Best Of
Re: Getting better "blog"
@marcitko said:
For years now I've found it difficult to meditate but found great benefit in sports - for the same reason you state - that it ground me back to the body and taught me a lot.
I think you are totally doing the right thing by being mindful of what is beneficial to you. Meditation is not right for everyone, doing it in small quantities may be exactly what you need.
Jeroen
Re: The unconscious and the superconscious
I found this book interesting , it's not quite what you are on about but interesting all the same...Check out page 23 "The five flavours of Ch'an" It explains the composition of the Mind and the execution of Ch'an...
The Sweet Dews of Ch'an by Rev Cheng Kuan
Shoshin1
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
"A young nurse practiced meditation with Ajaan Fuang several days running, and finally asked him one day, 'Why wasn't today's session as good as yesterday's?'
He answered: 'Meditating is like wearing clothes. Today you wear white, tomorrow red, yellow, blue, whatever. You have to keep changing. You can't wear the same set of clothes all the time. So whatever color you're wearing, just be aware of it. Don't get depressed or excited about it.'"
Ajaan Fuang
Re: Getting better "blog"
The first Mooji video of @Jeroen's post might help with the anxiety. It instructs a sort of "one task at a time" behavior. When focused like that, on just whatever one task you're doing, the mind isn't thinking about anxiety inducing things. I found even the first three minutes alone to be a good calming practice and reminder how much the mind is all over the place. I might experiment with watching it before doing a task to see if it helps keep me focused.
There was also a post on Bare Awareness a while ago by one of the other forum members. It came in useful for anxiety reduction too.
https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/bare-awareness-or-bare-attention/
Re: Getting better "blog"
@marcitko
This is probably not new info for you but hopefully is as interesting for you as it is for me. How to allow what we might think is a deficit to become training's asset?
I have practiced in the company of a number of folks in the sangha, whose own training with anxiety/depression was spoken of as the major motivation for why they ordained in the first place.
It would appear that their relative successes at addressing anxiety/depression all tended to share some common ground.
They learned within their experience of anxiety/depression, to shift their practice accordingly from its current expression of a mentally dominated imbalance to one that's more physically orientated. This offers to bring some balance to an imbalance.
Most commonly, they used the very force they used to think of as their affliction, as a governor to determine the degree to which they focused upon the physical following of their breath. When and to the degree that the anxiety/depression eventually lessened, was the degree to which they would return to their regular meditation practice. This correlating cycling between concentration and meditation not only strengthened their overall practice but it allowed them to see that what they formally thought was an affliction, was actually their teacher.
Here, where one might of formally been subject to a myopic focus upon the self, a more balanced and spacious expression of selflessness becomes possible.
While the difficulties behind these discoveries never seemed to completely disappear, and they needed to remain ever wary of their potential susceptibility to them, the habits that once beckoned out to those difficulties became the new habits of acceptance and even gratitude for the teachings they offered.
how
Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
@FleaMarket
Especially for those of us who tend to live in our minds.....
Meditation in the stillness of a formal sitting is the easiest state to see the differences between natural and manipulated thought. Here, in the stillness of meditation, our acceptance of the arising, living, and fading away of natural thought allows for a potential development of objectivity and equanimity, whereas our directing of natural thought into a deliberately manipulated thought is usually just another pandering over our ego's storyline.
A practice though is about moving the stillness in activity.... into the activity in stillness.
Of course, we need deliberate thought to survive in daily life but by bringing along the objective skills that you've developed in formal meditation into the equations of any arising, living or fading thought, our responses to it, no longer need to be dictated by a habituated storyline of our own selfishness.
As far as sexuality goes, whether in the mind or in activity, the skills of equanimity that you've developed in meditation, in any moment, are there to be practiced with.
Sexuality and desire, when met with sufficient objectivity & equanimity will usually result in harmlessness.
