Sitting comfortably
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Over the years my sitting has changed. How about you?
At the moment I am sitting without a cushion. Chanting very quietly. And modifying/relaxing any posture stiffness, The relaxation is part of how I am doing the Medicine Buddha chanting/focus. So the mudra/hand position goes through some interesting convolutions/softening.
I am starting to use the half lotus again but am in no rush to return to full lotus, kneeling or corpse meditation (yoga nidra).
For me there are some important reminders:
-medition is mostly attentive awareness
-'Bad' meditation is still pretty good
-find comfortable, not more suffering
... be interested in others insights/changes/preferences ...
Am I too broad in my new ageyness?
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/the-12-major-types-of-meditation-explained-simply
Comments
Talking of very broad definitions of meditation, here is a description of Osho Dynamic Meditation:
So you can see, variations of posture while focussing on breathing are rather mild changes from what is possible while still calling it meditation… Admittedly ‘the dynamic’ as it used to be known in the communes was meant to be a cathartic experience.
There are as many forms of meditation as there are forms of love. Some focus on comfort. The Buddha paid little attention to the seeking of comfort or discomfort and called his particular practice between them, "the middle way".
I think there is an important distinction to be clarified in** Buddhist** sitting meditation between searching for comfort and being able to accept where you presently are, whether that is comfortable or not. Most folks who get involved with meditation in order to find comfort, and who never transcend beyond that motivation, end up falling away from such a practice when faced with the physical, emotional, and mental challenges that inevitably disrupt that comfort.
Birth, old age, disease, and death are not comfortable and will be everyone's past, present & future experiences.
Yes, it's good to choose a posture that allows you to remain alert as opposed to sleepy, and grounded as opposed to unnecessarily distracted, but the Buddha's path towards suffering's cessation is about the simple and direct unraveling of all of our attachments, whether they are comfort supplying or not.
Sit in a comfortable position. If lotus position hurts, you will be focusing on he pain.
Thanks due as usual.
I feel @how reflects closely what sitting is about. Attentive awareness rather than the convoluted high created by the hyper ventilation that @Jeroen mentions or the masochistic serotonin buzz coming from intentional discomfort that @Lionduck reminds us is ignorance.
Are we trying to become clown drunkards like Chogyam Trungpa or Deepak Chopra celebs? Do we not-meditate because we have a higher misunderstanding? Not all of us can meditate, without the distraction and discomfort of attention?
I meditate because it continues to be a form of dharma. Not drama, dogma or dodo convention ...
For me, the type of meditation that I’ve settled on doing from time to time is shikantaza, just sitting. I find it beneficial to put everything aside and just focus on sitting for a while. I don’t really hold with getting the posture exactly right or the spine exactly straight, I stay with the way I naturally sit — focusing the mind, what I consider the core of the meditation.
I try to find ease in the body, to find a posture which is without stress. Therefore I also don’t worry about shifting every so often to relieve built-up tensions, although I do try to maintain a stillness in the body while meditating. I usually sit for a short period, not more than 20 minutes.
It is about living a meditative life, I try to carry my meditation with me through the rest of the day, I try to be alert to living from reaction and what I am reacting to when I do things, that is a bit of mental process that I try to encourage, but for the rest I try to live in silent ease.
Hmm for me meditation works with the practice of letting go. Whether you can consider that a higher understanding is questionable. But while sitting things will come up and this will teach you about what you have not yet let go of, whether it’s the voice of your wife telling you to go clip the hedge in the yard, or worries about the energy bill. These things have deeper roots, and one should examine them, preferably after meditation, but examining them is all part of letting them go.
So meditation helps with knowing and cleaning the mind. Of course, many things only come up during the day, when you are actually doing things, and so carrying awareness and insight with us during the day so that when you encounter a piece of reaction from a long-held trauma you can identify it and tuck it away to be worked on later.
good practice from @Jeroen
Meanwhile …
Tee hee … sure @federica would have spotted the irony right away. That useless crustacean can barely spell meditation … hardly attentive. In my defence, I was rushing due to chore commitments on a small phone screen … Pah! Excuses?
… Talking of excuses I had a chance to download a mind machine app called Luminate, which uses sound and strobing lights to generate potential changes in consciousness and/or epileptic fits. I had to go through such a convoluted start up procedure, that involved 🤬🤯🤐some specialised lobster fuming, swearing and general wrong speech or miss spoke in neo-right-speech …
Worth the half an hour set up? The aggravation? I would be better off watching one of @Linc horrific heavy metal vids, with eyes closed and sound set to mute … 🫨🫣🙉🙈
I would rather slap myself with a wet fish … Glad to try it none the less. There are many such apps. Anyone find them helpful?
Next!
Slapping oneself with a wet fish sounds eminently suitable for a crustacean. 😂
I’ve not yet tried an app of such a type, I’m sure they are available for the Mac though, I might have a look. I’m somewhat light sensitive but it makes me sneeze, it doesn’t make me go into epileptic fits.
Also a sneezer. Sometimes when I sneeze hard enough it feels like I come back as a different person. Does that count @lobster ?
Everything counts.
Even the rippling universe.
In this sense (above my pay grade) it is not us who ripples outward and effects BUT the universe that counts/ripples with us.
You might call this synchronicity gone wild or Yab-Yum or a hired form of emptiness as in Mahayana.
Tee Hee! … but who counts if not everyone …
Even the Stoics (Whatever they are …)
Absolutely
I am just a sitting bum. Sit I do. At least …
“I care to sit. I do, indeed, sit to care”
Here is the long version/context …
https://www.rzc.org/news/sitting-with-care/
Sit Stand, Walk, Dance...celebrate the Way, celebrate life.