A Quiet Watercourse

I was thinking about meditation last night after my regular sitting, especially the “Sitting quietly, doing nothing” aspect.

I was thinking that people go into meditation for any number of reasons, but if you go into it with expectation of a reward, you turn it into a standard chasing after the payoff type activity of the sort we do every day. But if you’re focussed on the payoff (no matter how nice it is), then you’re not meditating properly are you?

My line of thought is that by simply meditating for it’s own sake, without any grasping after a reward, the exercise will help us reduce our level of attachments and ego.  But there is more to it, I’ve found that I pay more attention and notice things more since I’ve been doing this, if I’d been focussed on the payoff would I have started to learn to do this?

It seems there’s more to sitting quietly, doing nothing than anyone thought…..

Now here’s an interesting piece. “The Neural Buddhists” is an opinion piece in the New York Times, which caught my attention and I have to say I find myself in agreement with the author.

I’ve long felt that hardcore materialism doesn’t have all the answers, but at the same time neither does hardcore bible thumping theism. My focus has always been in the direction of a flexible positive spirituality, not restrictive guilt mongering or the complete denial of our spiritual side, neither fear nor denial seem particularly useful to me.

We have had scientific evidence backing the positive effect of meditation, and after reading the NYT piece above, I’ve got a definite feeling that this is going to get very interesting!

It been a while since I posted here, I suppose you could say I’ve had another case of “Bloggers Block”.

I made the jump to being fully vegetarian in the last fortnight, I feel much better in myself and I have to say that it’s made me much more aware of what’s in the food I’m eating and the issues surrounding it.

I’ve also become more aware of corporate and cartel power and it’s involvement in our lives than I was before, it’s as if this has spurred a blossoming of awareness, but not in a meditative way.

I’ve post a few links to some interesting Google videos when I get time.