The same, when met with an ego's storyline will be hard pressed to not result in someone's suffering.
how
Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
@how said:
@FleaMarket
Especially for those of us who tend to live in our minds.....Meditation in the stillness of a formal sitting is the easiest state to see the differences between natural and manipulated thought. Here, in the stillness of meditation, our acceptance of the arising, living, and fading away of natural thought allows for a potential development of objectivity and equanimity, whereas our directing of natural thought into a deliberately manipulated thought is usually just another pandering over our ego's storyline.
A practice though is about moving the stillness in activity.... into the activity in stillness..
I wish it was that clear for me. I keep coming to the conclusion the only natural thought is to sit in stillness of formal sitting and continue to let all thought go. Everything else, arousal, hunger, thirst, the need to scratch an itch or relieve waste, it's all registering as directed and manipulated thinking.
Or is it the arousal, hunger, thirst...are the natural thoughts that bubble up and the directed and manipulated thoughts are the inclinations/urges of what to do about it? Hunger so I go to the fridge or I order fast food or I go to the market. Those goings are the directed thoughts? Or keeping it on topic, arousal leading to decide upon going with mind's fantasies, or internet, or the club or bar.
Objectivity and equanimity then maybe being sitting with the sensation until all the inclinations and urges subside? But in terms of food and water, one dies in days without following some directed inclination.
Natural thought being like the weeds sprouting in the garden and directed/manipulated thought being what the gardener does with the weeds once noticed. Maybe that's not a great analogy if the stillness in meditation is to watch the weed's lifespan grow and wither without taking any action at all.
Of course, we need deliberate thought to survive in daily life but by bringing along the objective skills that you've developed in formal meditation into the equations of any arising, living or fading thought, our responses to it, no longer need to be dictated by a habituated storyline of our own selfishness.
This is a hard one to grasp before fully grasping the concept of natural and directed thought. Being able to distinguish the two more readily probably improves this just by nature of knowing. At least for me, the determining between the natural and directed does not feel clear enough. Probably need to meditate more often and hang out in the mind's "chasing after meaning" less often.
Mooji’s guided invitation to freedom
I was watching this video yesterday, and I found it helpful.
I’m not very familiar with Mooji’s teachings beyond knowing that he teaches a kind of Advaita and he comes from Poonjaji and Ramana Maharshi’s lineage. So his style is to work with “pointings”, questions which aim one with some immediacy into the space within.
I think it is important not to think too much about the questions he asks, but to allow insight to manifest when you hear the question. Once you start thinking about it you’ve lost the immediacy of it. It’s self inquiry of a sort, but on me it had a kind of gentle centering effect, bringing me back home.
Jeroen
Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
@marcitko said:
A side question (for all): I found this paragraph by @how very interesting since when trying to adopt good habits/behaviors and avoid bad ones I frequently notice that it is easy to resist while it is difficult (while under "attack") but once the "attack" subsides and I think "nice, it's passed"... I still succumb. A strange phenomenon that I do not quite understand.
It's a false "passing". The actual attack is in the calm after the storm when the troops are tired and need a pick-me-up.
Re: How do you find the end of the mind?
@FleaMarket said:
It's really difficult to say with much confidence that I made up a story about an actual past life of mine but if there were to be one it would probably be that one. Some of my first impressions of Buddhism and rebirth were that I got to be a human by luck or that I wasn't supposed to find the Dharma but use up my good kamma from past lives here. Mara certainly uses that to their advantage like a rude child messes up a good sand mandala half way finished. It was going to go anyway but could you let me finish it first?
In this case Mara would actually be doing you a favour.
You were never ever going to finish the sand mandala.
The rude child that messes up your dream party is the actually the Buddha.
Everything can be pulled apart until you arrive at that which cannot!
"Just as when boys or girls are playing with little sand castles: as long as they are not free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for those little sand castles, that's how long they have fun with those sand castles, enjoy them, treasure them, feel possessive of them. But when they become free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for those little sand castles, then they smash them, scatter them, demolish them with their hands or feet and make them unfit for play.
"In the same way, Radha, you too should smash, scatter, & demolish form, and make it unfit for play. Practice for the ending of craving for form.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn23/sn23.002.than.html
