June, 2016: Last week when I was having my “allergic angina” fake heart attack followed by a real angiogram, I thought it would be interesting to be one of those people who die, and is then brought back to life.
Of course the problem with that is that you have to die first.
That thought makes me think of the 1980 film Resurrection that stars Ellen Burstyn and Sam Shepard, and that’s where this image comes from.
I’m sorry, I don’t remember where I originally found this image, but I love this Ram Dass saying about being the witness:
“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
~ Ram Dass
Sitting down and starting meditation is one of the biggest obstacles there is to meditation. I usually start with different techniques, like focusing on breathing in through one nostril, out the other, and then reversing that.
I also have different sayings that I repeat to get me focused on the here and now. Last night this new one came to me:
My favorite part of meditation lately is when it takes on a life of its own. This is characterized by your awareness moving to whatever you’re focusing on.
For instance, if you focus on the Anapana Spot (ānāpāna, or “AP Spot”, as I call it) just beneath your nose, your awareness will eventually move forward to that spot, and you become aware that your head is behind you.
More dramatically, if you focus on something like a candle a few feet in front of you and your awareness jumps forward to it, now your entire body will be well behind you (“you” being “your awareness”).
Once your awareness jumps forward like this, you are well on your way to your meditation taking on a life of its own, meaning that you don’t have to work hard at it anymore, it’s like your awareness wants to be in this state.
(I think Daniel Ingram has a name for this state, but I don’t remember it at the moment. It may be in his writings about a Fire Kasana.)
~ January 8, 2024
Tonight while meditating I sat in my recliner to meditate as usual. I didn’t know it at the time, but for almost three hours I kept meditating and falling asleep. My head would fall forward, then I’d raise it, then it would fall forward and I’d raise it again, and so on. I’m sure it would have been humorous to watch from the outside.
But after a while, once I got past the initial “tired” stage, my awareness didn’t fall asleep, even though the head would occasionally fall down. I kept focusing on the third eye area and vowed to myself that I wouldn’t stop until I could see. I felt like my neck would break before I’d quit.
I have no idea where tonight’s determination came from, other than I had had an irritating day, so maybe that was a little extra fuel for the meditation fire. (I’ve also been dealing with an upper respiratory infection, and thanks to the antibiotics, today was the first day I haven’t felt sick in several weeks.)
These two paragraphs are some notes from Daniel Ingram in his excellent (and free) book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (with some very minor edits from me):
“For those who are practicing meditation (as opposed to experiencing an occurrence in daily life), in the early part of this stage, the meditator’s mind accelerates more and more, and reality begins to be perceived as particles or fine vibrations of mind and matter, each arising and vanishing utterly at tremendous speed. The traditional texts call this stage the beginning of insight practice, as from this point on there is a much more direct and non-conceptual understanding of the three characteristics...
This stage is marked by dramatically increased perceptual abilities when compared with the previous stages. For example, we might be able to hone our awareness to laser-like precision on the tip of our little finger and seemingly be able to perceive the beginning and ending of every single sensation that made up that finger.”
If that makes any sense and you want to know more about it, the printed book version of his book is here on Amazon, and you can also read the free HTML version of this book at this link.
As a brief note today, here is a short list of spiritual teachers I am aware of who have expressed the idea “I am not the body.” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj made this the most obvious to me by writing a book titled, “I Am Not The Body,” but when you think about it, many spiritual teachers have said the exact same thing in different ways.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
~ Part of the poem Ulysses, by Lord Alfred Tennyson
(In the process of writing Functional Programming, Simplified, I had to make thirteen trips to the emergency departments of three different hospitals.)
December 11, 2023: The following quote is from a book I’m currently reading named Demystifying Awakening. I wish everyone had the chance to experience Nirvana at least once in their physical lifetime. I think Earth would be a much better place.
Here’s the quote:
December 10, 2021:
I was sitting there meditating in the pitch dark this morning, enjoying a peaceful, easy feeling, when I heard a woman say, “Alvin.” It wasn’t like “Alvin, are you there?”, but more like, “Alvin, pay attention, I’m about to say something to you.”
But for some reason that was as disconcerting as any experience I’ve ever had, and I popped out of the meditative state and opened my eyes.
