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What do you guys do when your demotivated?
Im a bit demotivated about my practice at the moment - what do you guys do when you get like this? Ill assum 50% will say take a break. But is there any alternative
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Grow and nurture your desire to cultivate methodically.
And to achive a long term goal they must be. So that is why inspiration is so vital in cultivation. Growing and nurturing that desire to cultivate comes out of
1. Talking to your teacher or spiritual friends.
2. Reading or watching media
3. Engaging in an spiritual activity together with fellow practitionars.
You wanted to Achive Jhana and superceede the self experience? Work on that.
See cultivation is not only about sitting down and staring at a rock or counting breaths. It is also about getting oneself to sit down.
As it is now your mind has defeated you. Remember all the times it strays during meditation defying your will to stay focused?
Now it has done a far worse thing by getting you to think you do not want to cultivate!
Are you going to let it win?
Who is the master of yourself and your life? Your mind or you?
Tibetan monks can even decide when to die. That is being in control of your life!
Victor
The key to focus is more focus not thinking about unfocus!
IMOE
/Victor
Metta,
Ash
With metta,
Sabre
Do a shorter but attentive practice.
How do you get back to the meditation object when the mind strays?
In the beginning you catch yourself wandering, regret it, feel discontent for straying and then try to figure out when you started straying and then think about getting back on the meditation object and then finally get back.
When you have practised for a while then you automatically know when your mind strays and get back on the object at once without going through the other phases.
In the end you can keep your keen for hours.
Now compare that to getting back to cultivation when demotivated.
Either you can wallow in discontent over your demotivation and try to figure out why you became demotivated while thinking about getting back to cultivation and then start to find motivation to getting back to it and then finally getting back to practise.
Or you can skip most of it and just focus on the part where you get back to pracise which will save you some time.
All fenomena is anatta and everything is subject to anicca. There is no more objective value in either way only the worth you ascribe it. So what do you think? Which path appeals to you? Well to me it seems pretty simple...
It is the wolf you feed that grows the other one dwindles. Why feed the bad one? Let it dwindle and disapear.
/Victor
The Buddha said to practice compassion. And why should you practice compassion Victor? You can get angry, realize you are not supposed to be angry and think "HMM oh right i should get back to my beautiful benevolent practice and pretend like I don't feel anything!" BUT... more than likely that will get you no where. See if you're actually going to develop at all you're going to need to know why it is that you're supposed to be doing certain actions.
Ironically we just had this discussion in Sangha tonight. It was a wonderful talk and there was a straight consensus that the buddha said aversion was bad and thus nothing can be accomplished by avoiding but rather only more suffering will occur. Now if you were to sit and meditate on your discomfort and see you're unmotivated you will likely come to an answer rather than pretending that if you close your eyes it will go away. You can't do that with anger, you develop compassion by seeing others suffering. If they say something mean to you, they are likely disillusioned and suffering themselves, so you will learn to cultivate compassion rather than anger.
The buddha also said that Wise Effort, in the 3rd practice of it, that you cannot avoid unwholesome states, but rather you should cultivate unwholesome into wholesome states. I don't know about you, but when I am angry or sad or in doubt or afraid, I can't just turn these states around magically with practice and simply become happy, or generous or compassionate etc... I have to figure out why in the heck I am feeling this way, then I will figure out how I can cultivate something wholesome, and why it is unwholesome.
It is not enough to say "Angry is bad" why is being angry bad? Don't just do something because you're supposed to act as a buddhist acts and do as a buddhist does, but rather cultivate that within yourself. Why else have compassion for others if you have not looked at the fact that you harm them and the we are all interconnected. The buddha wouldn't have become enlightened had he simply not identified with the problems in the world and found a personal way for himself to fix it.
Ultimately Meh_ that is all it is, finding your own practice, what works best for you. No one can tell you, not I, not victor... not even the buddha that you should do something. If you find a method that works for you and you're happy then by all means ignore me.
@Victor I hope your practice is working, I hope you find happiness.
Ash
So if you have faith in the Dhamma then there should be no reason to ponder why you are supposed to do certain thing because the reasons should be pretty clear.
If you do not have faith in the Dhamma then meditation might not be the highest priority for you.
Well maybe you mean the same but as I recall there are four efforts. To subdue the unwholesome, to develop the wholesome, to keep the subdues unwholesome from returning and to promote the wholesome that is there.
This is also cultivation. And falls into the category of practise that I call culitvating Right Understanding of the Four noble truths. I do not mean generall pondering but evaluating these toughts,feelings considering the Dhamma and what it teaches. That is the fastest way to come to grips with what is ailing you anyway.
The OP:s question was about feeling demotivated from cultivating at all. Yes I agree. Thank you and the same to you!
Victor