So if you are feeling a bit low or down this meditation is an apt choice for you. Wollff 10 mo. Ep166: Fire Kasina Mystic - Daniel Ingram - YouTube Best of luck with your practice! When we feel the absence of this radiance within us, sometimes even the body feels frozen, it is a sign that this life-force is not flowing well or is becoming blocked or stagnant. But if you look for light in the darkness, at the same "frequency" as the afterimage, you might begin to notice that it's not actually black. Coping with Mental Health Challenges on Retreat, The Fire Kasina book, by Shannon Stein and Daniel M. Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. instructions - Fire Kasina This book covers using a visualized image of the Buddha as a meditation object for achieving Samatha (calm-abiding), going through the traditional 9 stages of Samatha, as taught in Gelug Mahamudra. Be gentle yet persistent and it will become easier and easier over time to notice this static. Alternatively, instead of attending to the closed-eye visualizations, you can use an imaginary object after doing a few rounds of eyes open, eyes closed. Right from the very beginning, the idea is to allow the two to mix freely as one field of Sight experience without differentiating between inner and outer, external physical and internal mental. Or just looking at a spot and keeping your eyes steady for a minute or two. You could use a plate. I didnt discuss this idea of eidetic imagery with Daniel, however, so he may disagree. 01:15:02 - Author and meditation teacher Daniel Ingram speaks with host Michael W. Taft about how the Fire Kasina practice can be used as an insight practice. If we take the second fork, we pay attention not to a specific color, but to how the subtle colors in the murk are organizing, because if you pay attention to them for long enough, they will begin to form objects that become more and more recognizable. Great detail in your article Thank you for an engaging post. Getting intense visions (or hallucinations) is likely to be very psychologically destabilizing for all but the most psychologically healthy of people. Developing Powers Using the Fire Kasina - Reddit Pick a kasina such as a blue disk, a computer-generated blue circle on a black background, or (my favorite) a candle flame. Basically, those are all good endpoints, and the ability to get into one generally comes with the ability to rapidly get into the others, so try for one and then have fun getting into the others. You just might be amazed at your capabilities. It may acquire all sorts of fine details, change color many times, develop into other images, and even begin to seem alive, like you are watching an animation. Repeat'] and didn't include any of the detailed, informative, and instructive background info that's available. Those of us with a more recreational bent will likely find these capabilities fascinating. Practicing kasina formally, and then informally attending to the visual field throughout the day, you might notice that sometimes the visual experience becomes more vivid, intense, or present somehow. territory; what the transition from third to fourth jhana looks like, 47:20 Things a practitioner can look for to know when INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FSD60FA, FSD36FA, and FSD60FA-M - Ruskin The way of awakening vs. the way of the powers. I am glad you found something new today to learn ~ Stay Blessed . Focus on the flame, its movement and the contours. So when you first encounter the FK meditation, its entirely natural to ask which is it, See In or See Out? You can support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon. To learn how to make your mind calm, centered and focused with minimum efforts, I highly recommend you check out >>> Meditation Mastery Secrets. Again, either style may also be used to bootstrap a kasina off the subtle colors we can see naturally on the inside of our eyelids with our eyes closed or in a dark room. Fire Kasina meditation and the basis for Jhana practice. Now we shall individually look into each of these kasinas and see how to practice each one of them. Most people won't be able to enter this level in daily life. There are many possible images you can use. See as only See. They may be vague and shifty at first but, with practice, they get clearer, more detailed, and more stable. Also known as fire kasina, trataka (tratak), mirror gazing, sky gazing, or hakalau. To better the experience you can use scented candles. You might notice the image I had you use looks like dharmachakra, the wheel of dharma. We can use the blazing, white, intense psychic heat of samdhi, when the energy is strong and powerful in the central channel and the sign glows brilliantly. How to Practice Kasina Meditation: A Guide for Beginners, Scan this QR code to download the app now. Achieving such a result of course requires dedicated practice, patiently and persistently, for a long time, and ideally in life circumstances that are conducive to a dedicated meditation practice. 