Adapting traditional Kasina practices to the Kasina

I'm curious how other people have used the Kasina in traditional meditation practices.

Mindfulness of breath during sessions is the way I have used it in the past. The Kasina deepens focus and acts as a timer for a meditation session.

The name of the unit is a reference to Kasina meditation, so I'm curious about potential exploration in that direction. A few references as starting points are here:

Kasina Wikipedia

Kasina Applied Techniques

The basic idea is to develop focus by working with the afterimage/memory of an object such as a flame, and then proceeding to increase the time of focus and the complexity of the object.

Usually the goggles stay on during a session--so I wonder where to go from here.

Here are some options I'm wondering about pursuing.

Earbuds in for all these options.

1. Start with a traditional Kasina image (candle flame) while listening to session audio. Develop the image traditionally with only the Kasina session audio.
2. Keep the goggles on and create a traditional Kasina meditation object in the imagination unrelated to the Kasina session imagery, but with enhanced attention to patterns and colors.
3. Take the goggles off at an intuitive point (or points) during a session and work with the associated afterimages from the Kasina session imagery. No development (or crowbarring) of traditional imagery into what comes out of the Kasina session imagery.
4. A hybrid approach where the goggles are removed at intuitive points then the Kasina session imagery is worked with until it goes into the direction of a more concrete traditional meditation object. The generated object image is then used as the meditative object until the end of the session.

If anyone has input on these (or alternative applications to other meditation techniques) I'm curious.

Thanks!

:read2:

I have a background in dharana yoga and my approach is somewhere between 2 and 4. I don't take the goggles off during a session, but I do steer the mental imagery my mind produces in response to the AVS until its appearance approaches the desired form. I tend to work with themes as well as specific objects of awareness. For example, I might begin with an intention to scry ancient Atlantis, and then I allow all phenomena that arise to be interpreted in an Atlantean mode until the boundary between mental phenomena that are generated deliberately to look like Atlantis and the sense that there was a real Atlantis which I am now remote viewing - this boundary begins to dissolve and I am left with a sense that I chose to look at Atlantis and now I am looking at it, with any quibbles about 'truth' and 'objective reality' temporarily bracketed for the sake of the beauty of the experience.

So if I wanted to visualise a candle flame, I would begin by setting the intention to see a candle flame, and then phenomena that arise would slowly begin to join in with the appearance of candlehood. Related imagery such as a sun or a star or a spark might appear to arise out of the AVS as well, and join the flame. Unrelated imagery would become fuel. The light from the goggles would be interpreted as flamelike, and my candle would arise out of that fire. Slowly (now, I don't know whether this is really the objective of Kasina meditation but certainly the point of dharana yoga is to achieve dhyana and ultimately samadhi), I would begin to merge with the flame, and begin to dissolve the boundary between the objective observer "in here" and the imagined flame "out there" with the LEDs "even more out there in the real world" and I would become simply this flame which is arising out of its own self-existent energy. The witness of the flame arises out of the flame, which is absolute. This is known as the state of dhyana, or single-pointed awareness of an object.

The ephemerality of the phenomenon is what lends it it's ability to act as a bridge between myself and the real world (here, the goggles). Rather than focusing solely on the pure witness of all phenomena, which is a different part of yoga, I have chosen to observe the phenomenon of the imagined flame and attain oneness with it. But as I become one with the flame, so also the surrounding reality (which arises within my awareness and is therefore not apart from me) also exists within the flame's horizon of being and therefore also has to be rendered in order for the flame to sustain its burning light. So we allow all things to arise and fall within this spaciousness that is the empty awareness within which the flame arises (step 1), and then we drop the distinction between seer and seen, dreamer and imagined object, and the flame stands alone, burning for its own sake, absolutely justified in its existence on the basis of its own fundamental right to be.

I hope that was okay to read. It's a fairly accurate description of what goes on for me. Obviously, I might be doing the practice wrong. And certainly I'm not answering your actual question because you were asking about Kasina meditation (which I have never tried) rather than dharana yoga. Worst of all, I don't even have a Kasina mind machine but a Limina! :icon_tongue: But certainly it is an effective practice for achieving transcendent states as well as good training for the imagining mind. It's nice to just be able to imagine anything you want with the help of AVS, and even better to get the kind of crystal clarity that can only come up when you're in nondual awareness :angel4: