I’ve been very interested by a story on the BBC which details the findings of scientists who are studying meditation. You can find the article here. It seems that the days of waiting for hard scientific evidence for the positive effects of meditation may well be over!

As a person who considers meditation to be an absolutely valuable practice this is music to my ears, I notice that they suggest it may help people struggling with substance abuse, and promotes happiness and enthusiasm.

I can certainly relate to that, I know how I feel when I miss my practice for a few days, I feel that my creativity and ability to engage properly with the world declines without meditation.

How do you feel your meditation practice benefits you? Drop me a comment.

Well, I’ve decided to make the effort to go Vegetarian again.  I started this a little over two weeks ago, this’ll be the third time in my life I’ve tried, all these attempts have been recently in the last couple of years.

My reasons are for health and because of my Buddhist / Taoist views.  It also feels right on level that I can’t articulate, I know that if I fail this time, then there will be a fourth attempt.

I’m trying a gradual change, my breakfast is already fully veggie, lunch is my next target and I’ve already achieved it.  I just need to get my diet right to sustain my gym activity before I start to move my evening meals over.

It’s interesting that I seem to be eating a greater quantity of food and experiencing some light headedness.  A vegetarian friend tells me that the greater volume is normal and I think the light headedness is because I need to get my dietary balance worked out fully, but this is exactly why I’m doing a gradual change. 

Last time, it was my exercise habits that beat me, but from what I can see there’s no reason whatsoever that a Vegetarian can’t be a bodybuilding or triathlete or whatever.

I’ll keep my blog updated with the things I learn as I go along, hopefully my trial and error will come in handy for someone else!

I had the Buddhist view of the self re-explained to me the other day, it made a bit more sense this way.

The example I was given previously was by Alan Watts and was of a man in a railways station who buys a ticket, sits in the queue and then finally gets on a train and leaves.

The point Alan makes is that at each moment the man has extra experiences, his metabolism has moved on, he’s had extra thoughts about things, etc. So at no point is he a static entity, the man who buys the ticket is not the man who entered the station. The man who waits is not the man who bought the ticket, and so on. A consistent self is not present, as at each stage the man has changed in any number of small ways, and thus cannot present a consistent entity.

So I’m reading “An End to Suffering” by Pankaj Mishra, it’s an interesting read so far. It’s autobiographical and is covering a bit more of the history of the British and European discovery of Buddhism than I’ve seen elsewhere. The Buddhist view of the self is presented here by way of a short story, which uses the example of a chariot.

A chariot, like anything, is made from components. But no one component can be said to be the whole of the chariot.

The question is asked “Are the wheels the chariot?”, and answered “No”. Then, “Are the reins the Chariot?”, again the answer is “No”, and so on. It becomes clear that the chariot is really the relationship between it’s parts, it can only be said to exist when the parts are together.

The same is true of a person that we are truly the relationship between our physical and mental parts. My appendix for example, is not me, just one part of me. If I have my appendix (or tonsils) out, then I am certainly not the being I was before as I am minus some parts, but those parts cannot be said to be me.

Again the point is that my “self” is really the relationship between the constantly changing components of my body and mind, not anything concrete. But there is another dimension that the author has not touched on yet, which I think underpins Buddhist ethics. It’s something I’ve mentioned on here before, the South African principle of “Ubuntu” or “I am who I am because of who we all are”.

A very important part of the relationships that make me who I am is my relationship to my environment, the society I live in and to other people within those. This makes the precepts and the eightfold path even more urgent, as they not only change my body and mind relationship, but they directly change my relationship with these external things, thus not only changing who am I am, but ultimately who we all are.

I was wandering on my lunch hour and found a post on Drops of Water that made me stop and think ‘how true!”

She writes of a person who has attained the Tao, you can put her in any company, no matter how low. She’ll be touched by it, but unstained. An image she gives is of a lotus growing in mud.

This is an image that resonates with me, my belief is that spirituality must be workman like. Yes, there is spirituality in a lotus or a meditation cushion, but that spirit is just as present in the dirty and profane places. I also feel that this imagery makes the important point, by association, that we should not use the fact that we are spiritual or religious as a reason to cut ourselves off from the world.

I feel that spirituality must start in the mud to be of use, that’s one of the reasons I identify more with Zen, the enlightenment they espouse is something that must survive the rigors of day to day living, not sat aloof in a monastery.

Allow me to refer to the Taiji symbol, I’ve said before that I consider the profane and darker side of the things to be as conducive to spiritual development as the sweet light side of things. I think this, because we all have a dark side and I consider it to be very dangerous to deny this side in our spiritual practice. If we do, how can our spiritual development ever be truly complete?

I was doing push hands in my Tai Chi class tonight, I’m starting to understand what they mean when they say you can get in your own way. Slavish adherence to the form and the idea of a set of rules tends to get you pushed over.

It reminds me of a couple of quotes, first it Bruce Lee “The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”, the other is an old Zen quote “If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him”. It’s gotten me thinking, can slavish adherence to the Buddhist scriptures in fact get in the way or progress?

We all know the old line about the flexible reed bending in the wind but the tree breaking, I think this is something we need to be reminded of from time to time in our practice. We need to move beyond orthodoxy in order to really fulfill ourselves as spiritual seekers, I know there are many paths that claim to have all the answers, I don’t think that that claim can be made and the claimant expect to keep any real credibility.

I personally think that the best attitude is the one my Tai Chi teacher takes, that he too, for all his very considerable prowess, is still a student.

I wrote some time ago about my views of striving and grasping for things.

Those views were helped along by a few things, I’d been encouraged to push harder in the gym only to be met with pain and injury. I’d witnessed workplace politics handled in a way I completely disagreed with, this has happened more than once across a number of companies. I also found myself questioning with our national work ethic, is this the right way?

