Meditation people roll call!

I've heard positive things about Vipassana, but I don't really know anything about it. Any resources you might be able to point me to, Shakey Mo?

I figure my taiji and giqong count as meditation, when I bother to do them.

vipassana = www.dhamma.org

There is no hierarchy, no gurus, no theology, no religious dogma that goes along with it. There are no fees of any kind, it is completely free and open to everyone, and centers are staffed and run entirely by volunteers funded by donations. The meditation technique is what the Buddha himself practiced. I was also attracted to its combination of simplicity and rigor - the concept behind it is very basic but the practice itself is quite difficult (at least at first).

However, I should probably also mention that I did not learn vipassana in the US or in the presence of other westerners - I'm not sure what centers in the US are like, and I imagine you may find yourself in a class with a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types and/or that guy from Weezer. Fortunately everyone maintains silence.

There is no hierarchy, no gurus, no theology, no religious dogma that goes along with it.

And no results! Ha, just kidding. ;)

With hand on bar, world is silent.

I got some totally chill book on meditation that helped me learn the following things: get comfy when you do it, ie a comfy chair or bed that you like & just close your eyes. Don't worry about emptying your mind or not thinking of anything. Don't worry if bad or negative thoughts come to you, just let them sift through. Don't worry if your mind is "busy," just let the thoughts fly by you but don't really focus on them or ruminate. Don't go into it trying to force some particular emotional state.

You can use a mantra if you want. For a while, mine was actually 'solve et coagula,' haha. Any word I want, not made up ones. It's like when you say any word over and over, ie "chalk" or whatevs, after a while it means nothing & can actually grow to be very amusing. Then I started imagining an image of a turtle & somehow that really works for me.

I liked the book because it was like building your own approach. Once you figured out ways that worked for you, just stick with them and don't act like there are rules & regulations. Or experiment with other things or methods or locations.

He also made the interesting point that if you get places a few minutes early, you have time to relax & never have the stress of rushing or being late, which is basically as good as meditating. Awesome.

a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types

That One Guy That Shows Up in Sandals & A Tie-Dye Asking About "Generating Energy"

He should buy a gasoline-powered anything, or eat a pear, or go for a run...all of which generate energy.

Yes, he should take out his pocket knife and prissily eat a pear.

Haha, I live in Berkeley. Everyone is like this!

annoying new age-ish "seeker" types >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the guy from Weezer

Now now, Abbott. The guy is a bozo, of course, but going for a run spends energy.

It creates energy via the krebs cycle & vellular respiration, ie the energy which you then burn. Potential--->kinetic. Or I could be totally wrong.

I am imagining this guy as the New Age Retro Hippie from Earthbound:

http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/snes/eb/images/clay/newageretrohippie.gif

contemporize maaaaaaan

Hmmm - okay, I was thinking about caloric energy.

Do you guys really have experience with a lot of new age-oriented people ("you may find yourself in a class with a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types") or is this just...stereotyping?

Experience with a lot of people who fall into this negative stereotype, I mean.

dude I live in San Francisco. My mom took me to Harmonic Convergence as a child. I went to school in UC Santa Cruz.

in = at

duh

Yeah. I just bristle a little at the stereotype because the only really progressive things going on spiritually in this country do still fall under the "new age" umbrella.

He also made the interesting point that if you get places a few minutes early, you have time to relax & never have the stress of rushing or being late, which is basically as good as meditating. Awesome.

this is major words of wisdom
i am always running late :/ and i try to breathe it out but what i'm really thinking is 'why didn't you just not run late in the first place?' rrgh

what book is this, abbott? it sounds like my kind of book

xpost

somehow i have managed to avoid a lot of those types. but i have also managed to avoid going to meditation centres and yoga retreats and things.

I don't disagree with that - obviously my own interests veer heavily into what a majority of Americans would consider "new age" or "occult" or "hippie" or whatever. Still, as far as demographics go it attracts its share of irritating people (and conmen, and dilletantes, and ignoramuses) just like any other religious community)

x-post

> somehow i have managed to avoid a lot of those types. but i have also managed to avoid going to meditation centres and yoga retreats and things.

