40 Meditation Exercises as listed in the Path of Purification

By Bhikkhu Khantipalo

 

If one has no meditation teacher from whom one may request a meditation subject, then one has to rely upon one’s knowledge of one’s character in order to prescribe for oneself a suitable meditation. There are forty meditation exercises (kammatthana) noted by the great teacher Buddhaghosa as being suited to certain types of character. For the purposes of meditation, he considers six characters: faithful, intelligent, and speculative (in which the skillful roots of non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion are variously dominant); and greedy, hating, and deluded (in which greed, hatred and delusion, the unskillful roots, are dominant). The trouble here is twofold: firstly, very few “pure” types can be found, most people being mixtures of two or more of them — and moreover ever-changing mixtures; and secondly, it is rather difficult to judge which class one’s character belongs to since one’s own delusion and pride are apt to blur one’s judgments.

Alumina (Aluminum)

by Anja Heij

 
Aluminum is a very light and easy transformable metal, associated with the planet Neptune and the sign Pisces. In astrology Neptune has to do with fading away, dissolving, excarnation, anonymity. This excarnation can work out in a positive way (mysticism, visions, psychic abilities, spirituality, dreams, ecstasy, inspiration) but it can also bring about confusion, intoxication, poisoning, decadence, delusion, addiction, degeneration, deformation and decay: the material world looses its solidity and stability. Pisces ‘rules’ the feet.

Out Of Spirits – A.S.L Hermes

Superstition is lining pockets, and occult shops and publishers are thriving in the current atmosphere of New Age credulity. Is an interest in the supernatural a harmless expression of mankind’s curiosity, or a dangerous delusion?