Meditation people roll call!

No doubt I will get trolled into some flame war on some other thread tomorrow, seemingly disproving whatever I typed here tonight, but so be it. There will still be some tiny part inside of me watching, saying “hmm, how interesting, I wonder why you are doing that again?”

I almost got into a war with an inanimate object today.

Zen master Dogen (and many others) have spoken about intimacy with yourself and your experience as a goal of the practice. I think there are qualities that the language of intimacy and alienation covers that my analytical explanation doesn't. James's comment gets at these.

Oh, and big fan of therapy over here. I'm at a place in therapy and my practice where they seem very connected.

Thanks for your responses, James and Lukas. I'm always 'waiting' for something to happen, but I feel like I'm in the early stages of some revelation with meditation, waiting for the right teacher or opportunity to appear. I sort of 'confessed' to someone at work that I was making practice more formalised and regular and they initially looked surprised and said 'how's it going'. I was surprised at my own answer, which was 'something's happening'.

I think that 'something' speaks to what's been said here - some kind of realignment, perhaps, maybe some kind of refiguring of the elements of the self and experience. Just simple things, like James said, having more space to notice my interactions and my reactions to things. Also very conscious that I can leave a meditation practice and find myself reacting in the same old ways to things. It's a long road.

I keep thinking about Peter Matthiesen's *The Snow Leopard*. I'm probably explaining the obvious here, but if you don't know it... Matthiesen was a practising Buddhist and had recently lost his wife. He takes the chance to go on an expedition into the Himalayas to search for the snow leopard but the book is really about tracking his practice and his spiritual awakening while he's there. It's a beautiful book and the insights he receives while meditating in the high, thin air form the core of the text, but the thing I often think about is how the book mirrors the process of practice. No matter how mind-altering the insights, when he 'returns' to civilisation, he is grumpy, sullied, agitated; it's pretty much instant. I assume this was intentional but he never makes it explicit.

(The fact that he leaves his now motherless kids behind to go on the expedition, and is out of contact for months, is another story altogether.)

there can be experiences that you're aware of that come with a conceptual overlay

Listening to a Q&A with Joseph Goldstein and he talks about this, saying “… the reason this distinction is important is that the concept is not changing.”

(but the experience is)

Anyway that one line kind of blew my mind.

Well yeah.

I know, meditation teachers say the same things over and over, but ... sometimes it hits different.

No worries, I get it.

Think my teacher said something today that was essentially the same actually.

Might have something to report

Maybe not

I like Zazen. The emptiness

What I was going to say was I was in a situation that is typical challenging for me, namely sitting in a restaurant for hours not being able to participate in the conversation in any meaningful way.

I used to just try to eavesdrop on the neighboring tables in this situation but that has its own problems. Now I try to just listen to the sounds in the restaurant as some kind of not-so-white noise which works really great when it works until it doesn’t.

I really enjoyed focusing on the general ambient sound of the goings-on and hearing what would emerge, clanking glasses and silverware, the squeaky wheel of the hand-pushed cart as opposed to the robocart. At the same time I was still reflexive pulling my phone at from time to time and looking at it but pretty much always immediately putting it back in my pocket.

Finally, in the middle of Hour Two, something inside me died flagged and gave way and I did end up getting more anxious or whatever and looked at my phone for a bit longer- to check my email, ilx, my language apps etc.- and I of course got vaguely called out for “always being on my phone.”

All of which I dutifully summarized in very concise form for my meditation teacher this morning, who then gave the expected response of saying being that aware of the moment of giving into annoyance is also a part of the practice.

“That” seems to be misplaced

Rinse and repeat

Yr mileage may vary.

There probably is something really interesting happening at that moment.

How often do you talk to your meditation teacher?

I talk through a little chat box pretty much every day.

Wow, nice. I would love a setup like that. For a while it didn't feel like there was much point in talking to a teacher frequently, but now that there seems to be some movement in my practice I'm more interested.

Excuse my rambling post about The Snow Leopard!