1. There is some difference between the traditions, with some holding the view that a stable wash of bright white permeating awareness is a good endpoint. In Need of Good Fire Kasina Candles! - Discussion - www This is a sign you've reached CEV Level 2. Kinda cool, right? Have you sat near a riverbed and watched the river flow. Island, realizing the practice can lead to awakening, 5:34 Setting the general context for using any kind of More practice again makes this easier. Ive heard Daniel speak of fire kasina before and have immediately tuned out thinking it is just too far out and woohoo. Attention must be broader, more open, and accepting. Weird experiences are completely unnecessary. For the first three minutes gaze at the object look at its natural yellow color, the brightness, the structure, different angles just about everything. This is one of those effects mentioned in the old texts that is still surprising, at least for me, when it actually happens. So, if you find yourself lying awake in bed trying to sleep but cant, you can always just use those colors to build a kasina practice, realizing that some are better at this than others. Even a saucer, a can top, jar lid, or piece of construction paper will work for this, but candle flames produce a nice retinal burn that helps make the initial stages more rewarding. Glad to know that you are already practicing meditation. Kasina Meditation - Buddhist Geeks Guide Kasina meditation is any meditation that involves looking at something. It is an account of a retreat by Shannon with commentary by her and Daniel as well as some other practical goodies. Even more recently, Chad Atlas, John Finnell, Chris Miller and Gabe Hill did a 9-day retreat. You can find YouTube videos of a candle burning for just this purpose, saving you the cost of actual candles and the fire-risk. This podcast contains the best guide to this practice I have encountered online, far superior to even what is available on Daniel Ingrams site. Fire Kasina is used to amplify the experience of phenomenal color to great heights, so it seemed strange that for some reason after several days of the practice everything started being grey; he couldn't stop it. But as we approach deeper concentration the mind-produced sign appears a sign of flame, of fire as a wall, as an even stream like a river of flame, rising up before us the flickering and dancing of the waves of flame begin to subside until it becomes an even, continuous stream of flame, synonymous with our even, continuous stream of concentration. If you do these practices at high dose for a week or two in retreat conditions with few distractions, you are likely to be very deep into some pretty wild territory by the time you are done, and advice and appropriate warnings for that end of practice will be given in later sections. 19391 . As with the earth kasia, the imperfections in the earth in the sign that we took originally, the unevenness of it, will be apparent in the learning sign. Now imagine the color, texture, shape of the soil in your mind for the next 2 minutes. This then is some explanation of how we might take fire as the object of concentration so that we might establish fire kasia and how we might develop it towards absorption. The initial strongly focused concentration that worked for the red dot or other initial object wont work as well here. By this point, you should also be able to shape that color into any object you wish just by gently inclining your mind to have that happen. With repetition, we get good at the changes. Heres what you need to do. The Luminous Jhnas These are deeper than the whole-body or pleasure jhnas, and are called "luminous" because the object of meditation used for entering the first jhna is the illumination phenomenon. Often kasina meditation instructions combine multiple methods. And if they happen, that's fine too. However, past a certain point, focusing on the central nimitta itself wont get you as far as things can go, as it is too narrow. More recently, Shannon undertook her own 25-day solo retreat exploring the same techniques. Thanks, Lowk. immaterial type jhanas, 1:04:38 Whats most exciting to Daniel about this practice I recommend adding intermittent walking practices to help add an element that is more footy and helps keep a balance of energy. This is like our initial and sustained effort that we must put forth in establishing concentration. If you do not, you might also consider the technique known as Image Streaming from Win Wenger. This was a very basic yet a profound practice which was fairly simple and did not require many skills. characteristics, 27:45 The first jhanic factors that come with tracking and Do this for 3 minutes and then close your eyes. In January of 2020, a three-week retreat happened in Bavaria, Germany. May all beings be happy and free from suffering. If you are using leaves, then focus on the shape, structure, the fresh color for about three minutes. and our We can just pervade the whole body with this sense of this radiant, psychic inner fire that the samdhi itself produces to ease the body, uplift and heal the body. Images grow more defined and predictable, and we get used to the now familiar sequence of images and perceptual changes. The second kasina is water. You could use a brick, for that matter, but brighter objects and objects having greater color contrast with their background make it easier, so a brick would do better against, say, a blue or green surface. Kasina meditation can produce fascinating closed eye visualizations . instructions, practice The Fire Kasina book, by Shannon Stein and Daniel M. Ingram November 27, 2017 danielmingram the-fire-kasina book in .pdf form. Ive had somewhat of a spiritual awakening in the past couple of years. Starting very large and then getting smaller and disappearing over and over. There is, of course, the nagging question of whether the siddhis, or magical powers, are real in any sense, but I wont go into that here. Similarly, those focusing on one chakral area, such as the sixth chakra, also known as the third eye, may find they feel that, while those chakras may become strong and activated, the energy channels and other chakras may begin to feel out of balance. At first you might think with eyes closed it is pitch black. With kasina practice, you can do this by putting an image on your phone or computer and doing one round of that 5-15 times a day. Everywhere you see a bit of that color, even if it just seems to be part of some vague shift or swatch of moving vagueness, focus on that, attempting to cultivate a sense of rapture regarding that color. Other traditions hold that hyper-real images and other well-developed effects of very strong concentration are their endpoints. That said, the fusion of concentration and insight is a remarkable path to follow for those who can do it, which is probably more people than the number that think they can do this. