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2020 Vision
lobster
Crusty Veteran
From another resolution/thread:
Do more meditation 🙏🏻😄
I am about to formally meditate.
How?
At the moment, I sometimes don't use a cushion. That is a yogi thing as my half and full lotus capacity returns.
I will most likely just sit
https://kirkville.com/just-sitting-the-zen-practice-of-shikantaza/
Maybe I will chant a bit
or think myself less silly
Anyway that is the vision/plan
How is yours?
4
Comments
I’ve recently started a process of self-observation, centred around the question “what am I?” I find it interesting to note what it does to me... it seems to encourage me to be more integrated, more direct, more spontaneous. It’s similar to just sitting, except that you focus on the direct experience of what you are for a period of time. It’s like meditating on the breath, except that when the mind wanders you bring it back to the direct experience.
That's interesting to me because I've been doing the same thing. I ask "What am I doing?" but it means the same.
In this way, I think we are training to better recognize the path of least resistance and be more in tune with the natural way things work.
I technically don't celebrate the new year until spring but I do have a feeling about 2020.
It feels auspicious somehow and not just on a personal level. I can't shake the feeling that the next year is going to be huge on the global scale.
Attention has never felt more important than it does right now.
My Mother has convinced herself that, as it's a Leap year, it's going to be a disaster, according to her, every leap year, is.
I told her that this year is the exception. it's 2020, which means super vision, a way to look ahead and plan with good foresight and a clear mind.... she hopes I'm right. I think I am. I echo your sentiment, @David.
That sounds healthy questing for many of us. It is a bit like the greeting, 'What's happening?' It is kinda vague but also invites us into the natural state of being.
Sitting in emptiness in one sense is the point of Zen type practice. However as the Mahayana remind us, 'Emptiness is form and form emptiness'. So in this sense we can watch the mind filling and emptying, wandering and returning, forgetting and remembering, turmoil and stilling ...
... or as the Christians and Jews say in Psalm 46:10
'Be still, and know that I am Cod; I will be salted ...'
Yum.
Yes, and it is also a turning inside. When you ask yourself ‘what am I?’ Or ‘what am I doing?’ then you focus on what comes from the inside, it’s an increased focus on that. You may never get a precise answer, that’s why my question is concerned with the direct experience and not so much with a verbalisation.
Though it’s inevitable that with that sort of mental concentration you get that movement of wandering and returning, I don’t think that’s the main meaning of the exercise. I think it is more about the focus within and trying to arrive at the direct experience of what it is to be human.
Here's an Interesting Take on Necessary 2020 Vision:
Only You Can Prevent Dystopia
By Farhad ManjooJan. 1, 2020
from The New York Times
https://nytimes.com/2020/01/01/opinion/social-media-2020.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
My best advice for meditation and people just starting is not to set a long time , start 10 minutes and do single point meditation with your eyes open. Each time your mind wonders inside to thoughts, honor them, and tell yourself to go back to the object you have your attention one. Great for me cause my attention span is all over the place. But at the same time my likes to unload I dealt with memories and grudges in my first 10 min of meditation. After awhile the mind will clear out all the excess debris mindsets.
Or you can forego a visual point and focus on a feeling such loving-kindness(metta) or generosity(dana) and maintain that for a small time frame. You can think about how you see it around you or how you would like to see it around you. I try to not include me in what I see and just try to observe the good things other do. This is conceptual meditation.
Also, Lamrim practice is good if you have a good guide or breakdown.
What kind of breakdown should I have? A nervous one or a physical one?
I do mine my sitting, comfortably, in a chair and chanting. There is no time requirement, minimum or maximum. I have elected to do so for two or more hours each day. Sometimes, I get "in the groove" only to glance at the clock to realize I have been going oblivious to time and the moment was in fact one or two hours. Often, it involves a mental warm up, where it takes a few minutes to slip into the rhythm naturally. I split my time, usually, as life happens, but I do the total of two or more hours each day. Yes, some days, it takes more effort. Such is life.
Whatever your method, do not punish yourself. Practice is practice, not an iron clad contract. Relax, enjoy, persist.
Peace to all
Quite often we as metta-humans and ex-men 🌈 must transcend learning from turmoil and chaos. That is for normals. The ignoring, the life buffeted, the ignorant, phone zombie viral me-me 'culture'. 😉
Pah!
Is that ignorance where we want to be? 🤦🏼♂️🙊💀
2020 is plan Be. 😌🙏🏽💗
I have been doing lots of Tonglen during our fire emergency and also mantras of Om Mani Padme Hum and The Green Tara mantra
ah ha, multi-threaded free form dzogchen ⭐️👍🏿😌... too advanced for me ... 🤪
The monkey mind exposed needs a settling. So useful suggestions you mention. I like guided settling/meditation 💗🙏🏽🦞
As a comedic atheist friend reminded me ...
'When I heard of all the worthy prayers and pujas ... I felt such a fool sending money to charities that could materially help the situation ...'
Too soon?
Why not invent something new, maybe a psychosocial breakdown?
Or perhaps insufficiently buddhist. What we need is a Tibetan marching band to keep up morale with their discordant clashing sounds.
... as if the Ozzies and their livestock and animals don't have enough to contend with ...
I feel it might be more useful to send in some karmically overweight lamas by parachute to live off their fasting and fulfill their Bodhisattva vows by tending to distressed people and other sentiments ...
What am I missing?
I understand your glib replies are meant to elicit smiles in this time, but I have to apologise for not finding the humour at the moment. Besides trying to help here if I can (Kangaroo Island is devastated), having family straddling two fire zones means I am just too tired - emotionally and physically - to be witty in reply.
I know there are other Aussies on here and I don't know their proximity to the fires. but speaking only for myself, I'm so "fired out" that it's an effort to even get an update on the fires these days. The devastation so far has just made me almost numb.
Yes
Totally take your point, @FeistyGibblets and can empathise. Please don't think though that the glib comments are in any way intended to make light of the situation, or to trivialise the tragedy that has overwhelmed the entire continent.
We honour all Life as sacred and deserving; and sometimes, humour is used to mask the pain and helplessness, that can overwhelm those who care so much.
A good friend of mine is an Ambulance Medic, and is witness nearly every day, to tragic circumstances which, however remediable they might be, will forever affect the lives of those involved, at times, irreparably. She confesses to me that Medic humour is very 'black'..; this above all, relieves the tension, and creates a barrier between coping, and depression (in fact, Medics often undergo Counselling to help relieve any lasting effects of the proximity to tragedy their jobs entail).
So please be assured. We neither mock nor ignore the extreme feelings engendered by this monumental catastrophe.
We send our love, and strength.
With much Metta and Karuna.
Thanks @federica - usually I can appreciate humour as a release, and I appreciate your response. Admittedly, I have not been here long enough to understand people's characteristics and nuances. In time I am sure I will.
It never rains until the clouds are fired up ...
When it is personalised the dukkha is realer? Not really ... it is just less avoidable ...
Have a grain for your fortuitous life ...
https://sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg85.htm
As has been said somewhere:
Let your life see what your eyes cannot.