[pissmanvd]

Virtually all Buddhist traditions employ the methods of vipassana/shamatha meditations. They go by slightly different names while the techniques are quite similar - sometimes even combined into one single practice. There is no one way that is good for everyone because of the differing conditioning which all of us have. In good time, it will be a natural way of living which will include the wisdom it teaches about what is observed instead of just only questioning everything you think and hear. The wisdom aspect of all this "mindfulness" is critical to a satisfactory way of being.

Ngodngam's instructions are exactly right for the kind of teaching school it represents. But while reading a book or a dozen of them is helpful, I do want to stress the importance of finding a good teacher because it will shorten the time that one suffers from the delusions of conditioning. In doing any one method of meditation, questions should absolutely arise almost immediately. It is exactly the mind that has these questions which arise from exactly that conditioned delusion. A teacher knows this and you and I don't nor does a book. A teacher can see right through the problems of the mind that is the problem in the first place. It is the mind that needs a little re-training and which can be quite a good ally.

If you don't have questions right away, a teacher will actually induce them for all the right reasons. It is not to make you uncomfortable but is to show your mind to itself in just the way that ngodngam suggests you to understand the observer and the observed. Also you should very soon begin to ask just how conceptual all this observer/observed activity actually is and whether a conceptual understanding is the real thing (It is not!). A teacher can see this too and can help move you out of the very concepts that are torture ....for example the 'usual' Christian concept of God. Being imprisoned in the default of conceptual thinking, as we all are initially, is a dead end and a painful one too.

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