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I think this is a perfectly good place to ask about general guided meditation, with the understanding that the responses may or may not be secularized or removed from a Buddhist context.
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Mar 25, 2018 15:39
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dharmaseed is bursting at the seams with guided meditations; and there's a podcast as well jack kornfield and joseph goldstein also have podcasts that from time to time include guided meditations n.b.: meditation is a vast topic that goes well beyond he confines of buddhism; and both within and without buddhism there are many different kinds eta: just get the dharmaseed podcast and try a variety of teachers; that will be a better way of starting out than via an app Red Dad Redemption fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Mar 25, 2018 |
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Mar 25, 2018 17:19
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I downloaded Headspace a week ago and I’ve been doing their beginner course daily but it’s just not clicking. He tells me to do something, fine I do it. He asks me a question, and my answer is just a matter of fact, eg him: “do you feel your stomach rising as you breath”, me: “yes.” He tells me it’s fine if my mind wanders, but my mind isn’t wandering because it’s just thinking “I’m doing Headspace for 10 minutes” and listening for the next instructions. If I try doing this without the app/direction, then I just start thinking about what I’m going to do for the rest of the day and tomorrow. I feel like I’m missing something causing me to be doing this completely wrong but I have no idea.
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Mar 25, 2018 17:41
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Headspace didn’t work for my wife when she tried to start meditation. However there is a newer app called 10% happier which she has had some better success with. I’m not one for apps myself, but I have perused the app as well and it seemed pretty good to me. Free version has enough content to see if you like it so might be worth a shot.Boris Galerkin posted:I downloaded Headspace a week ago and I’ve been doing their beginner course daily but it’s just not clicking. He tells me to do something, fine I do it. He asks me a question, and my answer is just a matter of fact, eg him: “do you feel your stomach rising as you breath”, me: “yes.” He tells me it’s fine if my mind wanders, but my mind isn’t wandering because it’s just thinking “I’m doing Headspace for 10 minutes” and listening for the next instructions. If I try doing this without the app/direction, then I just start thinking about what I’m going to do for the rest of the day and tomorrow. A couple of things on this part. First, meditation is actually quite a challenge to kick-start on your own, even with an app. Our minds and our thoughts are pretty complicated things. Reading some literature might be helpful for you so that you can get a larger framework on how meditation effects us and how our minds can potentially respond to it. The 'mindfulness in plain English' mentioned above is good. Also if you are of a more irreverent personality type like myself I recommend the new book 'Meditation for fidgety skeptics' which is by the same person who started the 10% happier app. Second, when you are meditating without the app, the fact that you start thinking about the rest of your day is exactly what is expected to occur! The entire goal of mindfulness meditation(at least for now) is to notice you are thinking about your day, and not about your breath. When you notice this occurring during your session you have successfully been mindful, and can now bring your attention back to your breath. Most likely within a few seconds you will be back to thinking about your day again. Repeatedly having this happen, noticing it happen, and returning your thoughts to your breath is pretty much the crux of mindfulness meditation for quite a while (in my opinion at least). Don't give up, and definitely come ask more questions! SpaceCadetBob fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Mar 25, 2018 |
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Mar 25, 2018 18:14
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Boris Galerkin posted:I downloaded Headspace a week ago and I’ve been doing their beginner course daily but it’s just not clicking. He tells me to do something, fine I do it. He asks me a question, and my answer is just a matter of fact, eg him: “do you feel your stomach rising as you breath”, me: “yes.” He tells me it’s fine if my mind wanders, but my mind isn’t wandering because it’s just thinking “I’m doing Headspace for 10 minutes” and listening for the next instructions. If I try doing this without the app/direction, then I just start thinking about what I’m going to do for the rest of the day and tomorrow. There's this description that stuck with me in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind about what's the best way to control your thoughts. If you try to tie your thoughts up tightly to control them, all it will do is get you tangled up. It's better to think of controlling your thoughts the way a shepherd would take care of a flock--you give them a large, open pasture, and you don't mind if they wander here or there because you're keeping an eye on them. I think what that basically means is, if you're trying to meditate from the position of "I cannot let my thoughts wander," you will just end up feeling stiff and frustrated, and you'll actually probably end up fixating even more on whatever you're thinking about. But if you take a step back and take the approach of "My thoughts will naturally wander, it's not a bad thing. Just notice when it happens and say to yourself, 'oh, okay, my thoughts wandered toward thinking about paying the bills. I see.'" No judgment involved, just perception. Thoughts happen automatically; they're like bugs flying around in a field. If you're the field, it doesn't matter if there's zero bugs, one bug, or a thousand bugs flying around, that doesn't suddenly make you the bugs and not the field. You can always say, "oh, these are the thoughts that are in my head, but that doesn't mean that I am just these thoughts. I can take a step back from them and see that I'm the field in which they are flying." I think if you're finding guided meditations too regimented, you might want to try just setting a timer for 10 minutes and sitting quietly. You can try self-guiding by breaking the meditation up into a couple of phases, like: 1. Sit down and find a good position 2. Begin to relax any tension in your body (I like to go shoulders, neck, jaw, face, eyes) 3. Take a calm, deep breath. Tell yourself "This 10 minutes is for meditation. I set this time aside for practice, so I can simply appreciate it. Right now, there's no where else I have to be and nothing else I have to do." 4. Begin counting your breaths. Inhale, one, exhale, one... Inhale, two, exhale two... Inhale, three, exhale, three... etc. Eventually, you might be able to focus on your breaths without needing to "say" the numbers in your head, and that's fine. If you find that some thought has entered your head, mentally say, "Oh, okay." You can even finish the thought if you'd like. You don't have to shoo it away. Just "oh, that thought entered my mind. Okay." And when you're ready, you can get back to focusing on your breath. If you're having trouble getting daily obligations out of your head while meditating, it can be useful to recognize that you've decided to make meditation part of your schedule. If you were taking lessons in French, for instance, you'd recognize that you weren't using your time wisely by worrying about a project at work during your French lessons. It's easy to think that because you're sitting around peacefully, meditation is kind of like a nap time or a lazing around time, but that's not true. You set the time aside to practice this skill. It's just as important as learning French, or doing the laundry, or paying the bills, because you've set aside a small amount of time just for this one practice.