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FSD60, FSD60-2, FSD60-V, FSD60XP, and FSD60M . Normally I teach these practices on longer retreat and to experienced meditators, but from time to time a student comes along who naturally resonates with this type of meditation, and so I thought I would share a brief piece here on the Fire Kasia meditation and the Fire Kasia Jhnas. As you gaze at the flower, look at its petals, its shape, the purity and the beauty. It must also notice fine and subtle details and give them permission to start to organize in their own way, which, given time and repetition, they will begin to do. In short, focus a bit more on See In. So is it good to use the flash light of my phone? This book is for free distribution. Dharana Dharshan describes this as samadhi, when you stabilize and become one with the imagined image. The end result of this practice is extremely vivid and stable visualization abilities, to the extent where one's visualizations are hyper-real (hyperphantasia), and the mind is incredibly calm and clear. So the best way is to find a park or a garden. The evenness of the warmth; the evenness of the inner glow at the heart of the fire. Ask and ye shall receive. I love Daniels descriptive language. ]; stay with that red dot, regardless of what it does, until it is finally gone, and then open your eyes and go back to the flame or disk or whatever again. Notice whatever you notice, practicing remaining calm, unattached to anything specific happening or not happening. The Pali Canon is one such standard collection of scriptures during the Buddhist tradition. So it can be helpful to use something that is both easy to get an afterimage and symbolically meaningful to you. Overall I find your post interesting and it is always good to find out more about how people of different religions pray, I am happy you found this post interesting and thank you for sharing your experience. kasina - Reddit 400 BC) most of his teachings were preserved in Pali language. For those who see colors, even subtle ones, when they close their eyes or are in the dark, you can even bootstrap a kasina off those with enough careful attention to the colors and to cultivating and organizing them, a skill that takes merely practice to learn. Then comes the question of how far to go out into the murk and when to bail and open our eyes and look at the external kasina object again. The short answer is that its both See In and See out, so lets unpack that a little bit. Even beyond this, some people, especially people doing 12+ hours a day of kasina practice on a multi-week retreat, enter CEV Level 4. Luckily, from one point of view, none of the reasons nor the specifics of the images really matter so long as you use them to build strong concentration. As we get better at this, we will notice that the murk (now well-defined and, really, no longer earning that name) and the nimitta become much more interactive with each other. That is, am I doing the vipassana thing of non-interference and non-control with imagery, or am I getting in there and manipulating it, playing around, and generally doing stuff with it on purpose? Fascinating read, Michael. practice - Fire Kasina When, while he is developing it in this way, it comes into focus as he adverts with his eyes shut exactly as it does with his eyes open, then the learning sign is said to have been produced. You can start right off taking the images around the nimitta as object and the nimitta will progress through its cycles as you cultivate the background around it. The nimitta will eventually start to do strange things, such as oscillate between a black dot and some greenish-yellow dot, or other variants on this theme. To learn how to set up a daily meditation practice effortlessly, I highly recommend you check out >>> Master Your Mind Beginners Meditation Course. I belong to the religion of Islam and therefore meditate in slightly different way. As you sit for this meditation particularly focus on the vastness and the ever expanding, borderless sky. This was a new topic for me and you made it really easy with simple steps to practice it right away. I have a very scientific and atheistic background, but some personal experiences and realizations as well as few books I read really opened my eyes that the world is probably not like it seems on the superficial level. Be patient and gently persistent, and it can rebalance. Animation program basis. Sink completely into it, unify the mind with this sign of fire and enter into jhna. Hi, Sandra. 