| growth | epistemic status |
|---|---|
| 🥜 seed | ✅ sound |
| concentration defilements meditation yoniso-manasikara wise-attention |
Link here.
SuttaCentral Summary
The parable of the cook. They present different kinds of dishes to the king, and observe which the king likes. In the same way, a mendicant observes why their meditation succeeds or fails. When the four kinds of mindfulness meditation succeeds it leads to giving up hindrances and entering immersion.
A competent cook pays attention to whether his master is satisfied with the dishes being served. In the same way, a competent meditator is aware of whether his practice is improving concentration and reducing defilements, or not. If not, then a meditator needs to choose another approach or object. Because if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Of course we need to not flit around between objects or meditation styles because This one isn’t working, but after applying ourselves enough to one approach we need to check-in with whether it is working or not. Certainly the one-method end of the spectrum is generally unadvisable, it is safe to say
But also, the simile of the cook teaches the need to know various meditation techniques to suitably nourish one’s happiness and spiritual progress. In a similar vein, there were certain wholesome pleasures the Buddha encouraged us to allow because a long and successful holy life depends on being adequately nourished in meditation. jhana
As the cook pays attention to his master’s reactions, to know whether a practice is developing in the right fashion, a meditator must pay attention to the ‘sign of the mind’, and we do this by developing yoniso manasikara, ‘wise attention’ or attention placed at the origin of experience where we can see reactions arise.
I might have stated elsewhere how profoundly insightful this seems to me right now, this understanding of applying wise attention to pure experience - it seems that here we can get ahead of the eight ball, so to speak. If we can more consistently inhabit the space of pure experience, our suffering is bound to reduce.