I only learned about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in 2024, but his teaching have made a huge impression on me. To that end, here are some of my favorite quotes related to his famous saying, “I am not the body,” from the book, Consciousness and the Absolute: The Final Talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:
There are many more great quotes in that book, but these are the ones that really strike me today (December, 2024).
I was sleeping on the couch this morning when X (a black and white husky) jumped up on me. I was laying on my right side, facing the back of the couch, so my back was to her. When she jumped up, her front legs were on my left hip, so I assumed she was standing on her back legs.
This woke me up and without moving much, I said, “Do you have to go out? That’s a good girl for letting me know.”
So I moved around and got up, but there was no dog there. X was asleep on her bed in the hallway.
(This was the third time a dog has gotten in bed with me while I was laying down, only to not be there after I moved around.)
~ December 7, 2022
[From time to time I write little stories that have nothing to do with programming or technology; this is one of those stories. So, if you’re only here for the technology stuff, you’ll want to skip this one.]
I’m standing in the kitchen of a friend’s house at a Christmas party, making myself a drink while talking to a friend named Angie. This was nothing unusual; she and I were always talking about something. We became friends during our last year in high school, and we’ve been talking ever since.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that I have feelings for her, but I guess you could say that I didn’t appreciate her back then. After high school, my ambition took me away to college, and then to a series of jobs in different states. By the time I decided to move back home, she was married and had two young children.
While we talked all the time, this kitchen conversation was unusual. I don’t remember how it started, but Angie did ask me about something I rarely talk about: my parents getting divorced in high school.
A friend was in Talkeetna recently, and sent me a picture of what this cabin looks like these days. Skipping over that, this is what it looked like in mid-September when I lived there.
Some great lyrics from Dan Fogelberg:
I have these moments all steady and strong
I’m feeling so holy and humble
The next thing I know, I’m all worried and weak
And I feel myself starting to crumble
The meanings get lost, and the teachings get tossed
And you don’t know what you’re gonna do next
You wait for the sun but it never quite comes
Some kind of message comes through to you
Some kind of message comes through
And it says to you
Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That’s a part of the plan
Await your arrival
With simple survival and
One day, we’ll all understand
A favorite quote:
“She was beautiful, but not like those girls in magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul. She is beautiful.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
As I wrote in Different meditation/mindfulness practices, different cultures, and they all talk about witnessing/noting, mindfulness and meditation masters (teachers) from different cultures, countries, and styles of practice often teach the same thing in different ways: a style of mindfulness meditation known as witnessing or noting.
To me, a simple way to think about this is that as your body goes along with its daily life, all you have to do is simply narrate what your body is doing at all times, in the present moment.
If you like, you can think of yourself as being the witness/soul, watching the body, and noting what it’s doing, like a birdwatcher does when they note what birds are doing in a forest. It’s that simple.
I’ve mentioned before that at the Providence Zen Center, when you meditate, you are told to constantly ask yourself, “What am I?” And when you’re doing some action, such as driving a car, you ask yourself, “Who is driving?”
I’ve also mentioned that these days the most popular mindfulness practice is to “note” what you’re doing, moment by moment. So when you’re eating you say, “eating,” and when you’re washing your hands you say, “washing,” and so on.
Tonight I was re-reading Ram Dass’s first book, Be Here Now, and found a section where he talks about developing the “witness” in yourself by narrating your life: “Oh, he’s heading to the refrigerator now. It looks like he’s going to get some ice cream. Yes, he’s picked up the ice cream container...”
The thing about these techniques is that (a) they come from three different types of spiritual practice, but (b) although their words are different, their intent is the same: They try to get your attention/awareness aligned with what your body is doing in the present moment.
If you’re ever interested in meditation, I promise that if you work hard enough, you can achieve this kind of intensity. I’m fortunate that it happens to me from time to time now.
As Ramana Maharshi said, “Proper meditation is so intense it doesn’t even allow thinking, ‘I am meditating.’”
Well, if you’re going to ask for someone’s DNA, this is a nice way to do it, play to my ego. :)
I got this in an email back in the day when I first learned that I have mast cell disease.
