'Strong Determination' Meditation Sits

Strong determination, said is an English translation of a Poly expression a deep thana. That means that you make a determination or a an intention that for a certain period of time you're going to sit without moving voluntarily. It could be an hour. It could be 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours or longer and in general.

There is the issue of.

Sitting for long periods of time, whether you make a Val not to intentionally move or not.

I encourage People as a general principle at least occasionally to do long sets.

And or strong determination sense.

I think it's a very good way to push the envelope of practice. There are some parameters. Of course, some basic principles. You have to keep in mind. The first an obvious one, but still needs to be mentioned is.

I would never encourage anybody to sit to the extent that it causes any harm to the body.

Usually, for the average person you would have to sit quite a long time to cause harm to the body in terms of joints or paresthesia of nerves or that kind of thing I mean, abiding paresthesia from having damaged nerves don't think that's likely to happen for the average person in just an hour or 2 hours of strong determination, said, but a person.

Does need to be careful that no physical damage arises due to the practice and how you do that? Is basically you start experimenting and if you do something that.

Causes you to be limping for 1/2 hour after you get up well. That's a sign that you don't want to be doing that kind of thing.

So.

We want to just deal with the sensations. The sensory challenge. That's involved in the long since so what's the sensory challenge involved in strong determination sit or long sit well. Clearly, it brings up physical discomfort and that physical discomfort, then brings up mental and emotional reactions, so the mental reactions come through.

Mental images and internal talk, the emotional reaction comes from the emotional type sensation in the body which many of you know, I call feel body sensation. That seems to a given individual at a given time to be emotional in nature, and then the more physical type sensations that paying the fatigue and so forth the sleepiness possible nausea those sensations.

I called touch in contrast to the field so basically the longer you set the greater the intensity of sensory challenge that arises physical discomforts become more intense your feel image talk reactions to it becomes to them become more intense.

So at some point you have a touch feel image talk.

Storm going on in yourself.

Now.

To the extent that you can bring concentration clarity and equanimity to that.

To that extent, it's going to turn into a new flavor of empowerment and purification.

On the other hand, by forcing yourself to sit long or sit without moving, it may drive you into a state of concentration clarity and equanimity.

So 1 use for the longer sits or the strong determination sits is it will force you or literally drive you into new levels of mindfulness that can be extremely useful because that then becomes the new set point for your practice.

So, sometimes People will tell me well, I've reached a certain plateau with my practice. What can I do in order to push the envelope to move on to the next level and so forth will actually there's a bunch of things a person could do. But one of the simplest things they can do is start doing at least occasionally not necessarily every time but at least occasionally doing longer sits strong determination sits dealing with that challenge.

Pushes you forward I said that there's some guidelines one of the guidelines is well don't damage the body with this. Another guideline is don't get goal driven in terms of thinking that the issue is how much can I take for? How long that's not the issue in this kind of sitting the issue is how much? Can I learn?

And retrain the nervous system that's sort of your goal. The goal is not like OK. I gotta make it to 4 hours without moving kind of thing. The goal is OK. How much mileage retraining of my processing of touch feel image talk? Can I get from? What I'm doing the guidelines are don't damage the body?

And.

Yes, there is a goal but the goal is not to achieve a certain personal records in terms of duration of sit or intensity of what you sat through the goal is well how effectively am I learning.

There is something to be gained by bearing down there is something to be gained by easing up the Main.

Advantage to this is as I say that it will tend to push the envelope of your practice in a natural way because the natural response to intense physical discomfort is actually to drop into equanimity.

But in order to access that natural response. You may have to push the envelope. A little bit, for certain People. This is actually a very easy way well. Now I will say a very easy way. It's a relatively easy way to make a lot of progress.

A lot of tangible progress so if you find that you're one of those people. I would encourage you to explore this within the parameters that I mentioned remember that.

If you've got 10 units of physical discomfort 10 units of emotional discomfort 10 units of disconcerting imagery and 10 units of negative talk.

If you can keep that all separate.

You'll have 10 + 10 + 10 + 10, which is 40.

If they get tangled you're going to get the impression of 10, * 10, * 10, * 10, * 10, * 10, which is 10,000 put Alternatively. I'll level of perceived suffering that the average person would say is 10,000 an utterly unbearable, it's fainting. It's kill me now level.

For the average person for someone with mindfulness skills. It's not 10,000 it's 40 and that's quite doable. So if you bear that in mind, and explore in that direction. Then this can be a very meaningful practice for you.