my zen training - 100 days of meditation

[fela fan]

OK, again...
Most religious people I've met are pretty happy, and religious belief, no matter what any of it's adherents will tell you, is a hugely restricting thing.



I've been talking about both.

Following an organised religion is most restricting of one's life. It tells you how to act and behave and think in many ways. It is anti-freedom. Whether it's anti-happiness i don't know.

Instead of celebrating some mythical God, celebrate life instead. Do some meditation today and celebrate life today. Celebrating life is not restrictive. Meditating is surely about dropping all restrictions.

If celebrating life is religious, then i'm religious. But that's not the same as man imposing themselves on another's life through antiquated beliefs and myths from a long bygone era, since when we've evolved by quite some way on several fronts.

 

[kyser_soze]

The thing is fela, I've yet to see you come out with a set of ideas that aren't anything more than re-heated Plato.

Also, you do read philosophers and suchlike - the threads where you talk about Fromm, for example.

Following an organised religion is most restricting of one's life. It tells you how to act and behave and think in many ways. It is anti-freedom. Whether it's anti-happiness i don't know.

Ah yes, I forgot you don't understand how choosing one's restrictions in life can be more liberating than having no restrictions whatsoever.

 

[fela fan]

The thing is fela, I've yet to see you come out with a set of ideas that aren't anything more than re-heated Plato.

Also, you do read philosophers and suchlike - the threads where you talk about Fromm, for example.



Ah yes, I forgot you don't understand how choosing one's restrictions in life can be more liberating than having no restrictions whatsoever.

Fromm was not a philosopher. Nor was he a suchlike.

I don't choose restrictions. I loosen them, or i lose them. Meditation is the way...

 

[Blagsta]

Erich Seligmann[1] Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm

 

[kyser_soze]

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I disagree, i don't think the judging mind is part of us, individually i mean. That's the bit which was conditioned into us through our upbringing, through culture and society, and often religion. It is the bit given us by society in all its wisdom (or not). Meditation offers a way to begin the process of deconditioning oneself from this judging mind. Masters i always presume have managed this totally, and for all time. I think that depends on one's environment, although i know that's not a zen thing to say. But some environments (often at the workplace) are just not conducive to being zen-like!

I think the judging part is simply the analytical mind, and judging is just one of the things it does. Its function is to analyse things, and we have a tendency to identify with that function, ignoring or forgetting the fact that it's just a tool. It's useful, but if you let it take the lead, it will consume you.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

. But not one with oneself, or with one's society, but one with the universe!

To me, the idea of becoming 'one with the universe', is a bit of romanticism. We don't even know what the universe is. We can't experience most of it, don't even know where most of it is. Imo, the best we can do, is to be ourselves, operating within our surroundings.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

This is exactly the sort of crap I'm referring to.

The discussion seemed to be proceeding without the usual namecalling and personal stuff that often happens, up to this point.

I don't agree with ff's take on it, totally, but I've got no reason to believe that your insights into life are any more or less valid than his are.

 

[fela fan]

To me, the idea of becoming 'one with the universe', is a bit of romanticism. We don't even know what the universe is. We can't experience most of it, don't even know where most of it is. Imo, the best we can do, is to be ourselves, operating within our surroundings.

Call it cosmic consciousness then. The whole system of life.

You're talking on a physical space kind of plane. Mentally and consciously and spiritually, there are no confines, our surroundings are the universe. Operating within our surroundings is operating under our conditioned persona.

Go out somewhere into the middle of the mountains where all you can see all around you are mountains. Now tell me you're not one with them!

All it really is is separating the human-imposed world with the natural world that exists out there without any time constraints. The former is always demanding answers, always wants to know, whereas the latter is about dropping the questions...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Go out somewhere into the middle of the mountains where all you can see all around you are mountains. Now tell me you're not one with them!..

Yes, I've been in the mountains. I've been in the Great Bear Rainforest. I've seen the orcas.

We are of a unity on some plane, but I'm not 'one' with them, in any way aside from some romanticisation brought about by watching Chief Dan George movies one too many times.

The idea of being 'one' with the Great Forest, is an intellectual one, not a natural one.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The idea of trying to be 'one' with the mountains, comes, imo from a desire to separate from the pain of existence, of the ego, by joining up with something larger, whereby the daily concerns seem to take on less significance.

The realization of self, imo, includes the recognition that ego pain, suffering etc, are part of existence, not to be sought out nor feared, the same as with all other emotions etc.

 

[Wookey]

The idea of trying to be 'one' with the mountains, comes, imo from a desire to separate from the pain of existence, of the ego, by joining up with something larger, whereby the daily concerns seem to take on less significance.

