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.
Sense of urgency and possibility
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
hi all,
for the past few weeks, i have been hearing talks on death meditation and how death can help in arising a sense of urgency within us for practice. i even think that i will die at some time in future, but this thought of dying does not create a sense of urgency within me.
so thought of asking you all - what arises the sense of urgency within you for your practice?
also, is knowing the ultimate truth or awakening possible without sitting meditation?
please suggest. thanks in advance.
0
Comments
I contemplate death, because that's how I will end up. And because there is resistance to death, I know I have attachments to life. These attachments cause suffering.
Alan Watts says death is a great help in this life, we never know when we are going to die. Could be today,
Contemplating this helps let go, why do I care what so and so said to me? He and I are both headed for the grave,
May as well enjoy the shapes of clouds. Human life is a transient phenomena, yet we pretend we are not going to die,
I would say awakening is very possible without sitting meditation. I base this on what other beings have said about awakening.
Some people have had awakenings with no meditation background at all.
It's all to do with how we perceive reality, not to do with how we sit.
Although some people have woken up this way too.
Any practice that leads you to Truth is what will wake us up. You could sit for a million years and never wake up if we have the wrong understanding.
Metta
First, please clarify what you consider ' a sense of urgency' to be.
How would you understand this phrase?
We don't need people afraid or not afraid by death, we need enlightened folk.
Urgently!
People have all sorts of ideas about what "awakening" means, and how it comes about. If you don't think sitting meditation is useful then don't do it.
Nothing much. I am a lazy hedgehog.
Got a lump in my throat/lymph node. Giving it a gentle pat every now and then is a pretty tangible reminder of the fragility of the dirtbag called human body.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm going to get it checked. And I have hypochondria so it might be just overreacting...)
I'm not sure how a sense of urgency relates to my practice - nothing to run from or run to.
You may answer this question yourself when you have done sufficient sitting meditation and the alternatives.
@SpinyNorman I said "Although some people have woken up with this way too (sitting meditation)"
I never once said it wasn't useful and I do sitting meditation myself.
I said it isn't the only way to @misecmisc1.
I think you must of read what I said the wrong way.
So what other methods have you tried, apart from sitting meditation?
-For me, when I contemplate the reality of my birth conditioning my death, on a good day this understanding cause my Buddha Wisdom to influence my choices to do less of what I shouldn't do and more of what I should. Then I forget, then I remember again. I am inclined towards practice, I don't know that it's a sense of urgency though. I practice because it works. I have seen tangible, personal results from reducing fetters and developing a better understanding of the illusions and impermanence of my reality.
As to sitting meditation being the only path to the truth, I think not...
Don't just pat it - give the area a gentle massage.
I don't feel a sense of urgency either, but perhaps I should. Are you satisfied with what you left or are leaving behind is the question that arises though.
No urgency @misecmisc1 ...just force of habit ie, a developed "habitual tendency" so to speak ...
Maybe, maybe not...It's best if you ask those already enlightened....
Mindfulness, Just sitting(as awareness), as apposed to concentration meditations. self inquiry( who am I?) . Contemplation(koans)
Guided meditations whilst doing anything. Dishes etc.
There was one time as a kid when it looked like I was about to die and yeah, when I got out of it I had a higher sense of urgency. But it was more like getting my priorities straight and getting rid of all the crap cluttering my head.
This feeling lasted for a couple of months and then it was back to normal.
nothing special, just the ordinary meaning of urgency. as life is impermanent and we can die at any time, so the urgency to practice to awaken to the ultimate truth or reality, to get out of this cycle of birth and death.
regarding me spending lot of time on computer, the answer is i am a software engineer, so i work through out the day on computer only
. these days i work nearly 11 hours on computer.
my practice is going no-where - or even may be not happening even, rather just passing my time casually. but i try to sit daily in the morning for nearly 20 minutes. yesterday i saw some yoga asanas in a tv programme. so today morning tried some of them, which i could remember. then sat for nearly 15 minutes in zazen posture and tried to observe my breathing.
@misecmisc1 said "my practice is going no-where - or even may be not happening even, rather just passing my time casually. but i try to sit daily in the morning for nearly 20 minutes. yesterday i saw some yoga asanas in a tv programme. so today morning tried some of them, which i could remember. then sat for nearly 15 minutes in zazen posture and tried to observe my breathing."