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Mar 25, 2018 18:53
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Thanks I’ll check out those links I’ve been given and see what I can do about the books.quote:Second, when you are meditating without the app, the fact that you start thinking about the rest of your day is exactly what is expected to occur! The entire goal of mindfulness meditation(at least for now) is to notice you are thinking about your day, and not about your breath. When you notice this occurring during your session you have successfully been mindful, and can now bring your attention back to your breath. Most likely within a few seconds you will be back to thinking about your day again. Repeatedly having this happen, noticing it happen, and returning your thoughts to your breath is pretty much the crux of mindfulness meditation for quite a while (in my opinion at least). Wait a minute, that doesn’t make much sense to me… I’m thinking about my day in the same way I’d do if I was sitting there with a pen and paper (or my todo app) and making a todo list. The only difference here is that I’m doing it with my eyes closed and without anything to write things down on. How is that meditation?
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Mar 25, 2018 18:53
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Cephas posted:But if you take a step back and take the approach of "My thoughts will naturally wander, it's not a bad thing. Just notice when it happens and say to yourself, 'oh, okay, my thoughts wandered toward thinking about paying the bills. I see.'" No judgment involved, just perception. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So the goal isn’t to control my thoughts, but to just have thoughts and to realize I’m having thoughts? I used to take the bus to work at my old job. It took me 45 minutes each way (vs 30 minutes driving, so I just opted to take the bus and not have to deal with paying attention to anything). I normally just put on my headphones just so people don’t bother me but didn’t have music or anything on most of the time. I spent a lot of that time with my eyes closed just thinking about anything that came up. Was I meditating? I honesty didn’t even consider that until now. quote:I think if you're finding guided meditations too regimented, you might want to try just setting a timer for 10 minutes and sitting quietly. You can try self-guiding by breaking the meditation up into a couple of phases, like: I’d actually prefer if it was more explicit. When the person tells me to scan from my head to my toes I do it in like 0 seconds. He commands, I obey, I guess. It would be much better for me if he was like “now focus on how your head feels, now move down to your neck. Does it feel specific_feeling_i_can_check_for?” I’m the type of person that gets bored with Minecraft like games where you can do anything, because I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to do. I don’t think I have trouble finding time to do Headspace because like you said I’ve made it a part of my schedule, so that’s that. I do the day’s lesson in the morning after I’ve showered and gotten dressed. I try to do it without the app when I get home from work, remembering what the morning’s lesson was.
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Mar 25, 2018 19:08
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Boris Galerkin posted:Wait a minute, that doesn’t make much sense to me… I’m thinking about my day in the same way I’d do if I was sitting there with a pen and paper (or my todo app) and making a todo list. The only difference here is that I’m doing it with my eyes closed and without anything to write things down on. How is that meditation? Ok, lets start at the beginning. When you close your eyes and sit down to meditate with the focus being your breath, the general idea is that you want to keep your attention on the feeling of your breathing. This could be just through feeling the in and out of the air, or counting the breaths. There are a lot of different ways to do this, and one of the most useful parts of guided meditations is to get an idea on how to pay attention to your breathing. So you are saying that you are thinking about your todo list. I'm going to assume that you perhaps had a second or two of attention on your breathing first before you got distracted by the todo list creating. If you are not even getting this far before getting distracted then I think making sure your intention to attempt to meditate is firm in your mind before you close your eyes. (Like the french lession metaphor above) So after some period of focus on your breath, you've moved on to your todo list. Do you notice that you are doing this instead of paying attention to your breathing? The goal for beginning meditation is simply to notice that your focus has left your breath and moved on to something else. This awareness is 'mindfulness', and repeated practice of this ah-ha realization that you've gotten distracted strengthens your 'mindfulness muscle' is the same as repeatedly lifting weights will make your arm muscle stronger. So once you've noticed your not paying attention to your breathing, then you need to reassert your intention of focus on your breathing again. Clearing your mind and going back to just the in and out of the breath until 'ah-ha' you've gotten distracted again. This repeats at an incredibly annoying frequency (at least for me) until the meditation session is over. So here is your meditation flowchart to see what part you are getting stuck at. 1)Sit down with the intention to focus on my breathing 2)Getting distracted and thinking about my todo list 3)Noticing that I'm distracted and no longer thinking about my breath 4)Bringing my focus back to my breath
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Mar 25, 2018 19:10
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SpaceCadetBob posted:Ok, lets start at the beginning. When you close your eyes and sit down to meditate with the focus being your breath, the general idea is that you want to keep your attention on the feeling of your breathing. This could be just through feeling the in and out of the air, or counting the breaths. There are a lot of different ways to do this, and one of the most useful parts of guided meditations is to get an idea on how to pay attention to your breathing. I think I understand now, and boy do I feel silly. So sometime way back I had to get a root canal, and I was dreadfully terrified of it. When I was sitting there getting it done I remember I just kept telling myself that it’ll be okay and that it needs to be okay because it’s literally happening right now. Once I accepted that I could let myself try to imagine what the dentist was doing and if it was ever too much I just reminded myself that it’ll be okay. Fast forward to today, I’m kind of an introvert and I don’t know if this is actually real or not, but I always feel so completely drained being around people all day that sometimes I really can’t stand it and I just want to cry. So when this happens I apply what I learned back then to this and I kinda sit there and tell myself that it’ll be okay. I usually start thinking about what’s stressing me out and when it’s too much I go back and tell myself once again that it’ll be fine. Sometimes I think about more happy things, like I’ll remember there’s a new episode of something on tonight and tell myself it’ll be okay and I’ve even got something to look forward to. Eventually I “get over it.” I don’t sweep my emotions or worries under the rug, I just acknowledge and accept it and try to go forward from there. Isn’t that basically what you’re saying to do?