The realization of self, imo, includes the recognition that ego pain, suffering etc, are part of existence, not to be sought out nor feared, the same as with all other emotions etc.

Those two processes to me describe two of the main aims of Buddhism. But they come in the opposite order; first one learns to become mindful of your inner voice, that chattering, neurotic, jealous, pre-occupied voice that natters away in our heads most of the time. That voice reveals our subconscious pre-occupations, our perceived needs, and our ingrained, inherited narrative.

Once you get good at recognising where your ego begins, you learn to switch it off and bit by bit you understand the feeling of harmony that subsuming "yourself" gives. It's like wearing a new pair of glasses, ones through which the world looks far more vivid in its technicolour, far louder in its heartbeat.

I see these as complementary stages of the same journey, one which many people are already on without knowing it expressly in their minds - a fact which reminds me of it's universality.

 

[fela fan]

The idea of trying to be 'one' with the mountains, comes, imo from a desire to separate from the pain of existence, of the ego, by joining up with something larger, whereby the daily concerns seem to take on less significance.

Notwithstanding wookey's excellent reply, it's not about trying to be 'one' with the mountains, nor about any desire to change. For me it's tapping into what we already have. Life. Unconditioned-by-humans life. Searching for the meaning to life - pretty much the main objective of philosophy - is difficult or impossible through language, the mind, philosophy. The journey reveals that answers, and questions, lie in other realms. And that it's about dropping something rather than changing into something. We need to drop the conditioning to find what it covered up. And that is the 'oneness' with life that i'm talking about. And a colourful sea sunset, a waterfall, the mountains, are all part of that life, and therefore one 'comes home' so to speak, and can be using the same energy that all else does its being with. Peace and inner calm are the result.

There is a whole world beyond philosophy, beyond the limitations of the mind, which is largely conditioned, and requires a lot of work doing on it. For me, identifying with elements of nature eg the mountains, is more fruitful than identifying with any political grouping, any ism.

Trying is not being... and choose choice, not desire...

 

[fela fan]

Once you get good at recognising where your ego begins, you learn to switch it off and bit by bit you understand the feeling of harmony that subsuming "yourself" gives. It's like wearing a new pair of glasses, ones through which the world looks far more vivid in its technicolour, far louder in its heartbeat.

Nice. The blinkers are off!

There's meditation in various guises. There's a spot near me where i can go and all i can see are mountains all around, and all the way to the horizon. Only nature noises, no human or machinery noise. It is a way for me to tap into the 'unifying' (perhaps a reasonable term) force and energy of life. Many nature places are. They are my temple!

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Those two processes to me describe two of the main aims of Buddhism. But they come in the opposite order; first one learns to become mindful of your inner voice, that chattering, neurotic, jealous, pre-occupied voice that natters away in our heads most of the time. That voice reveals our subconscious pre-occupations, our perceived needs, and our ingrained, inherited narrative.

Once you get good at recognising where your ego begins, you learn to switch it off and bit by bit you understand the feeling of harmony that subsuming "yourself" gives. It's like wearing a new pair of glasses, ones through which the world looks far more vivid in its technicolour, far louder in its heartbeat.

I see these as complementary stages of the same journey, one which many people are already on without knowing it expressly in their minds - a fact which reminds me of it's universality.

I think that as is often the case, we may be disagreeing about the words to use to describe the same thing. I've come to view the process less as a 'mystical' one, and more of a natural one, a process of coming to fully understand what it means to be a human being. I think of the state that comes after the quieting of the inner mind, as being another aspect of human consciousness, but one that is dominated by quietude, by receptivity, instead of analysis. The analytical tool remains at hand; but once one recognizes it for what it is, it ceases to be so insistent, so overbearing of all other varieties of consciousness.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Notwithstanding wookey's excellent reply, it's not about trying to be 'one' with the mountains, nor about any desire to change. For me it's tapping into what we already have. Life. Unconditioned-by-humans life. Searching for the meaning to life - pretty much the main objective of philosophy - is difficult or impossible through language, the mind, philosophy. The journey reveals that answers, and questions, lie in other realms. And that it's about dropping something rather than changing into something. We need to drop the conditioning to find what it covered up. And that is the 'oneness' with life that i'm talking about. And a colourful sea sunset, a waterfall, the mountains, are all part of that life, and therefore one 'comes home' so to speak, and can be using the same energy that all else does its being with. Peace and inner calm are the result.

