Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
This far I have focused only on the physical aspects of yoga and meditation. Now I want to talk a little about the mental aspects. Dharana is properly connected to the grade of Practicus, while dhyana is the main focus of the Dominus Liminus. I will however discuss them in their own right, rather than as grade focused practice. I would further say that the practice of dhyana is probably still my daily practice, helped along by both dharana and pranayama.
First, definitions: dharana is concentration, dhyana is unification. Dharana admits both subject and object, dhyana is the unification of subject and object into a single whole. Expanded outwards this naturally develops into samadhi, but one step at a time.
Practically speaking, dharana is probably the most complex of the two, and can be as variable as the imagination allows. Liber E suggests various methods, imagining various shapes, tattvas, shapes, colours, smells etc. Of course the simplest and most effective in my opinion is just to count the breath, not necessarily in the same way as pranayama, but simply counting the gentle inhalation and exhalation, or focusing the attention on the hara (muladara chakra or seika no itten). There is really no need to make anything complicated about it, although there is nothing specifically wrong with that either. Coordinated physical movements require concentration, and can therefore form the basis of dharana. Just walking down the street or driving can also serve. The thing is to obtain a mindset that naturally sticks fast to whatever you require it to, and stay there for as long as necessary.
Crowley recommends counting ones breaks. This is highly subjective but still useful, I would suggest making a spreadsheet documenting the number of breaks per session over a given time period, say several months. The best thing is to take the data first and then apply it to a graph all at once, so you can note changes, improvements or regressions, without being tempted to respond to the data and thus bias the results. It should also be possible to work out what helps or hinders good dharana by referring to the diary and noting common factors by comparing particularly good or bad days to the corresponding diary entries.
As for dhyana: this is where things get confusing. Firstly, good dharana leads naturally to dhyana. Dhyana isn't a practice as such, but a state of unified consciousness that is the result of practice. Dhyana is what happens when you achieve one-pointedness. Within Tempu's system, this was called, shin-shin-toitsu, 'mind-body unification'. In Zen, dhyana is that state in which, when you sit, you just sit, when you walk, you just walk. The mind being like the still surface of a lake, that reflects all things clearly.
Practically speaking, the state can be difficult to achieve, and more so to maintain. In a typical practice during a normal period when I am subject to the usual distractions of life, dhyana comes and goes throughout the sitting. I will be sat, the mind in its usual patterns, coming and going, following thoughts or the senses as usual, and briefly, it will stop, it is like a light comes on or a window opens to let in fresh air, blowing away the cobwebs of ordinary confused though. In aikido, dhyana comes when the mind and body are in perfect harmony with that of my partner, whether throwing or being thrown, the movement becomes unified, and on those occasions the person being thrown almost always lands with a laugh and the harmony of the movement. We might call this 'getting in the groove', it is common among musicians, dancers etc.
So, how to practice dhyana? It is not easy to just issue instructions since we are generally working against a lifetime of habits, but it is at least conceptually simple, since we can soon learn what kinds of things help or hinder our meditation by seeing what thoughts intrude and what makes us want to get up off the cushion. As far as practical advice for sitting itself goes: sit still, breath regularly, relax completely, stop talking, listen.
Talking of listening; I have found that listening to the 'nada' sound is useful. This is the ringing sound that we hear when all other sounds are filtered out. The mere fact of noticing the sound indicates that the mind is reasonably quiet, so it is a good place to start to cultivate this silence.
Now, we should be aware that the state of dhyana is always there, like the nada sound, and it only takes a second to return to it. The natural state of the mind and the body is to be unified. Animals, dogs and cats for example, are naturally in this state, did you ever try to push a cat over? They are naturally stable because the mind and body are naturally unified. This is our birthright too, although human minds are filled with all sorts of distractions, we are accustomed to carrying unnecessary tensions and useless thoughts. This causes the mind to tense up and separate from the body. The body tenses up, stiff shoulders, heavy movements, constricted blood vessels, and this happens so gradually that we don't notice. We cannot even remember what dhyana feels like.
Dhyana is then nothing more than our natural state, when we drop pretense, stop chasing after distractions, thoughts, verbal chatter, stop trying to attain some mystical state, when we relax, sit still but alert, just part of the world around us, neither unduly distracted nor closed off from it, we can return to the unified state which is originally ours.
Love is the law, love under will.
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