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Mar 25, 2018 20:11
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Bear in mind that asking what meditation is and how to do it is something like asking what exercise is and how to do it. You can and will get many different answers, each driven by its own theory and with its own practice, that are all correct. To take a somewhat random example, here is a single buddhist text with a few methods highlighted. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html* And here is another: https://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/eng/practice/zazen/advice/fukanzanzeng.html There are many others. There can be physical meditations, mantras, visualizations. Outside of the buddhist tradition there are yet more. Many more. There is no one answer or instruction. And they are situated within traditions that generally prescribe non meditative commitments that foster and are fostered by the practice (e.g., other elements of the eightfold path, in yoga yamas, niyamas, pranayama etc.). So you are probably going to need to do a bit of research, and some trial and error with different methods, to figure out what works for you in the context of your particular goals. * personally I find the charnel meditations to be the most efficacious
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Mar 25, 2018 20:23
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Boris Galerkin posted:I think I understand now, and boy do I feel silly. Perhaps. It is hard to say since I can't look into your mind  .Best thing I can offer is just when tomorrow's meditation comes up just try to keep it as simple as possible. Follow the 4 step flow chart and see how it goes. You can always come back with more questions after you've given it a run through with your new perspective.
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Mar 25, 2018 22:51
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I was reading something incredibly depressing the other day - a work of philosophical pessimism, not like, "a bad news article" - and I immediately thought of the bodhisattva vow and other Buddhist concepts in response to the points the author raised, and eventually came to the conclusion that he needed a hug and perhaps a meditation coach. I suppose this is progress! Really, I thought the problem was that he approached the general problem of suffering on the assumption that even if somehow everything currently extant ceased to be, that this would actually STOP anything as opposed to meaning suffering would arise in another location at some future date.
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Mar 26, 2018 00:23
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Is it normal to feel angry and frustrated during meditation? Not even angry at something in particular, just pure rage and a strong desire to stop. It doesn't happen that often, but it tends to completely ruin a sitting session for me when it happens.
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Mar 26, 2018 00:46
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Gantolandon posted:Is it normal to feel angry and frustrated during meditation? Not even angry at something in particular, just pure rage and a strong desire to stop. It doesn't happen that often, but it tends to completely ruin a sitting session for me when it happens. It's never happened to me, but I've read plenty of accounts by others of having this occur. I don't really have any advice towards it due to the lack of first hand experience though. I think it could be considered 'normal' especially since you say it doesn't happen often. If the anger isn't strong enough to straight up unbalance you, I guess I would try to turn it into my focus for that meditation just to see if I could plumb the depths of it a bit and get some perspective. I know I have plenty of experience with angst and anxiety during my meditation sessions which give me a lot of aversion. I have had success making them the focus of my meditation and it does seem to help temper the extremeness of the emotion.
