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Comments Made by Dr. Painter on the Yahoo JiulongBaguazhang Group
Site
Ch'an Lesson
Ch'an essentially means meditation.
Meditation is about awareness,
not a lack of consciousness. Awareness of this type begins when we
sit in
Quiet Sitting, perhaps on a cushion, chair or kneel on a
special bench. Here we begin to notice our surroundings,
our body
and how it feels then we observe the breath.
As we move through the phases of Li family Quiet Sitting
we will
begin to see how our consciousness spreads out as we sit we become
aware of ourselves and the outer world,
and of the relationship
between the two. As practice deepens with time, so your awareness
deepens.
We deepen this state of awareness by paying more attention to the
state of mind that comes when we just sit.
In Japan Master Dogen, founder of the Soto Zen tradition, insisted
that we must sit with a sense of gratitude –
gratitude for the gift
of a precious human life, for the breath that sustains life, for the
traditions that have
been handed down in the practice of Ch'an, and
for the awe-inspiring phenomena of the natural world and the source
from which they arise.
When we do this practice with a sense of gratitude it begins to flow
not only
through our meditation, but into all aspects of our daily
life and we can see what a magical thing it is to be alive.
Do you sit once a day, if not why?
There really is no good excuse not to!
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