Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Confused
betaboy
Veteran
Namaste,
I can meditate for at least 20 minutes (watching the breath, that is) without feeling restless or bored. Two problems, though: thoughts just come and go, and although I don't get caught up in them, they're still there ... floating in the background, so to speak.
Second, nothing extraordinary happens. I watch, watch, and watch. And that's that. Nothing happens. I know people say one should never expect anything, all experiences must be set aside, we shouldn't be attached to any sensation etc. etc. But the reason I am asking is that one needs some hint - anything - to motivate one, to make one sit down on the cushion the next day. It's in this connection I am asking - if 'not meditating' and 'meditating' both feel the same way, one may as well opt for the former. There has to be some qualitative, and it's this difference I am looking for.
I hope someone can clear my doubts about this.
BB
I can meditate for at least 20 minutes (watching the breath, that is) without feeling restless or bored. Two problems, though: thoughts just come and go, and although I don't get caught up in them, they're still there ... floating in the background, so to speak.
Second, nothing extraordinary happens. I watch, watch, and watch. And that's that. Nothing happens. I know people say one should never expect anything, all experiences must be set aside, we shouldn't be attached to any sensation etc. etc. But the reason I am asking is that one needs some hint - anything - to motivate one, to make one sit down on the cushion the next day. It's in this connection I am asking - if 'not meditating' and 'meditating' both feel the same way, one may as well opt for the former. There has to be some qualitative, and it's this difference I am looking for.
I hope someone can clear my doubts about this.
BB
0
Comments
Namaste
Spiny
You might find this Buddhist meditation series helpful. The first one is an introduction.
with kind wishes,
D.
.
"There is no promise of love and light or visions of any kind-no angels, no devils. Nothing happens: it is absolutely boring. Sometimes you feel silly. One often asks the question, "Who is kidding whom? Am I on to something or not?" You are not on to something. Traveling the path means you get off everything, there is no place to perch. Sit and feel your breath, be with it."
"The first point in destroying ego's game is the strict discipline of sitting meditation practice. No intellectual speculation, no philosophizing. Just sit and do it."
But as many meditators will tell you, it takes time and practice. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
In your case, I'd suggest an aid to focus on the quiet mind such as listening to chanting in the background or using a mantra. That gives your mind something to focus on besides the thought generator in your head.
But if you want something different, you'll have to extend the meditation until sensory deprivation kicks in, use a meditation guide to help you achieve self-hypnotic states of altered consciousness, or do like the founder of my own chosen school of Buddhism, Master Seung Sahn, who went off to a mountaintop on a quest. He ate nothing but ground up pine needles, took cold baths and meditated nonstop. Eventually he started hallucinating. All right, we refer to them as visions, but that's only because he used this opportunity to learn about himself.
For the rest of us, short meditations allow us to become familiar with our quiet mind, minus the busywork that keeps us occupied all day long. It's boring. Our minds crave stimulation. It's why laying on a beach in the tropics seems like paradise, until you've spent a few days doing it.
Other times I try (with varying degrees of success) to just observe my breath. I am by no means an expert though.
In metta,
Raven
As for the 2nd, how long have you been practicing?
Look at it this way- if, in the thousands of years that meditation practices have been taking place, it was discovered that something extraordinary happens in 20 minutes of meditation, then everyone in the world would be doing it and the world would be a very different place.
Nothing extraordinary is going to happen, especially if you expect it to, because that expectation is a form of grasping and then dissatisfaction too.
Just let it be what it is and realize the extraordinary nature of the ordinary.
Here is a small, true story that may or may not have some bearing. Once upon a time, I used to get together with a Zen chum once a week. We would sit for an hour or so and then go out to dinner, usually Thai. One evening, after sitting, I asked him, "Did you ever notice that whether it was a good sitting or a bad sitting, still something good happens?" He looked at me and replied, "Yeah." And since neither of us could think of anything useful to add, we went out to dinner.
Trying to weave wondrous tales about 'something' is understandable, perhaps, but in the end it is like trying to describe the taste of chocolate. You either take a taste or you don't. When things are "exactly the same," people know instinctively that something is wrong. Nothing is ever "exactly the same." No philosophy or religion is needed -- nothing is ever "exactly the same." This breath is "just like" the one that preceded it ... but it is completely new, utterly itself, and refuses any comparison. It is the same ... but different. It is the realization and actualization of change that creeps up on all of us when on the cushion. Bit by bit, we slow down long enough to realize the obvious, to stop trying to escape the inescapable. 'Something' is going on. To ignore it doesn't work very well. To grasp it is impossible. So....
We sit and try to find our own common sense... you know, the sense that was never missing.
With
Metta