I was thinking over the weekend about our habit of building abstractions and structures on top of things. For example you can buy meditation products, from CDs to incense to statues and more, some of it at great expense. Very interesting and some of the statues are very nice pieces of work, no argument. But do we really need all these trappings? In my view, the answer is ‘no’, in many cases the structures and trappings that we put round our activities can cloud our purpose, it’s as if we’re trying to bribe the universe into giving us success without realising that we’re getting in our own way!

I use meditation as an example, but I have no doubt that anyone can think of their own example or will certainly happen across one. Take meditation, in my case I’m beginning to work with zazen now, but in general I’ve found that what matters is your approach to it both before and during your practice. The effort to make a regular habit of it, combined with even a small amount of basic guidance from an experienced instructor is worth more than all the robes, CDs and incense in the world and will make a great deal more difference.

Meditation should be a simple affair, but I’ve seen meditation exercises in which you actually have to remember what to do next, it should be a thing of simplicity but we’ve strayed off and made it (as with many other things) into something that’s needlessly complex.  When you think of your own example, I don’t doubt you’ll see the same.

Personally, I think the simple approach yields greater benefits.

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, when she used a saying “Jealousy is for the weak”.  It’s a strong statement, but not in the way you think.  Jealousy is a powerful emotion, as are many others, but to say it’s for the weak is, I feel, to miss the point.

Emotions simply are, there’s no point denying them, but the statement above makes that implication along with a more subtle one.  It implies that the speaker considers themselves to be “strong” and denigrates the jealousy, imbuing it with more power.  Thus, the speaker now has an investment, an attachment to, a position of strength.

If we’re being honest now, the Jealousy is caused by grasping and controlling behaviour.  We must realise that this sort of thing is a trap, we may desire to control someone else, but in reality we have lost more freedom than them because we HAVE to control them.

By realising the true impermanence of all things we can let go of Jealousy, this is not the same as fighting/suppressing/ignoring it, as these are simply more subtle forms of attachment.  Our desire to be strong is also interesting, what is strong must eventually change and become that which is weak, this simply lines us up for suffering.

Although I feel I should point out that strength and weakness are both fairly subjective terms, they can mean different things to different people, they don’t always take the form we traditionally expect them to.

I recently wrote about going easy on yourself and negative reinforcement. I’d like to continue with my habit of exploring things over more than one post. The reasons I do this are twofold, firstly it enables me to develop a subject over more time. Secondly, it allows me to correct myself, if needed, after thought in a what I feel is a more natural manner.

In this entry, I want to think aloud about other people’s criticism. We get criticised quite often, be it at work, at home even on the web. Heck I caught some in my first 6 months for daring to make post a on Evolution! The question is how to view criticism without it being destructive, one thing I’ve learned it that it takes two to party. We have to remember that the criticism is just a viewpoint, whether we accept it or not is up to us, we are allowed to think critically about criticism.

Also, who exactly is being criticised? The person who earned the criticism no longer exists and the person being criticised has moved on from there, so it’s a little easier to be objective about it. From a Buddhist viewpoint it’s not you that’s being criticised, it’s an action, a word, a view, or whatever but none of these things are the ever changing you. Even so you have incoming negativity….. Or do you?

We’re conditioned to think of criticism as an attack on the self, we react defensively to protect our “self”. But we have the option to revise that, to essentially redefine how we think of criticism, we can change the rules which can be a very subversive thing to do.

Interesting thought, yes?

If you cast an eye down the right hand side of the blog, you’ll see a new addition called “I’m doing”. Well, I went and signed up to Twitter, a lot of people seem to rate it, so I thought I’d give it a try for a laugh. You can attach your mobile number or Instant messenger account and I’ve already tried it via text message. I think it should be good for a giggle, which is probably the best reason to do anything.

You can find my Twitter profile here.

I was at my Tai Chi class on Wednesday night, the exercise was a simple push, but Mark was making the point that you should only use “4oz” of pressure. Now this isn’t a literal commandment, but the principle is not to apply force.

While we were doing this, I thought of the Taoist metaphor of water. Our hands were like the tips of the waves, gentle, but with hidden power behind them. The power came from the depths, from our feet, our weight and then came crashing down when it was released (obviously not so much in the case of some of the students) with great effect.

This is great for Tai Chi, but I was just thinking that this goes much deeper than Martial Arts, it’s a useful metaphor for all of life. You stay connected to things and situations, not by crushing pressure, but gentle contact. When the situation moves, as you’re not trying to rigidly control, you can flow with it better.

But your motivation is not in your hands, the superficial contact with things, it should come from a deeper connection from developing an understanding that can only come from not trying to control or exert ego. I feel that when you move from that place, you add much more quality to what you do and things should go more smoothly. I’d like to develop this line of thought further, watch this space.

I’d like to revisit, if you’ll indulge me, my habit of building on previous posts. I wrote before about not being too hard on ourselves. Now I’d like to dig a little deeper into that.

I wrote before that it’s better if we’re gentle with ourselves when we fall short, I feeling that one consequence of not doing this is a negative spiral. If we spend time beating ourselves up and thinking of ourselves as “losers”, or some other negative term, we can easily create a situation where we reinforce a negative spiral in our self image. We make it easier for our self doubt and self pity to undermine us.

But exactly who or what are we trying to undermine here? From a Zen perspective, there is no concrete self, so who are we doubting and pitying? The person who made the mistake no longer really exists, there is nobody to beat up.

I feel that once that’s realised, we can find a great deal of freedom in that truth.

One of the habits I have is a tendency to beat myself when I fall short of my own expectations. I dwell on it and brood on it and can get quite down.

However I was thinking the other day about the eightfold path, and the words of my Tai Chi teacher came to mind, “What I don’t say is as important as what I say”. He was talking about us limiting ourselves during practice to imagine “rules” when he hadn’t set any. This is a vitally important point, many times we limit ourselves through imagined limitations, without stopping and thinking about where these limitations come from.

So, coming back to the eightfold path, we take it as a set of guides to our relationship with the world. But nobody ever said it was one way, we are as much a part of the world as anything else, so by necessity we must apply the principles to ourselves. I take this to mean not browbeating ourselves overly, remembering moderation and not denying ourselves things just to be “spiritual”. Remember to be gentle with yourself, don’t cling to failures (real or imagined), if you’re clinging to the pains in your head, how can you truly be alive in the moment?

I’ve started a process of change to the way things work at Watercourse recently. You can now find Watercourse at the address below. The general plan is to move Watercourse to new hosting as I wanted my own domain and Wordpress make some aspects of that difficult (e.g. email forwarding), also I’d like to host all of my files and writings in one place rather than having them spread out over free hosting and I’d like a little more control of things than I get at Wordpress.com.

The homepage and feeds are at the following addresses, though the old one still work for now:

blog: http://quietwatercourse.co.uk/
Posts: http://quietwatercourse.co.uk/feed
Comments: http://quietwatercourse.co.uk/comments/feed

Well, after a long absence I started back at my Tai Chi class last night.

It’s interesting to contrast Taijiquan and my usual Bodypump classes, as I do view them as different sides of the Taji symbol. I used to consider the internal exercise superior, an attitude that I picked up from an ex-colleague, I’ve reconsidered my approach these days.

While I appreciate the external exercise I get in the Gym, I found Tajiquan provides a missing part of the exercise picture, I appreciate that more now that I’m doing both than I did when I was just doing Tai Chi or Gym classes by themselves.

I have a feeling that the two are going to compliment each other quite nicely, does anyone else have any experience with this?