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Mar 26, 2018 00:53
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Keret posted:The second question I had is entirely unrelated, but I've just recently moved to Chicago from Austin, Texas, and am looking into practice centers in this city. In Austin I went semi-regularly to the Austin Zen Center which is a lovely establishment, but it doesn't seem that there are any SFZC-affiliated temples here. Does anyone happen to know of a good Zen practice center in Chicago that I should check out? Annual Prophet posted:I don’t live in Chicago, so take this with something of a grain of salt, but Dan Leighton (Ancient Dragon Zen Gate) has a good rep, worked in Japan with Shohaku Okumura and hails from SFZC. Certainly worth checking out, and he also has a podcast. Ancient Dragon Zen Gate is legit. I went to their Sunday morning zazen 4-5 times when I lived in Chicago. A friend new to meditation went there with me and started practicing there regularly. Boris Galerkin posted:I’d actually prefer if it was more explicit. When the person tells me to scan from my head to my toes I do it in like 0 seconds. He commands, I obey, I guess. It would be much better for me if he was like “now focus on how your head feels, now move down to your neck. Does it feel specific_feeling_i_can_check_for?” I’m the type of person that gets bored with Minecraft like games where you can do anything, because I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to do. The 10 Points Practice (Lying Down) is a comprehensive guided body scan recorded by Reggie Ray, a student of Chogyam Trungpa. Despite the title, you can absolutely do it in a seated posture. This has been my main practice for the last ~4 years. Regarding introductory meditation books, The Mind Illuminated is popular and accessible. It also touches on some interesting technical aspects of meditation and intersections with neuroscience. Gantolandon posted:Is it normal to feel angry and frustrated during meditation? Not even angry at something in particular, just pure rage and a strong desire to stop. It doesn't happen that often, but it tends to completely ruin a sitting session for me when it happens. This is normal and you can actually consider it a sign that the meditation is working. These knots of resistance to experience manifest in different ways for different people at various stages of practice. As you sit with them, they have a tendency to unravel, sometimes suddenly. The subconscious agenda underlying the emotion may suddenly emerge into awareness. Consider checking for any unusual or pronounced physical tension when this emotion comes up, and feel into the tension with a curious mind. You might also investigate whether emotions or physical tension with a similar flavor are present at a lower grade at other times, including situations that are seemingly pleasant or neutral. If you do experience rage or extreme emotions off the cushion in a way that feels overwhelming, it would be a good idea to speak with a meditation teacher. I'm not saying this will happen to you and it generally isn't something to worry about. Popcornicus fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 09:40
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I suppose this is a morbid way to revive the thread but you folks have guided me to a religion so I suppose it is fair enough. My grandfather died early this afternoon and I loved him tremendously, I was closer to him than to my father. It was not a great surprise - though it happened during a relatively minor operation. To complicate my own attachments, I was economically dependent on him and I was also in practice a sort of adopted youngest child based on the various age cohorts. I'm lost and afraid and while I suppose "prayers" is the wrong word, I would appreciate guidance. (A mild complication is that he was Jewish and so are his birth relations, though I am not - somewhat acculturated but not even a "lapsed" Jew.)
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Apr 17, 2018 23:20
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^ I’m sorry for your loss  Okay so I’ve been doing this mindfulness meditation for a few weeks now and I have a better understanding/grasp if it. I’m going to be completely honest and say that I didn’t make time to listen to any of those podcasts and read those books that were recommended to me. I got halfway through the Headspace app’s introduction to meditation guide before I got frustrated with it and deleted the app. I just didn’t like what he was telling me to do, because I still think it’s literally impossible (the “scan your body” type of stuff). I tried the 10% Happier app as well, but in the end I settled with one just called “Oak” (on iOS). I liked Oak because it’s 100% free (no ads, no I app purchases), but comes at a cost of being extremely minimal but that’s imo a good thing. Oak has a guided meditation sound file that you can choose how long you want it to run for, and an unguided version which is basically a timer without an alarm (but the minutes get recorded in Health.app so it’s an incentive). The “guide” is also way better for me because she doesn’t ask me to do things like “scan my body” or “feel this and that” or whatever. She just tells me to breath, focus on my breath, and then she pretty much stops talking to you other than to remind you to focus every now and then. Oak also has some breathing exercises that actually work for me. I’ve gotten used to doing the unguided meditation twice a day and my only question is what is actually the point of doing this? From my perspective, I am “acknowledging” that I am having thoughts, and then I “let it go.” But isn’t it better to think about those thoughts instead of running away from them? Sometimes I get a really cool idea for something as well, and it upsets me that I’m suppose to just toss it out of my head cause I’m probably not gonna remember it after 20 minutes of forcing myself to not think about anything.
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Apr 18, 2018 19:14
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With the "scan your body" thing, what is your mental block? Probably the best outline I've had is that there's that kind of proprioception - like if you tighten up your back muscles or suck in your gut, the part of your body that knows that "suck in your gut" translates to that. If you do it on purpose you can kind of reach the phase where you have gotten to the point immediately prior to "activating that muscle" without actually activating it. Interior stuff seemed to be entirely visualization, although I would not be surprised if advanced practicioners were able to detect upsets or growths in themselves.
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Apr 18, 2018 19:45
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can’t speak for other traditions, but zazen is, as kodo sawaki used to say, good for nothing
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Apr 18, 2018 19:56
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Nessus posted:I suppose this is a morbid way to revive the thread but you folks have guided me to a religion so I suppose it is fair enough. Sorry to hear about this - just because it's inevitable doesn't mean it's easy to lose people who are close to us. If we didn't have attachment to those around us, if we didn't cling to our dear ones, then this whole birth and old age and sickness and death business would be pretty easy, I guess. What are you looking for in terms of guidance? I can't tell you anything special, I don't have any magic words to make the suffering go away, but be with it, recognizing it as what it is, looking at where it comes from, and where it will go to. Don't try to imagine your emotions aren't real, let them come, but do look at what they come from. All composited things in this world are impermanent. All we can do is have great compassion for them while they - and we - are here. It sounds like your grandfather taught you well and took care of you, and so I am grateful for him to have had such a positive impact on you.
