Going to the Gym
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
This winter is looking like a slower work season, so I got a membership at a gym to help keep active. I like going and its easy when I don't have much going on. What is interesting is noticing all the things being there activates in my mind. Or rather all the things in my mind that haven't been let go of going to the gym activates.
I think all these things are fairly subtle movements of mind, but they're things that are usually buried. Like trying not to creep on the young attractive women, or judge the overweight people. There's also a seeming obsession with imagining romantic relationships, or who I'd have a shot with, etc.
On one level its kind of misery making. On another it shows me relatively unexplored areas that need to be resolved and let go of, or worked on in some way.
Comments
Bravo! This is a fine demonstration of bringing along one's meditation from stillness into activity.
Yeah I believe due to evolution we are wired to notice potential mates. But good to not creep out any people. also good going getting exercise which is the best preventative and treatment for many diseases and just generally feels good after awhile.
It sounds like a good way to allow mindfulness to do its work. Being aware of the contents of your mind is really a good practice, and even better if you can couple it with non-judgmental letting them come and go again.
The language you use indicates you are sorting thoughts into good and bad. Creeping on younger women = bad. Judging overweight people = bad. You are already involving the minds judgment as you verbalise how you feel.
“The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.”
— Sosan, Verses on the faith mind
coincidentally I'm reading a one page article about a researchers efforts to study preventing aging negative outcomes.
By studying c elegans, or roundworms, they noticed that specimens that had an oxidative stress were resistant to some aging . And then further tests confirmed this by exposing an entire population of worms to oxidative stress. Worms are studied for one thing because you get answers in months instead of years with humans. And c elegans have biological similarity to humans apparently.
Humans can get moderate oxidative stress via exercise. It can damage us at the wrong dose, but help us at the correct level and is called hormesis. And this lab is studying the molecular and cellular level of changes from hormesis (in humans). Professor Ursula Jakob.
So longer time to live is good and more time to practice.
I'd like to think I'm discerning rather than judging, but maybe not. Like in the sense of where I'd like to end up and how I'd like to treat and think about others. "Mind as vast as the sky, behavior as fine as sand" requires some sort of distinction between this and that.
How would you phrase or think about it?
The daily living of one's Dharma practice is a form of mental gymnastics, for example exercising discretion.
Well, I generally think anything I think about other people is unnecessary and more about judgment than anything worthwhile. I try not to judge, and I usually succeed. If you are having to catch bad thoughts about judging people, then it’s already too late, the ‘judging program’ is running in your mind.
About being discerning about my own behaviour, I let kindness and compassion take my focus, I think that as long as I am not harming other people or animals or even rocks I am doing ok. I like the motto, touch the world lightly.
So I try to address my behaviour at the root, at the point of the first cause, rather than sorting out later whether my thoughts were good or bad, or my behaviour was good or bad.