrary number like 136 lives, then nothing. It’s one or it’s eternal. It can’t be a third option. There is no third, and the one life option doesn’t make sense if you analyze it.
Because, if you look at what you are today, how did you get here. Things don’t miraculously appear devoid of prior causation, like a “sky flower”, your body and mind stream and life included in that example. They didn’t appear miraculously. It had to come from prior causes, of similar nature, past lives of the kind stream. That’s the logical approach but Reincarnation will hit you when you see and meet a highly reincarnated Tibetan Lama. If you have karma to perceive a fraction of their realization, you’ll be shaken to your knees. Then you’ll realize it took them many lives to achieve these highly realized states. Dharma is real. Endless rebirth is real. We are locked in an eternity of thought passing from Eon to Eon and the only way out of causal reality is dharma. Wish I were more able to explain it but I’m a failed student of the Dharma.
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All that's really required is an open mind. The truth is that nobody really knows what happens after death. We have opinions and beliefs but neither are indesputable facts. There is some evidence that suggests rebirth is possible but it's up to each of us to decide whether rebirth is a skillful way to think.
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Buddhists should repost Rebirth evidences more often and as a standard reply to those who have doubts about/do not believe in rebirth.
Rebirth evidences below, far below, I will only present one case in text, the other one is in youtube, the rest you shall have to browse the links to the books. They are numbered in brackets (1), (2). I have to prime your mind to be ready to receive the information as unbiased as possible first.
There are plenty of people new to Buddhism or attracted more towards secular buddhism because they cannot believe in rebirth.
It's just causes and conditions for them not to believe in rebirth. The world media is dominated by one of 2 views:
Nihilism/annihilation that there is nothing after death, this is the view most materialists have for thinking that the mind is the brain (or some function of the brain) and cannot exist when the brain dies. People who learn science generally is influenced by this view, they typically come in from western Buddhism, or from the style which market Buddhism for atheists, as not religion, it's a philosophy etc. If you show rebirth evidences to these people, they typically have close mind, and reject facts in favour for their philosophy of materialism/physicalism. Take note that science doesn't proof materialism philosophy, nor does science depends on materialism philosophy.
Eternalism, that heaven and hell is eternal and after death, it's one or the other. God based religions are generally having this view. .
As Buddhists, let's not be the 3rd force to ignore these rebirth evidences and research. Just because we believe in rebirth, doesn't make the evidences less important as it is useful to convince people from the first 2 camps to come into mainstream Buddhism rather than having to recommend them to secular Buddhism.
For secular Buddhists, they usually use kalama sutta as an excuse not to believe in rebirth, but in short, kalama sutta says not to rely on logic or revelation alone, but by personal experiences, in scientific terms, it's empirical evidences (experiments). So the rebirth evidences below ought to change their minds if they are sincere about adhering to kalama sutta, if not, then they are just dogmatically attached to materialism philosophy.
Rebirth evidences (1): The very well done documented case of James Leininger.
30 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEd4KZvjuA&t=3s
10 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JrSi7rWWpM
3 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql_-BZS6Jow
Ian Stevenson had interviewed thousands of children who spontaneously remembered past life, many of whom visited their past life families and gotten emotional response not possible with other kinds of explanation but rebirth. The kids remembers details without any means of obtaining the knowledge in this life. Eg. Where the hidden treasure was kept by their past self.
The cases are also having birthmarks corresponding to fatal wound of past life, languages known by the child when there is zero exposure to it in this life, but in previous life they know the language. The cases are independent of parent's belief on rebirth, rich/poor divide, the benefits of the kid to recognize past life family.
Read his many books on reincarnation cases.
Ian Stevenson is by no means the only researcher in this area, there are carol bowman, jim tucker, many others.
Just as the Kalama sutta is gearing people towards empirical evidences to accept something as truth, not by logic, or revelation (sutta). We now have these empirical evidences for rebirth. It only requires an open mind to accept.
So please, fellow Buddhists, let's use the rebirth evidences as standard replies to those who have doubts or do not believe in rebirth. Not just use logic or authorities of the sutta.
Most of Ian Stevenson books are good.
Francis story book is good too. He approaches it from a Buddhist perspective, skeptical of the evidences, but believing in rebirth already.
https://store.pariyatti.org/Rebirth-as-Doctrine-and-Experience_p_1465.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Reincarnation_researchers
Basically can google the books by the researchers above.
(2) Rebirth case sample from Chapter 3 of Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives By Jim B. Tucker, M.D.