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Apr 19, 2018 02:07
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Paramemetic posted:Sorry to hear about this - just because it's inevitable doesn't mean it's easy to lose people who are close to us. If we didn't have attachment to those around us, if we didn't cling to our dear ones, then this whole birth and old age and sickness and death business would be pretty easy, I guess. What are you looking for in terms of guidance? I can't tell you anything special, I don't have any magic words to make the suffering go away, but be with it, recognizing it as what it is, looking at where it comes from, and where it will go to. Don't try to imagine your emotions aren't real, let them come, but do look at what they come from.
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Apr 19, 2018 02:15
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Nessus posted:With the "scan your body" thing, what is your mental block? Probably the best outline I've had is that there's that kind of proprioception - like if you tighten up your back muscles or suck in your gut, the part of your body that knows that "suck in your gut" translates to that. If you do it on purpose you can kind of reach the phase where you have gotten to the point immediately prior to "activating that muscle" without actually activating it. I went with a friend to a yoga class once and it was the only yoga class I’ve ever been to because the instructor was telling us stuff like “pull the energy up from the ground and feel it go through your body” and other equally silly and not physically possible things. My mental block with the “scan your body” things is that I think it’s all a bunch of nonsense just like how pulling energy up from my feet is also nonsense. e: This is literally why I like the Oak app, because to me it feels like it’s 100% nonsense free. She guides you to stretch, take deep breaths, find a spot where you can physically feel yourself breathing eg your rising stomach, and then to just focus on that every time you think about things. e: quote:Interior stuff seemed to be entirely visualization, although I would not be surprised if advanced practicioners were able to detect upsets or growths in themselves. This is the stuff I’m talking about. I really don’t believe this is true or even possible. I’d like to avoid anything or anyone or any app that suggests otherwise, unless it’s from a peer reviewed journal. When I hear this it’s no different than hearing about people who can survive on air or whatever. Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Apr 19, 2018 |
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Apr 19, 2018 05:29
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Boris Galerkin posted:I’ve gotten used to doing the unguided meditation twice a day and my only question is what is actually the point of doing this? From my perspective, I am “acknowledging” that I am having thoughts, and then I “let it go.” But isn’t it better to think about those thoughts instead of running away from them? Sometimes I get a really cool idea for something as well, and it upsets me that I’m suppose to just toss it out of my head cause I’m probably not gonna remember it after 20 minutes of forcing myself to not think about anything. I can tell you some of my experiences meditating but I don't think I can tell you really what the point is. The point depends on what you believe, what you want, etc. When I started meditating, it was pretty rough going through 10 minutes of sitting meditation. It was hard to stay still for long, both physically and mentally. For a while I challenged myself to meditate for 15 minutes at a time, then 20 minutes, then 30. For a while I'd meditate twice a day. To be honest, these days I don't meditate every day, or even every week. But I've noticed some cognitive and behavioral differences in myself. The first thing is that I notice much more easily when I'm not, for lack of a better term, "centered." When my head is filled with thoughts that are distracting, or when there's something nagging me, or I just am not thinking clearly. After meditating enough, I know what I feel like when my head is clear and my concentration is uninterrupted, so I can tell much better when I'm not in that clear-minded state. This is more useful than you might imagine, because it tells you that you need to stop whatever it is you're doing and change tack. Step away from the computer and get a breath of fresh air; make a cup of coffee or tea; get something to eat; sweep the floor for a little bit, and then return to what you need to do. Knowing what my head is like when it's clear makes it possible for me to know what it's like when I'm feeling foggy or irritated. The second thing is that my patience is higher than it used to be. I notice this when I'm sitting outside and just looking at nature, or when I'm at the gym. I can feel more like the time I'm spending is fine just the way it is, without needing to check my phone or think about something as a distraction. I had a day where I was sitting around a doctor's office shadowing for 7 hours, and I realized that I could sit and pay more attention for a long period of time than I thought I could. The last thing is that it's helped with my sense of empathy, probably. I've thought a lot about what David Foster Wallace calls your default, automatic setting. Where you get upset at your enemies, where you place yourself first and get frustrated when other people interrupt the primacy of your self. I really hate it when I'm thoughtless. I think this ties into both being centered and having more patience for things as they are. I notice more often when I'm starting to judge someone or jump to a conclusion about something, and it's easier to stop it and rethink my approach to be more compassionate. I'm also a big fan of metta meditation and Llama Tsultrim Allione's take on chod meditation, which are significantly different from mindfulness meditation in how you approach them (you spend your meditation consciously thinking about a particular subject). As someone who's dealt with PTSD, chod and metta meditation have been pretty transformative. Boris Galerkin posted:I went with a friend to a yoga class once and it was the only yoga class I’ve ever been to because the instructor was telling us stuff like “pull the energy up from the ground and feel it go through your body” and other equally silly and not physically possible things. I'm not saying that many practitioners of yoga, tai chi, etc. don't also believe in things that are inherently magical or spiritual in nature. But it's worth recognizing that your inhalations, exhalations, muscle activation, residual muscular tension, and balance and stabilization are certainly forms of energy. With a statement like "pull the energy up from the ground and feel it go through your body," the word "energy" can act as shorthand for all of these various physical processes. For instance, a lot of yoga techniques coordinate movements with inhalation and exhalation, and certain points of the movement will be periods of ease or periods of effort. So it could be completely possible to interpret it as "tense your arms and hands as in a pulling motion as you fill your lungs with air, and feel the effect your deep breath has on how your body feels" or something similar. I'm not sure what sort of body scanning you've encountered, but in my experience it's a fairly straightforward process. I've used something similar to it when trying to doze off, where you start at your toes, tense them up for a moment and then relax them, and then do the same thing in your legs, your thighs, your core, your arms, etc., moving up. If you say "relax your foot" you might say "what? my foot's already relaxed" but if you tense it up first and then ease up on the tension, you know for certain that it's relaxed. In the same way, people can involuntarily be storing tension in different parts of their body without noticing it. A lot of times I find myself clenching my jaw, or furrowing my brow, or hunching my shoulders, probably as a stress response. As far as I've seen it, "body scanning" is about trying to locate areas of your body that are storing unnecessary tension so you can release it. Cephas fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Apr 19, 2018 |
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Apr 19, 2018 06:11
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Boris Galerkin posted:This is the stuff I’m talking about. I really don’t believe this is true or even possible. I’d like to avoid anything or anyone or any app that suggests otherwise, unless it’s from a peer reviewed journal. When I hear this it’s no different than hearing about people who can survive on air or whatever.
