Category Archives: Meditation

A Meditation More Challenging

Posted by on March 23, 2012 1 comment

After a long time of being a solo practitioner and participating in in virtual Sanghas, I restarted my investigation into local Buddhist centres recently.  I’ve tried a couple previously, the Birmingham Buddhist Vihara and the Jangchub Ling centre in Cradley Heath.  Both brought interesting conversations, very friendly faces and a welcome affirmation that I was not alone.

My most recent trip was to the Dr BR Ambedkar Memorial Centre Buddha Vihara in Wolverhampton, literally a stones throw from the Mercedes dealer on the ring road.  This brought more smiling faces, a warm welcome and a much needed reminder about the physical difficulties of meditation.  If you meditate in a chair, as I tend to, you never realise just how challenging meditating on a cushion can be.  The aches in the leg muscles, the aches in the back and the constant distraction from this can make you quite glad that your sitting is over!

This took me back to something I learned many years ago from a wonderful book that started me on my somewhat intermittent journey as a meditator.  The book is called “Moon Over Water“, by a lady called Jessica MacBeth and it really is like having a patient friend walking beside you on the path.  Jessica recommended that we shouldn’t rely on always meditating on one place, or having certain incenses or clothes or an altar to hand.  The idea was that we would be able to meditate wherever we needed to (e.g. a hotel room).  The sitting I did on Sunday proved the value of her advice and I would like to add that we should also not get overly used to sitting in one position.  If used to a chair, if you can do so, try the stool or the cushion and vice versa.

The lesson I learned here is that we do need to challenge ourselves as meditators from time to time.

Buddhism in the West

Posted by on March 16, 2012 No comments

My previous two posts have continued a short theme I wished to explore.  They’ve hopefully explained why I consider Buddhism to be Secular and provided a very quick overview of how Buddhism came to the West.  So here we are, Buddhism is in the western world and according to some sources is the fastest growing religion (I use the term as a shorthand) in many countries, maybe even the whole western world. [1] [2] [3] [4]

I think Buddhism has come to fit the western world very well.  Buddhism is finding that in many places it fits very well with modern science.  Indeed the attitude of questioning and verifying things for yourself that the Buddha speaks of to the people of Kesaputta in the Kalama Sutra is not at all antagonistic to the scientific endeavour.  I’ve posted verses 4 and 10 from the above link in order to bring them directly to your attention.

4. “It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blameable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them.

10. “Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumour; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blameable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.

The above isn’t the only thing Buddhism has to offer that fits it with an increasingly secular west, you will find Buddhist meditation centres in many western cities.  Theravada centres, Zen centres and New Kadampa centres among just a few.  The teachings of Buddhism offer a powerful potential antidote to the stresses, strains and challenges of modern life.  They allow a person to find a sense of peace in our high-tech materialist society without making you feel inherently sinful or unworthy.  For me, as for many others here in the west, this is a huge part of the appeal.

References

[1] – Buddhism fastest growing religion in west.
[2] – Buddhism is fastest growing religion in English jails over past decade.
[3] – Buddhism: Ancient faith experiences and explosion of growth in US.
[4] – Why is Buddhism the fastest growing religion in Australia?

 

Making Lemonade

Posted by on February 26, 2012 No comments

There’s an old saying “When life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade”.  It’s good advice and I’ve had time to reflect on it, given that life has indeed chosen to give me Lemons of late.  I’m going to post my thoughts on this with the hope that they will be beneficial for someone.

I found it very beneficial to take the view that these things can serve as a valuable lesson, if one decides to make the effort to learn from them.  It’s very easy to point out the faults of others, to deride them and place oneself above them.  To my disquiet, I became more aware of myself doing that and resolved to stop doing it.  As the situation I was in drew further on, I found that I was being moved to meditate on humility and finding compassion for others, whereas before I might not have been so understanding or compassionate.

Of course, my own faults were there too and their karma came into play, which taught me the importance of honestly acknowledging one’s own faults and resolving to address them.  This process of acknowledging your own faults builds humility, I found that it helped me in my efforts to view others and their faults and shortcomings in a more compassionate way.  It’s always worth remembering that while someone may not have your experience or skillset and seem helpless to you, the same is true from their perspective if the roles are reversed.  Remember what it was like for you when you were starting out.

Now the challenge is to apply all of this!