An example of a child with apparent memories from two separate lives is Ian’s case in India of Swarnlata Mishra. Swarnlata first spoke of a previous life when she was on a trip with her family at age three. Passing through Katni, a city she had never seen before, she asked the driver of the truck they were riding in to turn down a road toward “my house.” When the traveling group was having tea later, Swarnlata said they could get much better tea at her house nearby. After the trip, she began giving more details of a past life in Katni, saying her name had been Biya and that she was from the Pathak family.
She gave details about her family’s house, saying there had been four stuccoed rooms and the doors were black and fitted with iron bars. She said lime furnaces and a railway line could be seen from the house, and a girls’ school was behind it. Though Swarnlata’s family moved around some, they never lived within a hundred miles of Katni. When Swarnlata was ten, she met a woman from Katni and said she recognized her from her previous life there.
The following year, an investigator learned about her case. After gathering information from Swarnlata’s family, he went to Katni and found that many of her statements (including all the ones I’ve given above) matched the life of a woman named Biya. She was from the Pathak family and had died nine years before Swarnlata was born.
When members of the Pathak family and Biya’s marital family visited Swarnlata several months later, she appeared to recognize them, even though they arrived with a group of people and concealed their identities. Soon thereafter, Swarnlata and her family visited Katni and the places where Biya had lived after she married. Swarnlata recognized people and places Biya had known, commenting on various changes that had occurred after Biya died. Swarnlata continued to visit Biya’s brothers as well as Biya’s children, showing great affection for them.
Beginning at the age of five, Swarnlata also performed songs and dances, always one with the other, first for her mother and then in front of others as well. They were different from anything her parents had seen before. Swarnlata said they were from a different past life she remembered, a short one between the time of Biya’s death and her own birth. She said she had been a girl named Kamlesh and she had lived in a place called Sylhet. (Sylhet was in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, which limited Ian’s ability to investigate Swarnlata’s reports of her life there, and they remain unverified.) The songs were in a language other than Hindi, her native tongue. Her parents, not knowing what language it was, thought it might be Assamese, since Sylhet had been in Assam.
Ian’s associate, Professor Pal, observed Swarnlata perform the songs and determined they were in fact Bengali, the predominant language spoken in Sylhet. He had her perform them three times so he could transcribe the words. He determined two of them were derived from poems by Rabindranath Tagore. The third was also in Bengali, but Professor Pal was unable to identify the source.
Professor Pal visited an institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore and watched a performance of one of the songs Swarnlata had shown him. He said the music was the same as Swarnlata presented it. The words she sang were very close to the original but with some changes. She said she had learned them from a friend named Madhu during her life as Kamlesh. Her performances suggested that Madhu had seen the songs performed and that Kamlesh then learned them from her imperfectly.
The name Kamlesh and the ones Swarnlata gave for other family members would be unusual for a Bengali family. She was unable to converse in Bengali and in fact had trouble recalling the words of the Bengali songs without performing the dances simultaneously. All of this suggested a life in Sylhet of a girl who, though from a non-Bengali family, had Bengali friends and learned the song and dance routines from one of them. Ian explored whether Swarnlata could have learned them in this life and thought it was improbable, if not impossible. He felt they were a paranormal part of her case.
Extra: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/lh5b73/wiki_crowd_sourcing_of_published_rebirth_stories/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Rebirth story of a monk who recalled his past life as a monk whose teacher (of the past life monk, the teacher was still alive) verified the details of the past life telling.
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A Acollection of teachings of Swami Vijnanananda - a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.
The duty of man is to remember Bhagavan always, whether one is engaged in consciously repeating His name or not. Every breath of ours should be associated with Bhagavan, in our mind. We should consider that we breathe in God to make the inside pure, and we breathe out God to make the outside pure.
God is existence, knowledge and bliss.
God vision is the true aim of human life, for that alone can give us real and lasting satisfaction. Men hankers after the things of the world, wealth, sense enjoyments, honour, etc., in the hope that these can give him happiness in life. But the pursuit of these has only a reverse effect on the mind. Not only do we fail to realize the desired but the restlessness of the mind is even increased, and we are rendered even more unhappy than in the beginning. Through wealth and honor our egotism is bloated up, and there is no greater obstacle in the spiritual path than egotism.