100 mile ultramarathon in the desert at 10,000 ft elevation, Mastering Meditation: Instructions on Calm Abiding and Mahamudra by Chden Rinpoch. But in many ways this is a very helpful object to choose to concentrate upon because it is quite similar to our mental states when we begin to establish concentration. The murk is frustrating until your concentration gets stronger, because while you may be practicing more and more, after you go through your sequence of images in the center of attention, the center of attention becomes more and more vague and dark and strange. This just takes practice, so dont get frustrated. If you didn't see an afterimage, you might try this: after closing your eyes, immediately shine a bright light onto your closed eyelids for a few seconds. Not everyone does on the first try and that's OK. What are your practice instructions for Fire Kasina? When I finally sat down for my first kasina fire experiement, I just vaguely recalled the instructions more or less as: light it up, look at it, afterglow, red dot, something about a "murk" and then I stopped reading because what followed seemed to be too advanced to be relevant on a first try. We have to make initial effort to light the flame, to cause a spark, to bring flame to the initial twigs and leaves. Well, Ive of course heard about it but never really had the patience to try it (oh the irony) seriously. Fire Kasina - The Fire Kasina Meditation Site Basic Instructions for Practising Fire Kasina Started by Alex Linda "Polly Ester" replied 1 Year ago. May the technologies in it be used skillfully by those who wish to develop strong concentration and realize the benefits thereof. I love fire kasina - first influence of field Started by Aaron Baron Aaron Baron replied 2 Years ago. This "Vivid Visual" experience might come on for a few seconds and then go away, or go on for hours before fading into dullness (see this article for more). Cooktop Furrion FGH4ZSA-SS Installation. In terms of the FK practice, if you havent at least reached stream entry, then dont spend much time playing with manipulating the images that arise in practice. If you are choosing a colored disk, it should be a few inches in diameter for most people. Unfortunately you cant have a physical object for this, like for the above three kasinas. Sit comfortably with your back straight and simply gaze at the object. Sit on a chair two to three feet from the light and gaze on the rays of sunlight. But I first heard of them from a student of Chinese Chan (Mahayanna) Buddhism. One trick that can help is pre-scripting the experience by making resolutions about what you want to see before you start a new cycle, then letting the intention go and allowing the cycle to run on its own (which it should be doing easily by this point). Stare at a candle flame or other light source (e.g. Position your disc in a place you can sit and see it comfortably without developing any discomfort in the neck, shoulders etc. Paying attention to that high-speed spinning and movement will develop good attention-tuning skills that translate extremely well to other meditation styles. As you take a walk in the park or garden find a bench or a place where you can sit for a while. Can I incorporate aspects of TMI in a Fire Kasina Practice? Ensure your gaze is at the same level as that of the position of the yellow object. We must continue carefully to blow and fan the fire, feeding it other twigs and leaves until a flame flares up and catches. These may begin to become more coherent, more defined, and brighter. Luckily, there is a solution to this: with eyes closed, continue to attend to visual perceptions, whatever you are actually seeing. Over time the afterimage will tend to become more stable and clear, representing your more stable and clear mind. Basically staring hard at the insides of the eyelids. Those who add a mantra may notice fifth chakra effects in the throat region. 1 waiting Premieres Sep 9, 2022 0 Dislike Share Save Guru Viking 10.7K subscribers # . I appreciate the Shinhead translation work here. So, if the external kasina object is bright, the initial visual purple after-image will be dark, and if the kasina is dark, the after-image will be light. Sink completely into it, unify the mind with this sign of fire and enter into jhna. Do the gazing for around 3 minutes and then close your eyes and imagine the water, its nature and characteristics. I am happy you found this post interesting and engaging. The key to developing our samdhi on all of the kasias, as the sign begins to emerge, is to pay attention to perception of uniformity, of evenness within the sign, within the object. 2) You write I didnt discuss this idea of eidetic imagery with David, I think you may mean Daniel here. This could be while washing dishes, eating a meal, walking outside and so on. We may seemingly find ourselves entirely into those worlds, as if we are fully lucid dreaming and yet totally awake at the same time. For many people, getting to the better side of the murk requires some significant number of hours, such as eight to twelve per day for a few days, but a few will have natural talent and be able to get into this territory on lower doses. Fire is also symbolically meaningful, representing transformation, energy, heat, maybe even en-light-enment, so fire kasina (or trataka) is a popular visual meditation. What are the basic practise instructions for fire kasina? Kammahna - Wikipedia Subjects include: the background of kasina practice in the Thervada tradition, using kasinas to go into jhana, how vipassana practice interacts with jhana practice, meditation on the Three Characteristics, and detailed instructions for doing the Fire Kasina practice Skip to content Deconstructing Yourself Home About Podcast Blog Resources