2 months--no drugs or alcohol

My body is your canvas… that sounds gross.

Shifts uneasily in chair

Yeah so uh did you did catch the 49ers game yesterday? Helluva game, helluva game.

swigs beer

:laughing:

This thread is taking a (too funny) turn… humour is good for the psyche and soul… has healing qualities… start healing thyself Gib. :slight_smile:

I was but an innocent pawn, in a deliberate set-up, to unwittingly make a funny with Prom… about handling wood. 8-[

Gib, you should check out Prism’s Spirituality and breathing thread… though it’s not about Buddhism, but mindfulness and overall well-being.

Thank you Mags, I gave it a quick read. I’ve had plenty of practice holding my breath for at least 30 seconds… when smoking pot. :laughing:

Saying that one’s breath retention capacity is directly correlated with their quality of life and spiritual maturity is an pretty extraordinary claim, which requires (you guessed it) extraordinary evidence. I only read the OP, but I hope he can back up his claim with real life examples.

In any case, as I said in the I don’t get Buddhism thread, I don’t think this path is for everyone, and here I mean me specifically. I’ve dabbled on occasion but could never get into it. Work seems to be what’s getting me by these days. That’s my primary focus now.

Anything, even work, can be a kind of meditation.

I would recommend you consider:

Zazen is considered the heart of Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist practice.
The aim of zazen is just sitting, that is, suspending all judgmental thinking
and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts
pass by without getting involved in them.

No 4 noble truths, or 8-fold paths to follow… Zazen is not the same as meditation, in that you simply do nothing. I would say that it’s the next stage on from meditation, when you find that meditation has no more utility in it.

I suppose it depends on how you do it. Otherwise everything becomes meditation and meditation loses its meaning. How would one do something such that it becomes meditation?

You could always choose to focus on what is bothering you just out of your everday consciousness. Pot can help with that. Like if you get nervous socializing in certain contexts, go into those feelings when stoned. You can get insights and even express feelings you are not usually so aware of. People do this on ecstasy also, sometimes with a therapist in tow. This isn’t meditation, in the Buddhist sense or Hindu sense, since you are precisely NOT disidentifying with the emotions. You are immersing yourself in yourself. This can be a way to integrate.

I think this can be done without drugs, but drugs can offer a shortcut sometimes.

Karpel Tunnel,

Would you not say that alcoholics are already too much immersed within their selves? Perhaps what they need is to get away from their selves, move out of their own way, move toward others. For instance, put one’s self out by doing volunteer work with cancer patients. Meditate on that!

Yes, drugs can offer a shortcut just as alcohol can. So we are going to suggest to an alcoholic that he take one more shortcut. It seems to me that an alcoholic’s life has been inundated with shortcuts in order to avoid progress and healing.

It actually doesn’t lose its meaning - I do not want to sound condescending but (I will,) if thats your impression of what happens when you meditate too much, you have not reached a true stage of meditation.

There are many cultures who investigated meditation and many maps having been made of the mind states and qualities and ranks of consciousnesses to be attained; here is the “western” one.

This is always my experience, Ive never lost lust for life, meaning was never elusive to me, I think you misread me here.

I asked: why preserve ones life? And then gave an answer.

Well indeed… the mind changes with each sitting, no matter how short it may be. 5 minutes per sitting can be enough for noticeable changes to occur… it doesn’t have to be longer than what you can afford, time-wise.

I prefer Zazen, as… I have to agree with Gib here, meditation can lose its utility, but Zazen never does… each sitting is unique and gives newer insights each and every time, because the process is different yet simpler than standard meditation.

zenlightenment.net/health/z … ealth.html - have a read Gib and see what you think.

I prefer standing meditation - just, standing, doing nothing other than being. But this is just another version of what Zazen is.

Meditation in the traditional sense, i.e. “opening the third eye” is basically sending energy to the frontal lobes and causing more neural connections to be born, creating a greater freedom for oneself to experience life in spontaneous ways rather than being stuck in the same neural feedback loops.

A few things:

  1. I wasn’t talking about meditating too much, but rather everything one does being meditation. So if tying one’s shoes counts as meditation, what doesn’t?

  2. I know I haven’t reached a true stage of meditation (if that’s a thing); I’m not even trying, and I have no aspirations to reach whatever it is that sounds like it is.

  3. It was a question; I suspect the answer is: yes, everything can be made into meditation… if you do it right. People have said they meditate while doing their taxes. I just want to know how one does something such that it becomes meditation as opposed to a menial task. I suspect the forthcoming answer is: mindfulness. But I’d like to know what does mindfulness feel like in the example, let’s say, of doing your taxes, as opposed to “only” doing your taxes (I mean, doing your taxes requires keeping your mind on stuff, crunching numbers, analyzing them, making sure you got it right… so how would meditating on your taxes change that?)

Fixed Cross,

Would this be your own subjective reasoning or are you also including the thoughts and emotions of others …before I go further.

No LOL, tying ones shoes doesn’t count as meditation. Unless you’re doing it n a meditative state.

Well good because it would surely be too late, you have to start it quite early on like all great arts.

I bet you got that answer fro a hot yoga teacher.
Not in any case form what I just told you before about the frontal lobes.

Knowing things doesn’t usually happen like that, freely, without effort.

You sound like you’re scheming and waiting coiled up to release some more venomous ignorance.

I don’t actually believe you think I came up with the concept of will to power. I think you are just being very nasty for some reason, like so many people here seem to have turned into slithering creeps.

Fixed Cross,

Wow! This really caught me off guard here. I have no idea what you are dealing with but you have certainly misinterpreted my words. I have a good, healthy respect for you and your mind. I know what you have accomplished and I know what your mind is capable of and I would never deliberately go out of my way to insult you or to use subterfuge with you.

I simply wanted to know if you were including others within your words, as I said, or if this was just based on your own thinking. I felt at the time that my response might be a bit different depending on…
Sometimes, FC, a cigar IS just a cigar.

Hmmm, Im sorry then to have misunderstood. But glad also that it wasn’t a right understanding.
Honestly I was still angry at what you seemed to suggest, that I asked “why stay alive” as a serious question.

Im a bit ill tempered because of all the recent events here, and the reverberations it had.

Anyway , the will too power is Nietzsche’s thought, and because Pedro is a Nietzschean, I used it to make my point to him.
The theory Nietzscheans have acknowledged as true is that the world is will to power and nothing besides.

The idea is that one does not live merely to live, but that one lives to constantly attain, in a broad sense, power.
It is in a sense an unfortunate phrase because power is so easily conflated with dominion.

I think by doing it with complete Mindfulness. Whatever one is doing throughout the day, if it is being done with Mindfulness, focusing only on that which is being done, not allowing our minds/thoughts or emotions to become scattered, that can become a form of meditation I think. Something as simple as putting our whole selves into washing dishes can become a meditation.

How could such a thing lose meaning especially when one’s whole Self becomes a part of everything which one does? I would think that the world at large could/would open up to more meaning since we ourselves would not be so fragmented.