How can we have peace seeing that there is so much conflict and suffering in the country owing to trade depression and political struggles?” asked a devotee. “Why do you make so much of these struggles that are going on in the outside world?” Swami Vijnanananda asked in reply, and he added, “Do you think that they will stop, supposing you gain your immediate end and the present phase of the struggle passes away? Certainly they will not. Restlessness arises not from these external struggles, but from our own internal hankering and our clinging to the things of the world. Even if God were to appear before us to bring peace unto our souls, we would refuse to recognize Him. For when He comes, He takes away our worldly possessions, and few of us arc ready to make this sacrifice.
You are the master of your mind, and you have to keep it pure. Your responsibility ends there; the rest is God's business.
Kali Yuga 5124 begins on April 2, 2022 – Current Kaliyuga Year 5124
Truth can’t be found by rotating clockwise around Duality or rotating anticlockwise around Non Duality. To find the truth, to find pure consciousness, the head has to be dropped, the questions have to be dropped. When the head drops, in that silence the truth appears in all it’s presence, in all it’s beauty, in all it’s grandeur.
As it is very obvious that the existence around us keeps on changing, look at yourself, how was you when your born, then all that childhood time, teens and adult hood, your body and everything around you went through so many changes. But what was that which remains the same. Now this is very subtle point. Who was there observing all these changes?.. Now this observer is the one who remained the same and was not subject to any change.
The things which keep on changing can’t be real. The only thing which is real is all pervading awareness which is observing all this existence going through different changes.
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There is no observer either. The ultimate truth is, there is no ultimate truth.
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A The truth is Silence. The more one writes about it the less they know.
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MAYA Let us explore this with Nyaya; In darkness a man sees a snake in a garland , when there is light he understands his misconception. Poet Kambar writes of this in Ramayana “Alangalil theriyum Aravu” Snake visualised in a garland! So it is imposition of our thoughts which alters perception.
Maya does not cause illusion on what is not there , as a barren women’s son, horn in a hare and water in desert due to mirage . That is why Maya is called sookthi roopyakam or sunlight on a sea shell shining like silver. It is illustrated by “Who is father? Who is mother , who is wife who is son/ daughter? The passage of time and samsara brings in this illusion. It disappears when your manas or mind ends. All things are Relative and changing except the Absolute which remains unchanged , mentioned as Sesha ( that which remains, or Keval which is only one that remains). WHen that happens we come to realise
“Thou Art that or Tat Tvam Asi
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ULTIMATE MORAL EVIL
Consciousness creates experiences in beings. Every being has the exact same “no form” consciousness. Beings experience everything in space time within its finite sensory system. We can’t experience the experiences of other human beings but we know approximately because many share them with us in symbolic languages. We don’t really know the experience of ancient people, of dogs or of bacteria but we know they experience to live life. From our perspective of evolution and complexity, their experiences are less diverged and less complex than ours.
We can store some of our experiences in our memory via languages. However, we cannot measure human experiences with machines because many of our experiences are beyond words and machines are no more than computer codes of words.
Human beings can imagine. What we can imagine drives us to do things to create additional experiences. For example, we have transformed landscapes in the world in just the last 50 years. Note that dreaming is actually subconsciously imagining, if memory of the dream is not retained. If one believes in one’s dream, one can make it happen. Dreaming is a great characteristic of human beings. Without this, human beings would not have created interesting and diverged experiences of the world.
So far, consciousness creates experiences. Human beings with such consciousness imagine and create new experiences that others humans believe. And so on … ever since being ever started …
Individuals may feel fluctuations through human history but it has been the same fundamental change that are the perpetually unique and ever increasing experiences of being. You can throw away anything and everything around you and, as long as you are still alive, you can still experience the world.
Many have said “consciousness is the ultimate reality” because, without it, you would not have the unique experiences of the world as you might have known it. They also say this because your reality is tailored uniquely for you both consciously and subconsciously.
When our body dies, our mind with those individual experiences and imagination are gone. When human beings cease to exist, all human specific experiences will be gone and the world, as we humans know it, disappears. However, the universal consciousness remains unchanged in all other beings. Even when all beings cease to exist for whatever reasons, consciousness still remains with emptiness.
PANPSYCHISM - FPE - SARVA DRASHTA
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Everything in this world is real!!!!
Maya is not the world it self, maya is how you perceive the reality.
Mr.x and Mr.y eat durian fruit..
Mr.x eat is real
Mr.y eat is real too..
The durian fruit they eat is real too!!
Everything is real right?
Well the subjective perception they experience.. That is maya.. Both eat the same fruit.. For mr.x it is heavenly experience.. But for mr.y it is a torturing and full of suffering moment, because he cant stand the smell of durian fruit.
That subjective experience that we call maya is not actually an illusion.. Those experience are REAL for both mr.x and mr.y!!