Yeah, by attending a taiji school with a sifu who likes to mix it up a bit we tend to weed out the guys who think that 'martial arts isn't about fighting, it's about peace.'

Uh, what part of 'martial' is confusing you, man?

Now, I'm a wierdo who thinks that if you use violence for recreation, you'll be less inclined to use violence as a way of solving problems (except the problem of violence) but that's a whole other thing.

that is a rather odd idea

Allow me to elaborate then:

A few things about sparring -

It teaches first hand that might doesn't make right.
It teaches first hand that anybody can lose.
It teaches first hand that you never know what's going to happen.
It teaches first hand that what is unknown is especially dangerous and unpredictable.

Nobody values peace as much as an old soldier, right?

seems like a different thread, this idea that to practice violence is to learn not to practice it.

True enough. Sorry about the drift.

Do you guys really have experience with a lot of new age-oriented people ("you may find yourself in a class with a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types") or is this just...stereotyping?

-- Tim Ellison, Tuesday, July 17, 2007 11:01 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yes, I has experience. Most recently, a friend and classmate of mine gave me this to read, and very earnestly seemed to think that it would, like, blow my mind, man.

http://www.erowid.org/library/books/images/cosmic_serpent.jpg

Some insightful journalism, some truly laughable "science."

...anyway, point is: yeah, I run into/interact regularly with nuts like this all the time. And I live in MT, of all places!

What are the premises of that book that you thought were laughable?

Do you guys really have experience with a lot of new age-oriented people ("you may find yourself in a class with a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types") or is this just...stereotyping?

-- Tim Ellison, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 23:01

For the record I was describing an actual guy I encountered on my first visit to my local Zen Center.

Also I have been one of these people.

Not in a past life, like five years ago.

My wife works at a metaphysical book shop and I find the other people that work there and those that come in regularly to be, on the whole, very cool and extremely interesting.

You're 21, Hoos. 5 years ago is a past life.

lol for real

I don't believe in reincarnation, but I totally get 'death and rebirth.'

I've been doing - of and on, with a lapse of some weeks in between - basic "sit then follow your breath" meditation for about 3 years now. It's funny how much I miss it once I get back into it. I find that the end results affect me on more of a personal level so I can't get into eventual "benefits" or anything like that. Only that it personally makes me feel mentally much lighter than I would had I not done it. That's it. That's what I get from it. And I love it for that reason.

Why don't you believe in reincarnation, hoos? I'm not going to proselytize to you; I'm just curious why someone would definitively say, "I don't believe in it."

Didn't mean to sound definitive "it does not exist," but I don't think it could; the population explosion of the last century seems to rule it out.

Well, that's an interesting statement, but there isn't necessarily more life on the planet now than there was in prior centuries. Also, I don't know as that souls always necessarily reincarnate immediately.

Also, it's a big universe. : D

Tim, what to you indicates that reincarnation is at all likely?

Being close to spiritual adepts whom I trust and who have knowledge in this area. I don't personally have any conscious knowledge of my own past lives, but I have been given information about them and about why I chose this particular life now. The information made a great deal of sense to me and has helped me to focus a great deal on myself and on what I am doing.

i chant daimoku from time to time... i like the message behind it and it helps me refocus my energies (there's that word haha) to what matters in life, i.e. value creation, my place among the universe, etc.

i like "namu amida butsu" not because i believe at all in the tenets of amida buddhism but i love the way it repeats in my head. i guess that's what makes a good mantra.

Cosmic Serpent is a great book

the fact that DNA emits light did kind of blow my mind

excessively literal interpretations of reincarnation strike me as fairly ridiculous - what is this "you" that keeps getting reborn? how to explain the exponential increase in population (does reincarnation require souls jumping some kind of species barrier)? what is the point of having "past lives" if you can't remember them and need to pay someone money to tell you about them?

however, I am down with the laws of thermodynamics, so if you think about consciousness as a kind of energy (which can therefore never be destroyed, only transformed from one state to another) I can accept the idea that there's this constant field of conscious energy that keeps manifesting itself physically in an infinite number of iterations - but the individual identity, I don't see how that would figure into it. People's personalities and identities are shaped by the interaction of genetics and the environment. The idea that someone in the past was "me" in any literal, meaningful sense is patently ridiculous.

its one of those issues where terminology needs to be clearly defined - what is the "I" that is supposedly reincarnated. One of the things that's become clear to me from meditation (and various readings of Buddhism) is that there is no "I", really.

