Posts in the “zen” category

You are not your thoughts.

As you learn in this meditation technique, it’s easily possible to sit back and observe all the crap that spews out of your brain. As you’ll quickly find out, “you” are the observer, and all those thoughts — I’m too fat, I’m not smart enough, I’m too sexy for my shirt — just keep spewing out of your socially-conditioned brain machine.

Observing the thoughts is the beginning of ending them.

Apparently I have sleep apnea. But during the day. During meditation.

When I was meditating this morning my body stopped breathing several times for more than a minute and a half. At first I observed and wondered about it, but then I just let it be. The new normal.

~ July 6, 2021

“When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves. That is our way, to live fully in each moment of time.”

~ Shunryu Suzuki, not always so

I just read this Richard Gere “I wish you happiness” quote at this G+ link, then found this image on Pinterest. (I don’t know the original source of this image, but thank you.)

As a note to self, while I was doing a Shinzen Young style “noting” meditating this morning (Feb. 11, 2021), I felt pressure on the right side of my head. It was like if you have a sinus infection or had some dental work, and the right side of your face has that pressure. Meanwhile, the left side of my face/head felt perfectly clear. So in addition to noting “rest” and “hear,” I started noting “pressure.” The more I focused on the pressure, it eventually went away.

Another thought from this morning is that many thoughts come and go during meditation, but some of them are particularly sticky. You try to let them come and go, but they’re like flypaper or something — ridiculously sticky. I felt like a cat who gets tape on its paw and keeps shaking the paw, but the tape won’t come off. This reminded me of Pema Chodron talking about getting stuck and unstuck, though I can’t remember her exact terminology.

“...think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed...”

~ from the book, The Artist’s Way

“When engaged in noticing continuously both the dissolution of objects and the act of knowing, he (the meditator) reflects: ‘Even for the wink of an eye or a flash of lightning, nothing lasts. One did not realize this before. As things ceased and vanished in the past, so will they cease and vanish in the future.’ One must notice such a reflection.”

~ from the book, Practical Insight Meditation

I am a fan of some of the guided meditations in the Brightmind app. These are my adapted notes from the sixth and seventh meditations in the first “Core” group, by Shinzen Young:

Years before I heard of Shinzen Young, I had always “enjoyed” practicing meditation in the cold. Some part of it probably goes back to childhood, when I had to wait for the schoolbus in the freezing cold of northern Illinois winters. (This was in the time before global warming.) I used to stand there without moving, and mentally I’d concentrate on not being cold, or at least not feeling the cold.

Many years later when I lived in Alaska, I used to enjoy going up into the mountains to basically inflict the same thing on myself. I always thought the “meditate deeply or suffer the consequences” approach forced me to meditate more deeply. This past winter that same “Do or die, there is not try” mentality forced me to maintain my focus and helped to combat my medically-induced lack of energy.

At the 2013 Buddhist Geeks Conference, Shinzen Young gave a talk about The Meaning of Life. I just found this image on my phone, and apparently the meaning is in there somewhere. :) The graphic was created by Kelly Kingman.

I recently bought the second edition of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book (I already read the first edition), and it occurred to me as I was reading the introductory pages why I like this book so much: As the author (Daniel Ingram) writes, “... it is a very strange thing to have such a completely different language, set of experiences, and perspectives from most of the people around me. I can often feel like an alien wearing a trench coat of normalcy ... If you go way into this stuff, you will discover this same loneliness.” I know that feeling well.

If you’re debating about whether this book might be right for you, my recommendation is that if that description applies to you, this book is probably right for you.

Also, you don’t have to be a Buddhist to read the book. Mr. Ingram often explains mindfulness and meditation techniques in great detail, and without archaic language.

In fact, I think one of the prime reasons to buy the book might be the thought, “I had some sort of unusual experience that I find hard to talk to other people about, but I’m courageous enough to want to learn more about it, and understand it.” As Mr. Ingram explains, sometimes experiences that happen to some people while meditating happen to other people who have never meditated a moment before in their life.

I suspect that some of my early experiences happened because I was a pitcher on baseball teams in my high school years, and I took that very seriously and concentrated hard while pitching. While other players had more talent, I had great concentration (and control). These days when I meditate I sometimes think, “Yep, this feels just like the concentration required while pitching.”

If you want a truly hardcore book with no-nonsense language from someone who is willing to talk about these things, this book is for you.

A moth is a mapmaking creature. When it flies into a candle it’s working from an erroneous map. Maybe the moth’s map says, “Mating opportunities here.”

A human is also a mapmaking creature. Everyone operates from a map, and the map is always getting out of date. Life, the territory described by the map, moves quickly. This means that the map drifts away from the territory, eventually becoming more of a historical artifact than a useful guide.

When there is a wide gap between the map and current world, the person who made the map feels discomfort.

For however long it worked, it was a nice map, and now it doesn’t work any more. In this situation, unlike moths, humans have two choices. One is the path of discovery, in which the map is abandoned or redrawn over and over again.

The other path is one in which the more doubts you have about a map, the more strongly you insist it’s accurate. This is the path that leads the moth into the flame. If you follow this path, you’re living by a fiction, an erroneous map ... essentially what you’re doing is building a prison cell of non-reality to live in, your own little Alcatraz.

It’s the job of the koan to take down your prison walls, to undermine your fictions. Then you might discover that you’re not really suffering from other people or from circumstances. You’re suffering from your maps, your fictions, the prison you yourself have created.

A quote from a book titled, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life, by John Tarrant

Prolong not the past.
Invite not the future.
Alter not your innate wakefulness.
Fear not appearances.
There is nothing more than that.

(Sounds like something Yoda might say, but according to a Ram Dass book, it’s a stanza from the Tibetan school of Buddhism.)

Expectations lead to suffering. :)

(For Bodhi Day, December 8th of every year.)

I used to meditate in what I now call a “lazy” way, more of a savasana “withdraw from the senses” style. These days my meditation is more active and alert, and I like this quote by Shunryu Suzuki: “Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.” (Last spring (2014), when I thought I might die as I laid in a bed in a hotel room, my meditation was extremely intense, just like this quote requests of us.)

I don’t know the original source of this image, but this quote is from the book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

“The true practice of meditation is to sit as if you are drinking water when you are thirsty.”

~ Shunryu Suzuki

Zachary: I ran into one of my brother’s work buddies, he introduced me to Tai Chi. It saved me.

Longmire: How so?

Zachary: I like to put it like this ... I went to church a lot as a kid, and we were always taught to love our enemies. Tai Chi taught me something new — to love the enemy inside me, as well. So I don’t look at peace as the absence of conflict any more. I see it as the acceptance of conflict.

(From the tv series Longmire)

When, by meditation, we withdraw the restless thoughts ...

Wake up! Life is transient. That’s a good message right there.

The image shown is of the Tassajara Zen Center in California. I couldn’t find the source of this image when I first posted it here — I found it on Pinterest without any attribution — but it looks like this might be the original source.

The Buddha Board is a nice gift idea for the Zen person in your life. You paint on it with water, the painting appears, and then disappears as it dries, helping to demonstrate the Zen/Buddhist concept of impermanence, among other things.