It sounds like you wanna be 'better' Buddhist / practicer, but I think your definition of that is incomplete. If you can make it personal, like being good at mindfulness (for me, that means I tried it, I liked it because I was lucky enough (?) to experience it as something that helps stop the modern-day merry-go-round of frenetic activities and thoughts that really end up not being very satisfying and helped me to focus and think better. I don't know your age or what your other goals are but I feel that having more bits of time where you can empty your mind might help. I just don't know - I hope you find what you're looking for.
It sounds to me as if you have stopped giving a damn.
Now - the REAL practice starts.
i am 34 years old. i have a wife and i have a 4 year old daughter, who has started her nursery class in this year. i struck spirituality by a series of incidents, but unfortunately or fortunately dont know after my daughter was born. i guess having a family helps me to show me my defilements, how mean-minded i can be on many occassions, how easily my anger gets stirred up. now my wife has recently again started to press me for having a second child, i have tried to explain to her in many ways that what implications second child might have, but she is adamant on it and she is suffering too much on it. then i even asked her - will she be able to raise the second child on her own? to which she in desperate anger said that she will. so mentally i have prepared myself to go for the second child now. this is what is going on currently in my life.
now coming to what i want in practice - actually on roads, i have seen people with different disablilities or born in so poor families that the only option for them to survive is begging, watched people living in slums in documentaries etc - my current life is very fortunate since i got good parents, who took good care of me and helped me in getting good education, which helped me in getting good job, which helps me in raising my family. but i do not want another birth, because who knows how bad it can be in human realm or there are many chances it may not be in human realm even. so in a way, i want to escape this cycle of birth and death. but this even does instigates a sense of urgency within me, because sometimes i even do not remember about these things for many weeks, leave about days. but seeing the lack in my concentration and my inability to focus on my breathing for even 5 seconds, seems like i might just waste my this life by not reaching anywhere in my practice.
I think you are showing all the classic symptoms of depression.
Honestly, I do.
Is here anyone you can speak to? Seriously, can you confide in your doctor, or seek some form of therapy, be it in tablet form or counselling?
You're in a rut. You feel hemmed in by circumstance, and you feel a lack of something.
I think you need support of the medical kind.
You will not know another birth - in that sense, whether you want it or not, you shall not know it. Good and bad are relative and a desire to escape is born from these constituents - where would you escape to? You can't cheat - imagine being your own judge - there is no escape.
Perhaps it doesn't motivate you as it is only part of the solution or no solution at all - for example, I am thirsty, I drink - that is a solution. If I am thirsty, I don't feel any urgency towards eating bread, I doubt I would remember it in the depths of thirst.
In my opinion, your focus on 'escape' is an issue - why is it that you do not take the same potential focus and dedication and apply it to your actual life, rather than a fantasy one? You have a family to take care of and to love and they will also take care of you and love you - is there a coherent reason why fantasy should take precedence?
@misecmisc1 said:
now coming to what i want in practice...i do not want another birth, because who knows how bad it can be in human realm or there are many chances it may not be in human realm even. so in a way, i want to escape this cycle of birth and death.
...but this even does instigates a sense of urgency within me, because sometimes i even do not remember about these things for many weeks, leave about days. but seeing the lack in my concentration and my inability to focus on my breathing for even 5 seconds, seems like i might just waste my this life by not reaching anywhere in my practice.
So this is the thorn in the side that she wants a baby and you don't. Truth will out, heh. I understand. I think you could ask her if she'd like to accompany you to a good therapist or talk it over with a mutual friend? Is that possible?
I don't really feel a sense of urgency anymore but that's likely because it fuels my impatience.
I have no sense of urgency in my life to spur me on in my practice.
Only the joy I experience in savouring the Dharmic path as I tread.
If anything, it is certainly not the contemplation of death, but my basking in the ephemeral beauty of life, instead.
I enjoy Samsara and I'm in no haste to break the samsaric loop anytime soon.
@misecmisc1
seeing the lack in my concentration and my inability to focus on my breathing for even 5 seconds, seems like i might just waste my this life by not reaching anywhere in my practice.
The only other person that I've ever run into who was able to focus well enough in life but had a 5 second attention span when formally meditating, simply had personal issues that he was so strongly avoiding that his mind kept shutting down whenever it was challenged by any attempt at meditating.
