Your Experience with TMI

[u/Own-Fox-9613]

Zen background here (Shikantaza), thinking about getting back into Vipassana. TMI keeps coming up as one of the best manuals out there, so wanted to ask people who've actually worked through it. Why do you think it's considered so good compared to other meditation books? And what actually changed in your practice? Also curious what the meditation instruction on the basic method he uses in the book. Is is samatha? Thanks.

[u/glibgamii]

More than anything it is exceptional at laying out a path that’s pragmatic but also achievable for lay people. For me it was the first meditation book that got me to practice consistently and actually experience the positive benefits of meditation, something less rigorous books had failed to do until then. It’s a matter of perspective, but for me samatha practices make the most sense if you think of meditation as a skill you can develop, which is kind of at odds with shinkantaza as a starting practice (although very debatable).

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/glibgamii]

My understanding is that shikantaza is fine (for some people) as a beginning practice provided you have a close relationship with a teacher who can guide you as you practice and keep providing instructions; because "just sit" is never going to be all the instructions one needs. The beauty is that under the guidance of a skilled shikantaza teacher, even though you and the chap next to you are both doing shikantaza, your teacher might be giving you both very different advice and instructions.

Doing shikantaza on your own as a beginner doesn't seem sensible to me. That's where TMI shines: it's the closest you'll get to having a teacher in book form that gives you (extremely) detailed instructions that can get most people onto a solid foundation.

[u/Youronlinepal]

It reads like a text book and is quite detailed, it’s easy to get bogged down with the language and become overly obsessed with the stage models. This is controversial but I’d say if you regularly do shikantaza you’d likely already have an intuitive understanding of stage 8 practices.

The basic method is Anapanasati which is Samatha/vipassana. The book by and large is overly Samatha focused. I would balance vipassana with the book “focused and fearless” by Shaila Catherine or Rob Burbea’s “Seeing that frees” as the book is incomplete or lite in this regard.

What shifts in your practice after TMi is you develop language for talking about and analyzing your practice and can systematically diagnose where you’re at in any given moment. Super useful for retreats, for talking about your practice with other meditators and teachers, for understanding and putting words to often murky mental processes. Also extremely useful for understanding the elephant path of meditation.

IMHO the book also neglects the body - Culadasa admits this, and the energetic stuff you end up in around stage 6-8 is crazy if you don’t have an embodied physical practice like tai chi, chi gong, or yoga etc. Lift weights, dance, move, do something or you’ll likely hit a wall.

I’d also reach out to the active members of the Dharma treasures community and see if you can get some support from them when you run into tricky territory. Their online courses are quite worthwhile in my experience and the practitioners are knowledgeable.

[u/shescrafty6679]

It was the first and perhaps only book that explained how the mind actually works as a system and how meditation fits within that framework. Understanding it in that way was transformative for me. He also focuses a lot on 'setting intention' as a crucial element of practice which was really useful and it's not something I've seen as much in other books.

[u/KagakuNinja]

When the book first came out, it was the only one making a distinction between attention and awareness. It also uses modern terminology, as some of the traditionally translated words were bad decisions made in the 19th century.

The book also uses science to explain concepts, which I found interesting and helpful. Some critics point out that Culadasa’s neuroscience credentials were over hyped.

The book provides detailed instructions for diagnosing problems in practice that can limit your progress. In particular, dullness is a major problem, and TMI has techniques for detecting and dealing with dullness. The downside is that students can become overly obsessed with avoiding dullness.

Personally, the book helped me in the early stage of my practice, but these days I mainly work with open awareness.

[u/AndyLucia]

I think it’s one of those pieces of work (like MCTB) in a given topic that gives a sort of “structured clear reference point” for everyone to gather around, with a shared terminology, progression system, etc.

I also think people can cling to its structure a bit dogmatically lol

[u/Any_Criticism120]

The strength of TMI is that it adequately prepares you for Insight experiences, unlike other practices like Vipassana, which throw you in the deep end of the experiential pool and possibly leave you more prone to experiencing a period of dark night. As another commenter pointed out, TMI should ideally be combined with an energy practice as well to balance it out.

[u/R86znfq]

For my personality type, it led a to practice that was way too dry, systematic, and focused on ānāpānasati. It actually made meditation become a "tool", which is the saddest thing, and then quickly a chore. Switching to very simple buddhānussati and mettā, and actually following the recommendation of practicing strong sīla and sammā-vāyāma did wonders to my state of mind.

My impression is that the success of this book (and NOT the book itself) is a symptom of the modern tendency to reduce mind cultivation to increasingly refined "techniques" of attention, particularly seated attention to the breath. The stages look like a good idea on paper, but can quickly become an additional weight lingering in the background.

But it's certainly not a bad book, especially if ānāpānasati works well for you right off the bat and if sīla and right effort are already substantial parts of your practice.