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Apr 19, 2018 06:25
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Let me rephrase, for years now I've been doing a thing that I "discovered" on my own (not saying I discovered it, but that I found out on my own that doing it helps me out a ton) where if I'm extremely stressed, too sad to function, overwhelmed, etc, I can "shut my mind down" to think about it. It's not unlike what all the meditation apps are telling me to do: I start with some deep breaths, I may or may not close my eyes, and I just stop thinking about what I'm currently doing but instead think about what's wrong. If I'm stressed I "talk" to myself in my head through it. My internal dialog would be something like, "Alright, poo poo sucks right now, but it's gonna be fine. You are upset, why? Because I didn't get what I wanted. Because I didn't do X. Oh well, it's in the past, I can still get what I want if I just do Y instead. And even if I don't get it, it's totally fine, I don't need it." etc. In the end I'm calm and "centered" and have a slightly different outlook on life, and if there are problems that need actions, I've given them thoughts and have planned out what I need to do to address those problems today and what I could do to prevent them in the future and so on. Or maybe I've randomly thought of a cool idea for a thing I want to do, and I spend the rest of that 'meditation' session thinking about how cool it would be and so on. For this time when I've "shut down my mind" I'm not thinking about anything around me. My phone doesn't matter, my TV doesn't matter, it's just me and there have been occasions where I've literally sat there for hours staring blankly at the wall doing this without noticing the time. Now when I use Oak (I have to be specific and say Oak here again, because with Headspace and 10% Happier I was constantly fighting back against what I was being told for reasons I wrote in my previous post), I do the same but my internal dialog becomes: "poo poo sucks right now, and I've acknowledged this, and I can't think about why it sucks. Maybe if I do X---alright, I hope I remember this in 20 minutes because I can't think about it right now. Oh tomorrow I want to---that's a thing for me to think about later, right now I shouldn't think at all." In the end, I feel more calm, relaxed, and I guess centered no matter which of the above I do. My question is why can't I think about my feelings to figure out the root causes of why I'm feeling that way? Why can't I pursue an idea that comes to mind?
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Apr 19, 2018 07:23
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Boris Galerkin posted:In the end, I feel more calm, relaxed, and I guess centered no matter which of the above I do. My question is why can't I think about my feelings to figure out the root causes of why I'm feeling that way? Why can't I pursue an idea that comes to mind? I'm not really a meditation coach so take this analogy with several grains of salt and the full knowledge that it may be corrected: The interior dialogue you describe would be better if replaced by something along the lines of 'watching' the thoughts. Don't engage, just let them float past like clouds in the sky.
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Apr 19, 2018 08:51
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Nessus posted:I don't think there is anything wrong with such thoughts, but you want to not do that while meditating. You don't have to be in a constant state of meditation. And, if you have the secret to nuclear fusion come to you during a sitting session, you can break the session and go write it down, the Buddha won't come and beat you up for that. There are definitely forms of meditation where you're supposed to think about things, this is sometimes called contemplation. It generally revolves around spiritual topics, but there are also forms where you think about your daily life. At least in Christianity... but Boris doesn't seem to be very invested in the religious affiliation of their practice.
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Apr 19, 2018 09:13
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This essay, focusing on Tibetan Buddhism, gives a good overview of the ways Buddhism has been interacting with people's (secular / esotericist) perceptions in the west: https://aeon.co/essays/what-lies-behind-the-simplistic-image-of-the-happy-buddhist quote:Perhaps the best-known esoteric tradition in the West is the Kalachakra Initiation, the ceremony in which the Dalai Lama or other high-ranking monks slowly construct beautifully intricate mandalas out of coloured sand, and then wipe them away. Laypeople in the West usually read this ritual as simple religious art married to a lesson on the impermanence of everything. But building the mandala is part of a larger ritual process meant to prepare young acolytes for spiritual transformation. To drastically over-summarise, the mandala becomes a representation of, and portal into, the abode and mind of an enlightened deity, which monks can mentally travel through, psychically mainlining the whole of Buddhist thought from an elevated perspective. The mandala is seen as so magically charged that its dissipation actually spreads spiritual benefit into the wider world. Many tantric practices are similarly opaque and magical to outsiders, yet, because they deal with compassion and meditation, remain somewhat comprehensible to the pop-Western mind.