I asked myself a question, “Am I mad, or is there a better way?” In the gym I reminded myself of the 70% rule of moderation. It’s a great little rule I learned from Tai Chi, you only work at 70% of your max; energy and attention are kept back for working on a gradual improvement in your performance, also to make sure you don’t burn out on the way, it’s a long term game plan, but it offers greater potential than flogging yourself to death. I’m working at less than my max now, focusing on technique, I don’t doubt I’ll get back to the weights and performance I had, but when I do it’ll be with much better technique, I’ll be able to handle it much better than I did.

As far as the whole work thing goes, I find myself with less invested in the long hours culture we have here in the UK, as a result I don’t do overtime anymore unless it’s an emergency. Again, this comes back to moderation; whatever some might like to think, we don’t live to work.

I’ve seen the results of office politics and crackdowns on more than once occasion and in more than one company, striving for more results, more controls, a greater bottom line. I’ve seen it reach a point that employee goodwill was lost, people refused to work overtime, wouldn’t go out of their way for their employer; the workplace spirit was lost.

This is a way echoes comments in my previous post, crackdowns and tightening up have their place, but if you take it too far it hurts far more than it helps, you can wind up flogging the horse to death if you’re not careful.

This comes back to moderation, the middle way. Yes, you can keep driving people harder towards business goals, “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes”, but in the end the human cost will be huge.  We already see this, lots of stress and work-life imbalances and not just in the UK, sooner or later we must settle into a steady state, not the greed driven relentless drive for better growth; for the sake of our own collective health and sanity.

I think that this excerpt from chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching sums up my thoughts on this:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?

I was reading an article which summarises the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” today.  One of the habits is getting a proper understanding of the other person in any situation or dialogue.  The point is made that we all want to be understood, but we don’t try to truly understand.  I think this goes for more than just people and applies to working practices, technology and belief systems as well as everything else.

It’s a well made point, in my view, we never really see, hear or understand clearly.  Everything is coloured by our minds desires prejudices or conditioned thinking, that we rarely see clearly, if ever.  This point if made by Steve Hagen as well, that a fundamental point of Buddhism is to simple see properly and that a Buddha is simply someone who has awakened and sees clearly.

One thing I noticed was that speech wasn’t mentioned in the article, which is odd as I think that the factors that cloud our perception also cloud our speech.   Seriously, how often do we say what we really mean?

Think of all the times the message didn’t get across when you were talking or when you said something that just came out completely wrong.  The more I think about it, the more I realise how right the Buddha is, our speech is not from a position of awareness, how often do we stop and actually consider what we mean to say properly?

I lost my path very badly recently, partly because I started to take things a little too seriously and in doing so let them get me down. I was amazed at how a situation like that sneaks up on you and before you know it, you’re stuck. Luckily I’ve  started reading The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, which is helping me move back on track.

It really brought home to me how right the Buddha was that our problems stem from our grasping at things, our attachment to things.  I’d become too preoccupied with results at work, then I’d stressed out and my mental state suffered, followed by my performance. It’s a timely lesson, and I suppose really, the hard way is the only way to truly learn it, if you’re going to get too attached to the results of your actions, you run the very real risk of ruining those results.

In my case because I diverted time, effort and attention into worrying which would have been better used elsewhere.

I had a dangerous experience on the way to work today. Part of doing meditation is having old emotions released, I personally have found that it doesn’t always happen during the sitting though. This happened to me today while driving, a blast of anger and impatience that almost caused an accident.

So I took a look round Blackle and found something very interesting. Most talk of meditation and emotions is in terms that I personally consider to be less than ideal, the words ‘control’ and ‘cure’ are used and I personally think that this isn’t the way to approach this.

I feel that the word ‘control’ can lead to repression, something I have been guilty of in the past, that’s not the way to go. I have similar feelings about the idea of “cure”, as if emotion is a disease of some sort, something to get rid of.

Emotions are a part of our being and while we may not like or feel proud of some of them, they are not an enemy to be controlled or a malady to be removed, they’re an integral part of who we are. I’ve found that the best method is to allow them to arise, then try to observe them, nothing more, just observe. The act of observing moves you a little more in the third party and allows you to let go of the emotion when appropriate. This sounds a heck of a lot easier than it is, mind you, but I’ve found that a regular meditation practice stands you in good stead.

That, for me is the ticket, that releasing. Think about it, if you’re trying to control or cure or dominate your emotions, then you’re not letting them go when they’re no longer appropriate; that sounds like a sure way to cause emotional problems to me.

There’s a saying “Knowledge is power”, I’ve been starting to disagree with it recently. I don’t know about you, but in my line of work a great deal of emphasis is given to skills and certifications. Do you know this package or operating system? The field of IT changes rapidly and it can be a full time job trying to keep up with it, furthermore it’s almost seen as an unforgivable transgression not to know something, you can never admit to that. But, I’m reminded of some old anecdotes from a friend in the industry of certified “IT Professionals” who were frankly useless at the job. They had the knowledge, they were certified, but still……

The Maasai people have a saying, “One head cannot contain all knowledge”, I think we need to take a different approach; not only in order to cope and keep pace with change, but to get past this fixation with knowledge.

I’ve found that the best approach is practise the basics, whilst taking the view “I don’t need to know everything, but I know how to find out if I need to.” You have to try to put aside the ego driven desire for more knowledge for the sake of it. In short, I’ve come to the opinion that it’s not knowledge, but the attitude of the individual. Knowledge isn’t power, the ability to apply knowledge is where the true power lies, this is why I admire the Zen approach of emphasising real world daily experience in the moment over abstract knowledge.

We apply knowledge in the moment, not in the past or the future, in my IT experience I’ve found a solid knowledge of the basics can go a heck of a long way when combined with good experience.