In other words it was not his focus in general that he had problems with.
It was just that he had a higher investment in avoiding facing his personal issues than in putting up anything that might challenge those investments.
I don't know if it will help, but you can pm me for more details if this rings a bell with you.
I don't know if this helps but when you meditate and try and achieve something during it, you suffer when you don't get it. I.e. Trying to still the mind.
A really helpful approach with this is just sit and don't do anything. Drop all expectations, let thoughts do whatever they want. You just stay as awareness. It's who you are anyway. Just passively watch.
This is a very effective form of meditation.
It teaches you the art of letting go. Of everything. We suffer when we try to achieve something contrary to what's going on.
Spot-on.... I am thinking along the same lines, as it happens....
What you're really describing here is an approach to mindfulness.
臨終正念 I don't know how to translate this word in english but roughly this means 'mindfulness at deathbed'. what this tells you is how important the moment of your last breath and how this moment will affect your next life.
also there are some teachings about
28 different appearances(相) of death. and you can tell where that dying person would go or be born by looking(judging) at that 相 ( appearance ), its written in Āryadhāraṇīśvararāja-sūtra.
so I try to prepare for the last moment just in case it comes unexpected : ) and I do think about it while I am practicing( not all the time though)
I can only say things that I find the source that I can add here otherwise somebody will come and say I am wrong or I made it up. My teacher of the Law told many things but somethings he did not mention which sutra or exact source. too bad.
I could spend hours trying to find the english name for it and the name of the sutra.
@SpinyNorman hmmm I think there maybe a difference in my practices. Maybe I'm doing mindfulness wrong.
So for me mindfulness is doing dishes, but completely engaged in doing the dishes. If thoughts arise, they are noted and back to dishes. But the objects of focus changes but always In reality and as non conceptual as possible. Simply experiencing.
Just sitting that I was referring to is absolutely no object and subject if you can help it, just simply let what's going on, go on. Zero manipulation or intentions. Purely letting everything just do it's thing. I think this is Zazen? I'm not sure.
Yes, I see. I usually do anapanasati during seated meditation as I like to have some basic structure, but I realise there are quite a number of different approaches.
Getting back to the tittle of this thread for a moment...
A sense of urgency and possibility
Anyone else think that some teachings can sometimes start to resemble a Kardashian soap opera.
I get why this teaching has been implied by many revered teachers over the years but I also wonder if these are the exasperated teachings of masters trying to get their own disciples off their teachers coat tails and on to doing their own practice.
I have seen this around particularly charismatic teachers where much of what attracts disciples to them, tends to also have those followers mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.
If so, the real fault lies in how the teacher's been selling the Buddha's practice, not in the practice itself.
If this has been happening to you, then mustering whatever urgency is possible to help you get off that lawn chair that you've mistaken for a zafu, makes sense.
If that doesn't happen to be your personal difficulty though, then just simply committing to this one present moment of practice, supplants any need to artificially generate any sense of urgency or make ones practice anymore of a soap opera than it might already be.
The sense of urgency arises from knowing that death could come at any moment--you could die tomorrow, OP. So think: how have you lived your life so far? Have you made the most of opportunities to show compassion to those around you, and contribute to the building of a more just society? Or have you wasted this precious time on Earth mostly in self-indulgence and amusements?
The meditation that's done in this regard is to lie down, and imagine yourself on your deathbed. You may be surrounded by family, or you may be alone at that point in your life. Imagine your body getting weaker, your strength ebbing. Your thoughts pass to a life review. What have you accomplished in your life? Were you kind and thoughtful to people, or were there too many harsh moments? Did you reach out to the world in a positive way, or were you mostly absorbed in your own problems and challenges? Do you find yourself wishing you had more time, a reprieve from death, or are you fairly content with having spent your time constructively, and are able to let go of life peacefully?
This is the meditation that tends to cause a re-ordering of priorities in life.
Despite fantasies of lotus born Buddhas, perfect from birth, most of us are born ignorant and will die ignorant, through our own efforts or lack thereof. People don't want to hear that, they want to hear that they have many lifetimes, that Jesus will save them, that special chanting will magic up an après death (but not pre-death) fantasy land. These people (also known as us) want 'the truth' but certainly not to hear it ...
This does not mean leaving for a mountain cave, it means living with intensity of an attentive kind. Don't say no one told you ...