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Apr 24, 2018 05:43
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Boris Galerkin posted:This is the stuff I’m talking about. I really don’t believe this is true or even possible. I’d like to avoid anything or anyone or any app that suggests otherwise, unless it’s from a peer reviewed journal. When I hear this it’s no different than hearing about people who can survive on air or whatever. For what it's worth, I'm an academic and spend my entire life with my nose buried in peer-reviewed journals, but I still find Buddhist meditation extremely helpful in daily life. In the past I've got a little hung up on the weird words people used too, but really it's not that important. Meditation has been confirmed to be effective by many a journal, and what matters is good technique that works for you that can be maintained; whether someone talks about energy flows or whatnot doesn't really matter. There's a ton of secular or mostly-secular mindfulness/meditation resources out there now, so I'm certain you can find something that fits your preferences; but if you find it difficult, try to remember that the mind is a complex organ that is moved by the non-rational as much as the rational, and metaphor and analogy can be very powerful tools for working with the mind. One thing you might enjoy is to read the books from the Mind and Life Conferences, where world-leading scientists spoke at length with the Dalai Lama about the intersections and divergences between Buddhist thought and modern science on emotions, the mind, meditation practices, etc. In particular Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying involves Francisco Varela, a superstar in my field and it's a brilliant read. On a tangentially related topic: For UK Buddhist goons: I was due to attend a two-day event with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche this weekend in Edinburgh, but cannot go as a very short deadline has appeared from nowhere regarding a very important research funding proposal. I can transfer the ticket, so if anyone here is in the UK and wants to go, PM me and you can have the ticket (for free of course).
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Apr 25, 2018 12:36
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check out this nembutsu "caligraphy" i made not the true nembutsu but still good
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May 19, 2018 13:40
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Senju Kannon posted:check out this nembutsu "caligraphy" i made
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May 19, 2018 20:05
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What is the significance/role of calligraphy in different Buddhist traditions?
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May 19, 2018 23:28
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There was a renowned Korean calligrapher Jung Do-Jun that was recently flown in by the Portland Art Museum to give a short talk and demonstration a few months back. He spoke to this briefly, this is from the notes I took. China, Japan and Korea each have their own calligraphic traditions which have subtly different inflections on their values which show some influence of their religious and cultural traditions. The oldest is Chinese calligraphy, Shufa. It embodies strong Confucian values, emphasizing strict methods of using brush stroke, ink and composition to express scholarly values. He also discussed the development of Chinese calligraphic styles over time and this emphasis on scholarly values is born out towards styles that are more legible, more easily writable with the development of cursive scripts etc. The Japanese style of calligraphy embodies more Buddhist influences. Shodo is the way of calligraphy and is utilized as a tool for self cultivation and attaining the state of dao. There is a greater emphasis on meditation, self discipline and growth. The Korean art of calligraphy is Seoye, and emphasizes a language of aesthetics shared b/w artist and audience as a form of visual communication. It seemed more deeply literary, referring back to classic texts and passages to make aesthetic points. Jung Do-Jun said modern calligraphers try to utilize aspects of all the calligraphic traditions. Departing from Jung Do-Jun's lecture, when you set these traditions side by side you see some with stronger buddhist influences. In the more Buddhist japanese traditions rather than just preserving texts and communicating scholarly ideas you see calligraphy as a vehicle for meditation. When you examine some of the exemplary works of japanese buddhist painters and calligraphers you will also see calligraphy juxtaposed with ink style paintings of various buddhist scenes and parables of enlightenment, such as a monkey gazing into a reflection of the moon on the water. Three blind men crossing a branch over a ravine. This as compared with, for example, the Korean calligraphic tradition. Many of the examples and demonstrations that Jung Do-Jun made or displayed were representations and copies of classic texts or poems, painted in such a way to embody an image of the subject. So a passage that says "You can only experience a rainbow by surviving the rain storm" is painted/written in an arc like a rainbow but also in such a way that suggests the character for Hope. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 22:14 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 20, 2018 22:08
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Very interesting thank you!
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May 23, 2018 20:47
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Link Broken
Thirteen Orphans fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 29, 2018 |
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May 29, 2018 18:16
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Link Broken Congrats!?
