Best Of
Re: Letting thoughts come and go
Generally you're taught to anchor the mind to the breath. So you count and pay attention to the breathe and what you notice that you get distracted by thoughts. often we are absorbed into a thought story day dream and then we snap out of it, like waking from a dream. that is a the gross form of thoughts. but there are also very subtle undercurrents of thoughts and stories that are fragments, which are very difficult to see unless we have a very refined attention. one can also attend to proto-thought patterns which deal with sensation, which is not really a thought as image, but as felt sensation. it still carries the same object fixation of there being "something" there.
in mindfulness you come to a point where attention moves out but simultaneously you are aware as the watcher of those thoughts and perceptions. it feels very much like a fullness or a sensation of centeredness, in which thoughts arise, abide and cease. what remains is the mind/watcher/cognitive quality. this is still dualistic in nature, but is indispensable training of the mind.
if you're looking for non dualistic teachings on mindfulness then you have to seek a teacher, who can point out to your mind how to discern the liberating principle apart from thoughts, sensations and perceptions. then thinking won't be much of a problem because there will be no more link between a subject and object, hence no continuity of karmic impressions.
taiyaki
Zazen & Metacognition: Beginner's thoughts
When sitting, you just sit. It sounds so simple, but the exercise becomes quite considerable particularly when you try longer sittings.
From what I've learnt, you sit and allow all sense gates to enter a state of calm awareness without letting any become intensively overloaded, especially if this sense is the Mind, the great pilot of this human skeleton.
While meditation practice should not be orientated towards Enlightenment nor self-improvement, there is certain aspect in self-improvement which helps to get rid of the self. Though my question is, when is this dangerous as in "creating or feeding the ideal of illusory self" which will then just prolongue suffering? Maybe this is just the way it should be. A positive well-round self-concept will more likely engage in constructive thoughts which will lead to mindful acts in real life. Then, someday, just like from what I understood the Bodhissatva Path "project" consists of: when we are all "freed" or aware of this freedom, we can drop and renunciate and reach the other Shore completely.. but, to then re-start this cycle again?
If it is infinite, then why to completely renounce, why not simply continue on the path accepting certain attachments which are intrinsic to human nature, while accepting the Four Noble Truths?
This is why I sometimes like to understand zazen in terms of metacognition.
"Metacognition is, put simply, thinking about one’s thinking. More precisely, it refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and performance. Metacognition includes a critical awareness of a) one’s thinking and learning and b) oneself as a thinker and learner."
This aspect has definitively helped to be able to continue following precepts and wholesomeness.
Peace!
Kotishka
Share the knowledge of wholesome deeds
In the past I learned from my christian friends that a good deed disclosed is a wasted deed in the eyes of God. That a good deed should be done and never spoken of. This is a fairly widely held belief in my area of the world.
I now understand the reasoning behind this belief. The doing of the good deed is not for the purpose of bragging. The fear is that incentivizing this disclosure leads to an expectation of praise as the sole purpose behind doing good deeds. It becomes a trade of sorts rather than a wholesome deed and loses some merit as result of desire for praise as payment.
However keeping good deeds to oneself reduces the number of good deeds witnessed by others. Good deeds witnessed by others inspire others to carry out good deeds. It amplifies good deeds and proliferates the idea of doing good deeds. More people do good deeds as a result. I've experienced this just recently with the sharing of picking up trash while hiking.
Knowledge and expression of good deeds should be shared as it amplifies the reach of the good deed. If the concern is bragging and desire for praise, simply check the intentions of the expression for this desire and remove it to the best of ability before expressing the good deed to others.
Happy deeding.
Re: Letting thoughts come and go
This will not be new information but is something I use to check myself occasionally when my own mentally starts dominating a sitting.
One of the analogies of letting thoughts come and go that I've liked, came from the abbess of a Zen Monastery that was in close proximity to the main freeway.
She likened thoughts (in formal meditation) to that freeway traffic.
That a meditator was like someone sitting under a busy bridge that was active with that traffic and was simply practicing the art of allowing it all to arrive and pass overhead without trying to attach, detach or ignore any of it.
Learning how to be that witness that can observe all the coming and going of that traffic without becoming a hitchhiker or a traffic cop in response to it.
Here, a differentiation between the observer and the observed can become established enough to stop empowering our habituated identity reactions to the traffic.
Here, it is possible to awaken to and fully reside within this present moment, completely aware of our arising, living and departing thoughts, and yet no longer be identity bound by that traffic.
It was not a bad teaching on a hilly section of highway, where heavy trucks could randomly and noisily apply their jake brakes in their long descent past us despite being in a monastically pastoral pine setting.
how
Re: The spiritual person after the search is over
@Jeroen said:
Meditation shouldn’t become a burden, if you force yourself in any way you lose the point. Don’t will the mind to become still, just let it do its thing and recognise these are merely thoughts. You don’t have to do anything, don’t get carried away, just observe and be refreshed.
Good reminder. Willing the mind still is the mind still willing. Just be still, no need to will.
Re: The spiritual person after the search is over
Buddhism approaches things differently from the new age audience to which Touber writes, that is true. It specialises in the long path, while Tijn’s public are after a much quicker fix, hence also the name of his book, a crash course in enlightenment.
I think here we also come across the difference of a religion, where in Buddhism you take refuge, and the attitude of a seeker, who may or may not ever stop seeking. And in the east you have more support for these attitudes. There is not such an immersive form of wisdom in the west as in the east, and I think whatever we can do to grow it here is a good thing.
In a way what we search for is a connection to ourselves, to the source of our being which has gotten obscured and tired over the course of our years of life. Lao Tzu says that a man of knowledge gains something every day, while a man of Tao loses something. In a way this process of returning to the source, of laying down burdens, of becoming ever more in tune with the way of existence is reinvigorating.
Meditation shouldn’t become a burden, if you force yourself in any way you lose the point. Don’t will the mind to become still, just let it do its thing and recognise these are merely thoughts. You don’t have to do anything, don’t get carried away, just observe and be refreshed.
Jeroen
Re: Zazen & Metacognition: Beginner's thoughts
From Dreamers and their Shadows:
"Don't move, Just die. Over and over.
Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now,
because you have only this moment.
Not even enlightenment will help you now,
because there are no other moments.
With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully.
Don't move. Just die. Over and over."
taiyaki
Re: Buddhist quotes
"Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it."
-- Ajahn Chah
Re: Thoughts on Plogging: Mindfulness of Dog Poo, Beer cans and broken wine bottles
I find that the routes that I clean upon, slowly end up being littered much less than they formally were.
It's almost as if, litter encourages more littering behavior, the way if one person pulls out their cell phone for a gander, those in close vicinity often follow suite, or how one yawner in a group elicits the yawns of their fellows. Now I even see others cleaning up on my routes in-between my ploggings.
One commercial market that supplied a lot of take-out food and used to be a perpetual dumping zone for cast-off food containers, after 10 or 15 of my plogging passes, now sends out some of its employees at the end of the day on litter patrol.
I think it encourages folks to see the connectedness of a shared space within life's terrarium, rather than as isolated entities of a me-first mentality.
how
Re: Buddhist quotes
"Enlightenment is Absolute Cooperation with the Inevitable !"
~Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello~
( in other words Go with the flow )
Shoshin1