There is a whole world beyond philosophy, beyond the limitations of the mind, which is largely conditioned, and requires a lot of work doing on it. For me, identifying with elements of nature eg the mountains, is more fruitful than identifying with any political grouping, any ism.

Trying is not being... and choose choice, not desire...

Any life that you are involved in, involves a human, seems to me. Philosophy is a human construct, through which people use mentation and words, to get at basic truths. It is part and parcel of the analytical mind.

 

[fela fan]

Any life that you are involved in, involves a human, seems to me. Philosophy is a human construct, through which people use mentation and words, to get at basic truths. It is part and parcel of the analytical mind.

Yes, agreed mostly. But it depends what you mean by basic truths, and whether philosophy can get you there.

I think this thread has been more about spirituality than philosophy, but again, it depends on people's connotative (conditioned?) understanding of words.

And if the purpose for meditation is to have a still mind, then philosophy is out the window!

 

[Wookey]

Nice. The blinkers are off!

There's meditation in various guises. There's a spot near me where i can go and all i can see are mountains all around, and all the way to the horizon. Only nature noises, no human or machinery noise. It is a way for me to tap into the 'unifying' (perhaps a reasonable term) force and energy of life. Many nature places are. They are my temple!

I have a spot in the Highlands, at the top of a mountain there's a loch, bound on three sides by more mountains and trees, and on the fourth by a 1000-mile view of the blue lochs below, and the white ridges of the snowy mountains stretching to the horizon.

The secret loch has a prominent arm of land that reaches out into it, and if you sit at the end of that arm of land you are surrounded on three sides by water, low down on the same level as the loch.

It's incredible there, and I knew it as soon as I saw it. I threw all my clothes off the first time I found it, and dived in for a swim. The wilderness and the sense of being nestled in the arms of the land give the valley a really comforting feeling that is totally at odds with the altitude, the remoteness and the vicious Highland weather. The best thing about this valley is that apart from you, there is nothing to remind you of humans at all - nothing in sight, you have to look through binoculars to even see road in the distance.

Conversely, as a city boy, I love canals and skyscrapers and subways and very often I am blown away by a vista created by human ingenuity - and I find that just as inspirational as 'nature'. Even petrol stations and bin lorries can look amazing if you look with the right eyes. Accepting the wonder in everything that's before me is not something I can sustain for very long, sadly - wish I could do it for longer. But that's the muscle that meditation exercises and which needs more work from me.

It reminds me of that phenomenon when you look at a certain word on a page for so long, so intensely, that it suddenly becomes alien to you, the letters don't look right, and you can't connect what you see with what you know to be the right word. This might last fleetingly, or for a while, but it's that kind of shift in perspective and analysis that takes places when I meditate, and later, outside of meditation, when the wonderment continues.

 

[Jazzz]

25 days down. I have really overdone it trying to do lotus postures, and my legs are sore. Too much too soon. Back hurts a bit too. But, quarter of the way through!

 

[fela fan]

25 days down. I have really overdone it trying to do lotus postures, and my legs are sore. Too much too soon. Back hurts a bit too. But, quarter of the way through!

I don't understand the benefits of punishing yourself physically. Is it to concentrate on the pain and thereby stop the mind with its thoughts it keeps producing?

I would have thought just sitting any way that is comfortable would be better. Pain? No thanks! Eastern people are much better suited to such postures with their suppler bodies.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I don't understand the benefits of punishing yourself physically. Is it to concentrate on the pain and thereby stop the mind with its thoughts it keeps producing?

I would have thought just sitting any way that is comfortable would be better. Pain? No thanks! Eastern people are much better suited to such postures with their suppler bodies.

Do Chinese have a different physicality from other people? This must be why the chinese circus is so exciting. 'Eastern people are much better suited to such postures with their suppler bodies.'

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I would have thought just sitting any way that is comfortable would be better. Pain? No thanks! Eastern people are much better suited to such postures with their suppler bodies.

I think you'll find it is more to do with their having sat like that since they were little.

 

[Wookey]

I would have thought just sitting any way that is comfortable would be better. Pain? No thanks! Eastern people are much better suited to such postures with their suppler bodies.

The problem is most Western people have lost touch with how the body should hold itself; we're conditioned by poorly designed furniture and bad shoes to hunch ourselves up and crush our inner organs and curve the spine backwards. And we carry satchels and back-packs that pull our spines out of shape, and we sleep on bad mattresses and drive in cars that give us back-ache.

The traditional meditative posture is one that can be held the longest with the least amount of effort. You sit on the bones of your bum, which saves the muscle from fatigue, and you allow the spine to rest in it's proper curvature, and the weight of yourself is rested down your spine, rather than in your lower back as most unpracticed people hold it.