Keeping at it

Posted by on February 15, 2012 No comments

I’ve found a new friend during my meditation practise, his name is “Percy”, or “Persistence” to give him his full title.  It’s a tempting vision, the idea of the meditator sat there, at effortless inner peace.  It’s also wrong. When meditating it’s often a terrible struggle, as any meditator will tell you, you’re assailed by the “Monkey Mind” bringing mental noise and distractions.  This is quite normal and can be quite discouraging.

The only real solution is to persist with your meditation in a firm, non-judgemental and gentle manner.  The constant distractions and re-finding of your focus; the days that you really don’t want to sit but do so anyway; the days that you do miss your sitting but return to your practise the next day, knowing the it’s the right thing to do; these times are where you really learn about meditation.

It’s not effortless success that teaches us to meditate,  it’s that moment of re-finding our focus that teaches us mindfulness and doing so without comment or harsh judgement that begins to teach us compassion.  For both mindfulness and compassion begin with ourselves, so it seems to me that in meditation to fail is really to sow the seeds of success.  As long as we remember Percy, of course.

I’d love to hear from other people about this.

SitQuietly Web Timer Update

Posted by on February 5, 2012 No comments

Well, I’ve got a little work done over the last week or two and I’ve just update my SitQuietly web-based meditation timer to version 1.3.  I’m still working on getting it going on tablets and phones, but my spare time is quite limited so this may take a while.

Changes are:

  • Added tool tips to sidebar items.
  • Centre the timer window.
  • Highlight the Acknowledgements section.
  • Slight wording change to the meditation instructions. Added two more resources to the resources section and amended the format.
  • Number input boxes allow multiple lines, fixed this issue.

As ever, I hope you find it a useful tool and should you find a bug or have any suggestions please let me know!

 

A Little More Slowness

Posted by on January 25, 2012 1 comment

I’ve revisited the idea of slowness recently and touched again on Wu-Wei when I thought about accepting our limitations. I saw this article in the New York Times a week or two ago and remembered it as tying in with the things I was talking about quite nicely. The article makes the case very well that Yoga is not as safe as we’d all like to believe. My opinion is that this is true of anything; which is why, in my SitQuietly instructions, I give a warning to consult your medical practitioner before taking up a meditation practise. But this article makes specific mention of people who seem to be treating Yoga as if it were a performance sport, specifically one man who threw himself into a spine twist and had three ribs give way.

The article says a lot of things that ring true for me, that echo my own gym and Tai Chi experiences. I realised a long time ago that it was up to me to make things easy on myself, that I had to do this by realising and respecting my limits. Apply Wu-Wei, don’t do things at an inappropriate speed, don’t force yourself into exercises that are inappropriate for your body type or mental state. When growth in our abilities occurs it should be unforced and as a result of the “70 percent rule”, which I’ve talked about before. This says that you work to 70 percent of your potential, with the other 30 percent held back for growth and improvement. Eventually, your 70 percent is equal to what used to be your 100 percent, and you’re still only giving 70 percent!

My other observation is that practises like Yoga, meditation and Tai Chi are not performance sports. The wisdom of Wu-Wei and the Slow Movement comes back again to the fore, these things are healing arts without a doubt; but only when used appropriately and at the right pace! They can heal your body and mind, but will do so in their own time, to try to hurry things seems to me to be a mistake. One that can only end badly as well. We in the West seem to be bringing our own neurotic hurried flavour to these things, but in doing so I worry that we lose a lot of their essence and bring ourselves further pain.

Sitquietly Web Edition update

Posted by on January 1, 2012 1 comment

I’ve been a busy bee over the last couple of weeks in my spare time.  The result of my work was uploaded just a few minutes ago and I hope you’ll like it.

After a long hiatus for various reasons, the web browser based SitQuietly meditation timer has received an update.  This new version removes the dependency on Adobe Flash, replacing that code with HTML 5 sound code instead.  I added a short section on meditation, with basic instructions and the site also sports a new format and has a few fixed bugs.

I’ve tested it in Firefox, Chromium, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari and Konqueror.  I also know it renders fine on IOS and Android but the sound is not yet working on those platforms.  I have a handle on what needs to be done, but I had no way of finishing the work before my deadline of 1st Jan.

Anyway, you can find it here, please let me know what you think!