I've been thinking about the 'conceptual overlay' and 'experiential alienation' stuff a LOT and am amazed at how a minor shift in thinking can open up new places from which to observe one's thought processes.

yup

*bump* to tell Chinaski that this practice can definitely help with some memory issues.

I have a few things to say about but can’t type any of them for the nonce.

Slightly alarmed by who 'the nonce' might be...

I'm sure it's purely coincidental but my memory issues have definitely increased since I've been meditating more! Very keen to hear of any ideas you have, James. Thanks for the heads-up on the other thread.

I've been trying meditation, and the only problem is that it seems to be working at cross-purposes with what I want in my life. My mind is empty enough already, and I don't want to empty it any further. I also want to stop being as self-aware and self-focused as I am and start focusing on other people. I'm also way too calm and accepting of the way my life has gone.

Apologies for the unsolicited advice. I'm always wary of over-generalizing from my own experience. But this is how meditation has been helpful for me, as someone else who is often self-focused.

Meditation isn't about emptying your mind. It is about becoming more aware of what's happening internally that's guiding your habitual behaviors - making the unconscious conscious. It should help with being able to focus on what's appropriate for you to focus on in a given moment, whether that's something internal or something external.

More than once I have misinterpreted meditation instructions to recommend quietism or passivity in daily life. That's not the case - it should help you see situations more clearly, and sometimes that will mean taking action.

It isn't a quick fix for any of these things, but one thing it also helps with is letting go of the idea that you need to radically change yourself. That's not to say you can't take action to make changes in your life! But that's different.

meditating with music on headphones I find is good too though I guess it could be called something other than meditating

meditate (v.)
1580s, "to ponder, think abstractly, engage in mental contemplation" (intransitive), probably a back-formation from meditation, or else from Latin meditatus, past participle of meditari "to meditate, think over, reflect, consider," frequentative form of PIE root *med- "take appropriate measures." From 1590s as "to plan in the mind," also "to employ the mind in thought or contemplation," especially in a religious way. Related: Meditated; meditating.

I might have to try this, because focusing on my breathing causes it to stop.

like chose an album that is a good solid 45 min of mind blowing fab music and lay down with the best headphones you have

Not meditation exactly but I've been enjoying noticing how my mind can be ping-ponging around while my body is just calmly doing something.

It’s definitely related.

I'm currently meditating every other day and have the dazzling insight that *something* is happening, I'm just not sure what it is (Mr Jones).

I'm reading Mark Epstein's *Thoughts Without A Thinker* which is the first text I've read that really lays out the process and purpose of meditating. Not so much how to integrate practise into everyday life but that's something I'm working out myself. I need a teacher. I'm just waiting for them to appear.

I'll check that book out. I still don't know what to recommend when people ask for a good introductory book on meditation.

Epstein is a psychoanalyst, so the book has a very particular brief wherein he's trying to find the common ground between the two disciplines. Perhaps not the best as an introduction? I'm not sure.

I guess it's the nature of who ends up writing successful books, but Epstein is another of the (admittedly few) writers I've read on the topic who has had access to some incredible teachers (Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield) and spent time meditating with the actual Dalai Lama.

Happy New Year!

I went on my first day 'retreat' in December. It was at my local(ish) Buddhist centre and involved a morning of guided meditation and an afternoon of reflection and puja. I would go as far as to say I loved it - particularly the three hours of silence and guided meditation, which I feel I'm still kind of feeding on. I struggled with the more explicitly religious aspects, I think, but did find the puja quite moving. I'm definitely going to return when I can.

Contra to that, I find this time of year really difficult and found I couldn't really meditate at all. I need to pick apart why but it did lead to feelings of frustration and confusion, mainly around a dialogue of 'when I need it most!' etc. Something to consider.

And happy new year!

Cool!

Have I mentioned the daily dharma before? There was a good one today that is relevant. I can send a link to the full article if you want.

Is that associated with Tricycle? I've just had a look now - looks great. Will consider subscribing.

Link to the relevant article would be appreciated!

Sure. You don't need to subscribe to the paid version right away. You can just get the bitesized version in the email every day if you want and use up your three free monthly articles or whatever it is in the beginning.

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.