Because Westerners are mostly unused to sitting on the floor, and crossing their legs (we tend only to do that as kids) we aren't used to the position, and it can hurt while you re-train your body. But once you get there you can sit indefinately - which is not the case with other postures which might seem comfy at first, but which after two hours are causing spasms and pain and fatigue.

It's possible to meditate lying down, but because most of us lie down to sleep, people who are just learning risk dropping off while they meditate, and concentration on posture is a useful discipline before meditation begins, to earth oneself and escape from the distractions of the corporeal self.

 

[xes]

Jazzz, meditate laying down if the lotus is painful. S'wat I do since Tyler ate the dog bed I was using to sit in to support my legs

The very notion of being uncomfortable will distract the meditation.

 

[Wookey]

The very notion of being uncomfortable will distract the meditation.

I believe it's how you approach pain or discomfort that makes all the difference. If you can develop equanimity towards pain and pleasure through your meditation, observe the pain without frustration and accept the pleasure without grasping, then a whole new set of tools opens up to you. These tools lessen the friction of our emotional response to stimuli, and deepen our appreciation of life in all its forms, being at one with the moment even if that moment is one of relative discomfort.

Pain management using meditation is often based on this awareness technique; the analogy is that small doses of discomfort if properly managed with positivity and acceptance, can innoculate the meditator against future pain in the same way a small dose of a disease is used to prevent the killer version taking hold later. It's about armouring yourself in a way.

 

[metalguru]

Those two processes to me describe two of the main aims of Buddhism. But they come in the opposite order; first one learns to become mindful of your inner voice, that chattering, neurotic, jealous, pre-occupied voice that natters away in our heads most of the time. That voice reveals our subconscious pre-occupations, our perceived needs, and our ingrained, inherited narrative.

Once you get good at recognising where your ego begins, you learn to switch it off and bit by bit you understand the feeling of harmony that subsuming "yourself" gives. It's like wearing a new pair of glasses, ones through which the world looks far more vivid in its technicolour, far louder in its heartbeat.

I see these as complementary stages of the same journey, one which many people are already on without knowing it expressly in their minds - a fact which reminds me of it's universality.

Wookey - I think you're on a roll in this thread.

What I like about this description is you don't need to necessarily bring spirituality into it...

I can see that evolutionary-wise it was probably a good development that humans developed this inner narrative, that natters away, obsessed with needs and wants - focussed on our survival essentially.

The trouble is that the price of focussing on survival is that you close your mind to most of what's going on, and concentrate on a few narrow areas - thinking about the future, worrying about the past. You miss the technicolour sense of the world, the intense sensation of the immediate moment whether its pleasant or unpleasant.

Meditation doesn't have to have anything to do with spirituality. It can be seen as as a way of helping you yourself to temporarily switch off the focus on survival, and enjoy more of life, appreciate what's going on.

That's why I'm not sure it's really so good to see meditation as a kind of bootcamp experience - my 100 days of meditation ordeal etc. I'm sure it should be a pleasure.

 

[fela fan]

Do Chinese have a different physicality from other people? This must be why the chinese circus is so exciting. 'Eastern people are much better suited to such postures with their suppler bodies.'

I didn't talk about chinese, just eastern people in general.

They have more supple and bendable bodies than us westerners for sure.

 

[fela fan]

I think you'll find it is more to do with their having sat like that since they were little.

Of course! Practice, and from the beginning. Not like us stiff westerners.

 

[Dillinger4]

I didn't talk about chinese, just eastern people in general.

They have more supple and bendable bodies than us westerners for sure.

It is a cultural thing more than a biological thing.

For example, Japanese people sit in a kneeling position on the floor (seiza) rather than sit in chairs, in the way people in west sit.

I have tried it (when I was in a particular Japanese restaurant), and it is pretty difficult for me to sit in long periods like that.

But it is a practice thing, if you have sat like that from a young age, it would come much more naturally.

 

[fela fan]

Because Westerners are mostly unused to sitting on the floor, and crossing their legs (we tend only to do that as kids) we aren't used to the position, and it can hurt while you re-train your body. But once you get there you can sit indefinately - which is not the case with other postures which might seem comfy at first, but which after two hours are causing spasms and pain and fatigue.

I agree. But i'm not sure one should try and get the body flexible through meditation. Perhaps do that as a separate discipline...

Thais can often be seen squatting, where the arse is just above the ground, and you rest your lower arms on your thighs. I can do it no problem now, after a bit of practice. But i just think it's better to get comfortable with new positions outside of meditative practice.