I have partial color blindness.. The Color that i perceive from my eyes are different from what you see from your eyes.. This difference experience is maya.. We both see the same red color, BUT perceive differently.. This maya is not an illusion, for me what i see is as real as what you see.
You cannot say that you see the true red because you dont have color blind, because our eyes only perceive a very small spectrum of light.. There are lot of thing that our eyes cannot perceive.
Maya, is an illusion, when you dont have awareness about this subjectice experience.. You treat, act, think just as like as the subjective perception experience like the objective truth. When we aware about our own perception limitation, maya become the truth!
What separate entertainment magician and spiriual scammer guru is the fact we are aware that magician using trick.
Everything is the truth.. The reality is truth.. Even maya is truth.. Maybe the only illusion is the “I”.
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GUANABANA , P RICO
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There’s probably things that have been said over and over but, no one listens. My dad is 82. He gives me a blow by blow and I observe.. One thing is that the way you eat and live has a much more dramatic affect on quality of life issues. If you eat junk you will definitely have issues. You might have issues anyway but, if you’re living on a steady diet of ice cream life’s going to be rough. The bad living you may have done up to that point will likely have a major impact.
There are quite a few “little old people”. But, there are extremely few big old people. As you age keeping your weight in check matters. It will hurt but, exercise anyway. My dad goes to the gym a few days a week. He says that he gets sore but, it’s ever worse if he doesn’t go. Get use to aches and pains. Make plants the center of your meals. You darn sure need the fiber.
As a very general rule, a majority of people over 70 are more polite. They have stopped fighting ego battles that never were going to go anywhere..they've figured that out. The biggest thing, people over 70 are just like everyone else. They don’t stop being normal people with normal thoughts and feelings just because they aren’t young anymore. We should treat them a lot better than we do.
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AGING At 78, I can tell you that life is a process of adding and then of subtracting. Once the subtracting starts, you can’t really stop it, but you can slow it. You can even, sometimes, reverse it for a while.
When you are young, you have many choices. Make good ones. As you pass 70, you have already discovered that your options are fewer.
When I was young, I could eat anything and be fine. Today — not so much. So, I eat a whole plant-oriented diet and avoid all junk food.
I have recently begun weight training at home with dumbbells. I have added significant muscle mass. It’s never too late until you are dead. I also exercise my brain as strenuously as possible. I am engaged with my business and the world.
Do not go gently into the night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
PS: Do not give up. You can do that when you are dead — and rest. I continue to work on my new home in the mountains (am now 79). A day of work at 6200′ exhausts me. My muscles are sore from the exertion, and I like the soreness because it means that I am alive and my muscles are growing, albeit slowly due to my age. We all face the problem that young people think that we are no longer capable, that we are out of touch with the latest fashions in clothes, music, etc. We are capable. I am out of touch because I recognize that fashion is just a way to pick our pockets. I am in touch with stuff that counts! Keep fighting. You are worth it.
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a Time travel is not mentioned anywhere in any of our scriptures, so it is likely to be simply impossible. The closest thing would be the story of Princess Revathi, who left her world with her father to take advice from Lord Brahma as to how to find a good suitor for her, Brahma informs them "time passes differently in my world, by the time you leave here, millions of years would have passed in your world, so any suitors you had in mind would be long gone." This is time dilation though, not time travel.
There are no instances of anyone instantly traveling to a different time, past or future. But there are a few Gods with the power to see all time, Lord Shiva granted this ability to Shani Deva
From what I can recall:
Treta Yuga's sequence was changed to free Ahilya
Narad Muni has divine sight to provide the mantra that changes Rishi Valkmiki's life, a mantra that does not appear until the Ram Raksha Stotram/Vishnu Sahasranama
Shri Krishna's presence in the final battle during Devi Mahatmya (Krishna was born in Dwapur Yuga)
Shri Krishna pauses time to narrate the Bhagavad Gita, and shows all events happening simultaneously, meaning the flow of time is only linear to humans (From the human, linear perspective, did Shri Krishna depart during His narration and appear to pay respects to Devi?)
Shri Ganesh is present at his parents' wedding.
Another convergence of time is when Shri Rama drops his ring to reveal to Hanuman that the same sequence of events has happened several times (Hanuman goes beneath the earth to pick up the ring, only to see a pile of rings)
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Baba Neem Karoli, who was revered by Steve Jobs was known to have time traveled. Those who possess these siddhies are beyond the allure of the Maya jaal and stay away from limelight.
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EVOMED
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