Well that's what bothers me about modern Buddhism, and particularly branches that really dwell on reincarnation. The Buddhas message was one of letting go of the self in order to escape suffering, and yet here we are concerning ourselves almost non-stop with where our 'self' has been and where it is going. It seems contradictory.

> if you think about consciousness as a kind of energy

My (pop-sci level) understanding of current cognitive science developments is that thinking and consciousness and emotion and creativity and all that stuff that we consider the soul or self or whatever generally is about completely chemically explicable.

Or put another way - there is no body/mind divide. The mind is a product of the body, specifically the brain, and that's about all there is to it.

excessively literal interpretations of reincarnation strike me as fairly ridiculous

you know, you can say that, but then are you also saying that people who do have illuminations about the subject also strike you as fairly ridiculous?

not sure what a less "literal" interpretation of reincarnation might involve.

Just in terms of reasoning through it it simply doesn't make sense to me is all. Could be that it happens, but I have no rational model which tells me it is possible.

https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhism-and-psychotherapy/

Anyway, I always find lots of good stuff over there, usually very well-written, including this article that is now number 2 on the most read right now: https://tricycle.org/article/mindfulness-buddhism/

HNY! I was on retreat till the 4th. Now I'm back in the middle of the whole mess. A little more open than before, though.

I think the answer to this will be 'you need a teacher*!' but I've been meditating pretty much every/every other day for about 9 months now and am a mix of, well, I wouldn't go as far as frustrated but something like that, and something verging on *scared* - the former, I'm sure, is 100% par for the course and part of the process; the latter, I don't know, something I need guidance on? For instance, I've been steadily moving towards 20 minutes every morning and today I felt completely undercut by strong emotions, like I was falling through my own trapdoors. I teach at a secondary school and it made the day pretty much unbearable (kids smell weakness and boom!).

I can't decide if I'm just struggling with stuff emotionally anyway (fair to say I have a lot going on in my life, with an unwell teenage son, and I can be very sensitive at the best of times anyway), or whether the meditation is opening up areas and I need a handhold through it. I've read a lot recently about these kinds of experiences within practice, so could just be assigning things wrongly? Maybe the connection is irrelevant and go with it anyway? Questions, fucking questions.

Anyway, what I don't want, and I know I'll be susceptible to this, is for the practice to fade.

*or a therapist!

Do you not have a teacher now?

No teacher, mainly due to nothing particularly being available. I'm affiliated very loosely with a local Buddhist group, but nothing official or regular. It's all been self-taught from lots of reading and listening.

If you can't get a teacher and/or therapist ... (I do recommend one) ... find an amount of daily meditation that works. Something where you're stretching and growing a bit, but that you can handle.

The standard guidance I've heard is once you're meditating roughly forty minutes a day, time to get a teacher. Below that, a teacher can be very useful, but you're probably not going to get into weird territory.

Most teachers probably wouldn't see emotional release during a difficult time of your life as a problem, but that's for you to judge depending on your circumstances. Maybe meditate after work?

Another thing I'll say is that a lot of teachers are accessible via Zoom these days.

This is great advice lukas, thank you. Things have calmed down since my message upthread *and* I've managed to find a day retreat for this coming Saturday so can hopefully speak to someone about guidance/teaching.

So Buddhism has this concept of the "near enemy" of skillful qualities - e.g. it's easy to mistake pity for compassion.

Note to self re: this morning's sit ... indifference is the near enemy of equanimity.

(this message brought to you by my splenius capitis)

Or the way it occurred to me at the time (when I realized, ugh, Christ, that really hurts, and it intensified and then released) was actually "pretending it doesn't hurt is the opposite of equanimity".

Ledge it sounds like you’re in the right path - fantasizing about longer distances would seem to be a great sign! But build up to those distances gradually.

^^ wrong thread, sorry

no no, I see the connection