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May 30, 2018 01:30
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May 30, 2018 01:39
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I've been reading the thread from the beginning, and very much enjoying the things I've seen. I last read this thread a few years ago, when I was having a very difficult time, and found that some of the most helpful things I had come to learn "myself" actually came from here. There were some subtle changes, but largely they were the same. For example, I started doing my best to practice kindness towards all things, considering the possibility that I may one day be the bug that I just saved from the sink. It's sort of self-centered, but it's helped me be a little kinder to people, and more conscientious towards insects and other animals. The question I have right now has to do with mindfulness meditation; I've been practicing it for a few days now, and I've run into something that might be a very subtle snag. I don't have any particular problems with distractions, due to the excellent guided meditation video I found, but I seem to have something of the opposite. When I've fully entered what I consider to be a meditative state, I find that very few thoughts actually occur. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about how I'm not thinking, but aside from that there is really very little going on inside my head. It isn't a dark time in a void, which I've experienced before - I feel entirely alert. It's just that, aside from my breathing, there's hardly anything in my head. It isn't because I'm forcing myself either, I don't think. I feel entirely relaxed, and if I need to adjust my posture I have no trouble allowing it for myself. I don't feel that I'm coming from a place of rigid discipline or forcing things down. The video describes my thoughts like lights shooting across the sky, but when I'm deep in meditation it's more like I'm staring into a pure night, with the occasional shooting star. It's possible that I just have a suitable temperament for meditation, but I thought it would be best to ask here in case I'm making some sort of pivotal mistake. Thank you all in advance. e: Apparently I'm still interested in talking. One thing in particular that has helped me process some of the darker parts of my life is the clarity of the definitions of karma earlier in the thread. That it is simply cause and effect, no great punishment or reward. In this way, I have been able to take personal responsibility over terrible things that happened to me early in my life. In particular, my mother died on Christmas when I was eight years old. This was very sad, and something that I never came to terms with. Time passed, seasons changed, I grew older, but I never got over it. Then, a few months ago, I started considering my deep and abiding anger. My anger has been with me since some of my earliest memories. When I was only four or five years old, my grandmother was trying to put my shoes on for me and I kicked her in the face until her nose was broken. The anger seemed irrational to me, some kind of "other" that I couldn't understand or do anything about. The medications that psychiatrists put me on seemed to be the only sensible solution, pills to cage the monster inside me. From age six to twenty-two, I was taking some form of medication or therapy. As I thought about this anger, it began to seem unnatural to me. Even now, I can't say that I fully understand it. However, I believe that the death of my mother has to do with karma. A previous incarnation may have killed a child's mother on some sort of festive occasion, and forced this suffering on that child. Time passed, and then I was made to take on that suffering myself. This outlook is very helpful to me, because it makes sense of the senseless. Without this view, there is no lesson to be learned, no goodness to gain from that terrible event. With it, I can take it as a way of understanding how deeply my anger could harm another, by looking at my loss from a different viewpoint. This is another case in which my thinking is very self-centered. Of course my mother had her own problems and burdens to carry that led to her eventual death, but my compassion isn't developed enough for me to understand her just yet. I think that my thinking will need to be self-centered for me to make real progress. I hope that one day I will learn a greater understanding. I think the meditation is working, because I've felt very relaxed and matter of fact as I've typed this. It's a nice change. klapman fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Jun 9, 2018 |
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Jun 9, 2018 11:02
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klapman posted:The question I have right now has to do with mindfulness meditation; I've been practicing it for a few days now, and I've run into something that might be a very subtle snag. I don't have any particular problems with distractions, due to the excellent guided meditation video I found, but I seem to have something of the opposite. When I've fully entered what I consider to be a meditative state, I find that very few thoughts actually occur. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about how I'm not thinking, but aside from that there is really very little going on inside my head. It isn't a dark time in a void, which I've experienced before - I feel entirely alert. It's just that, aside from my breathing, there's hardly anything in my head. The best thing you could probably do is to find a meditation instructor of some sort in the flesh who can give you more guidance. Without that kind of in-person contact, it's hard precisely to say how much your experience could be genuine and what parts might be veering from right view (if any). In any case, within the Tibetan frameworks for meditation, the experience (or nyam) of non-thought is referred to as mitogpa, and it is understood to be a perfectly valid experience. Yet, it is also simultaneously to be viewed as just that: an experience, just as much as of an experience as having many thoughts or emotions. Thus the instruction is to just notice that you are experiencing thought-free awareness, and not attach to it. It will come and go, and perhaps in a few months you'll notice every time you sit, you'll be besieged by thoughts and emotions. It's all part of the path. B. Alan Wallace has some great books that go into the subtleties of silent shamatha meditation (assuming roughly this is the kind of practice you are doing), among which Attention Revolution is probably the most well known. Culadasa also has a great book although I have no personal experience with it. These would also be great resources to consult as your practice starts to deepen, along with a meditation instructor of some kind. Note however, that it's of vital importance to thoroughly vet and ask around about any teacher before engaging them in any kind of significant manner.
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Jun 11, 2018 18:24
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Popcornicus posted:This is normal and you can actually consider it a sign that the meditation is working. These knots of resistance to experience manifest in different ways for different people at various stagesof practice. As you sit with them, they have a tendency to unravel, sometimes suddenly. The subconscious agenda underlying the emotion may suddenly emerge into awareness. The problem is not completely gone, but now it seems to happen much rarer. It seems to be connected to the body - sometimes I feel a compulsion to move, and not doing it produces frustration. This is something I do experience normally, although with less intensity. What's interesting, sometimes I managed to achieve an opposite state when I don't feel any need to move. In fact, moving seems difficult (it isn't, but feels like it's going to be before moving). I'm not sure if this is something I should try to achieve, but seems different from usual "concentrate on breathing, realize your mind wanders since last 30 seconds, repeat".
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Jun 12, 2018 00:23
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