Compassion Begins At Home.

Posted by on March 11, 2012 No comments

This is an idea that has been in my mind for quite some time.  Compassion or to use the Pali term, Karunā, is a core part of our Buddhist practise.  By having compassion for all living beings, we ourselves are moved into a much better place mentally.  This makes perfect sense, contrast this approach to walking round with nothing but hate in your mind.  Ask yourself, where would you rather live?  It also place us in a far better position for our Buddhist practise.  It sounds a little selfish, but it’s a wise kind of selfish that can benefit others as well.

To have all this compassion for others, does not mean we have to neglect ourselves though.  We must tend to our own needs, because as with all things, compassion starts with ourselves.  Again, this sounds extremely selfish, but I don’t believe it is.  If we can’t show compassion to ourselves, how to we expect to show it to others?  If we only try to show it to others, and neglect ourselves, then this will cause us pain and suffering; this means that we eventually fail in showing compassion to others through not being properly placed to do so!

“You can explore the universe, looking for somebody who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and you will not find that person anywhere.” – The Buddha

Walking with the GNOME

Posted by on March 10, 2012 No comments

I reinstalled my laptop recently, taking it back to Debian Sid.  It was running OpenSUSE 12.1, but I wanted to move towards a rolling release and not have to deal with static ones, plus I’ve always had a soft spot for Debian.

I’d started to tinker with Gnome 3 on OpenSUSE and have continued this on Debian, I must say that I’m growing more impressed with it.  It’s a huge break from the traditional Gnome and is causing a lot of controversy in Linux circles.  This is understandable when you consider that geeks are utter power users and we also tend to aspergic traits, thus disliking change.  For me it’s a simple and elegant environment and this desktop environment addresses a pet hate of mine, multitasking.

I’ve been a KDE user for a while on my main desktop, which runs OpenSUSE 11.4 though recently the KDE desktop has started to strike me as overly complicated.  I’m not a fan of this, I prefer something that is simpler but also I prefer to focus on one application at a time, multitasking isn’t something I think is a good thing at all.  Multiple windows are something I find distracting and I’m finding myself using Gnome 3 with the windows maximised all the time.  In light of this, I’m starting to give serious mental room to the thought that a taskbar is something which we should be consigning to the dustbin of history, it simply serves to bring all the distractions and put them front and centre!  If an application wants my attention, it can put an icon in the notification area, which I will deal with when I’m good and ready.  I want to see my screen real estate taken up by what I’m doing, not cluttered with the distractions.

The funny part is that even computers can’t really do two things at once, they just give the very convincing impression that they can.  Multitasking?  Humbug!

 

Buddhism and Unemployment

Posted by on March 9, 2012 1 comment

I lost my job recently, it’s not an experience I’d recommend at any time; especially in the current climate.  It’s been quite a shock to the system, but it’s proved to me that with the right attitude you can learn from any experience.

When you lose your job, often you’ll indulge in a bit of self doubt and recrimination against yourself.  I started this and then realised that the lesson from meditation is to hold off on this.  When we lose our focus during a sitting, we don’t recriminate or torture ourselves.  Firstly, because there’s not much point as what’s done is now done and it’s more important that we keep going; but also because doing this is just another distraction!  That’s right, while you’re recriminated and castigating yourself… you are not meditating!

The lesson that I think is here to be learned is that we can engage in a bit of mental Tai Chi and use this power to our great advantage by turning it into a reminder; this is also true when dealing with life events like this.  The lesson I see here is a reminder of the Buddhist principle of “anicca” or impermanence, that everything is in a state of flux, constant change.  This includes the things that we hold dear, the image we have of ourself; our bodies; our minds; all of these things that make up our identities are constantly shifting.  We are totally attached to our status and positions, wrapped up in these things to the point of an almost wilful blindness.  This includes not only our employment status, but our very identity as an employee.  We cast ourselves in fixed roles as employees, “I am an accountant”, “I am a mechanic” and so on.  But all of this is temporary and subject to annica, surely the wisest thing to do is to abandon our attachments and realise that these things that make up our identity are subject to revision without notice.

 

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.

Making the Case for Meditation

Posted by on February 8, 2012 1 comment

I released the latest update to my SitQuietly meditation timer on Sunday. It’s occurred to me that while I both endorse and practise meditation, I’ve never made the case in writing for it. This isn’t all of it, I will continue and will expand this into future posts. This is a start.

On a personal level, I have found that it improves reduces stress, promotes mindfulness and helps my creativity. Others that I have spoken to at Buddhist centres have told me that they are less verbally aggressive and calmer. But all of this is anecdotal. It used to be that Meditation was something strange people did, I was even laughed at once when I admitted practising it! But today, those of us who sit are having the last laugh. People in all walks of life use meditation and benefit from it.  The list includes celebrities, business leaders and soldiers it’s not just for robed monks!

This article from Men Journal goes into more detail on a study into the use of meditation in the US Marine Corps to improve the ability to act under duress. The exercises detailed here are simple, but clearly powerfully effective.

That’s a recent study, but looking back we find a report in Scientific American on neuroscience work at MIT, Stanford and the University of Wisconsin, this certainly makes the point that meditation produces tangible effects on the brain. The study of meditators in an MRI machine is even helping to unravel new discoveries on the structure of the brain.

Frankly, there is now a growing body of research that supports the decision to make meditation a part of your life. The research points to changes not only in our conscious minds, but changes that we are not directly conscious of.

Surely the question is not “Why do you meditate?”, but “How can you not?”

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!