I was but an innocent pawn, in a deliberate set-up, to unwittingly make a funny with Prom… about handling wood. 
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. 
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:
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?
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.
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.
So if I was tying my shoes and having a conversation with someone at the same time, that wouldn’t be meditation. But if I were to focus solely on tying my shoe, that would be meditation. Would meditation then just be being present in anything you do?
It wouldn’t lose meaning if we’re making this distinction (mindfulness vs. non-mindfulness), but if meditation just means “doing stuff” than what does it mean over and above “doing stuff”? If the latter is the case, then to say “I was meditating by doing dishes,” might as well be replaced with “I was doing dishes,” and you might as well remove the term from the vocabulary.
Gib,
lol No but that would be Mindfulness but mindfulness is part and parcel of meditation.
That would not be meditation either. That would just be “doing stuff”.
The monks in a monastery I believe see their whole day as a form of meditation because everything which they do has value and meaning to them. So, I think that it would depend on intent and will.
I do not think that someone would word it in that way but I may be wrong. An individual might say that doing dishes is a form of meditation to them. That is their choice to think and to feel that way, to find value and meaning in that. It is their deliberate intent and will to see in that a form of meditation.
What is the purpose behind meditating?
gib, do you not find any value and meaning at all in doing dishes or do you like the idea of bacteria growing in your sink? 
Perhaps we like to raise our forms of meditation to the heights, to see them as something almost next to God. They do not need to be that way. They could be akin to listening to the sound of a bird chirping in a tree or watching a child making mud patties…as long as we give our entire beings to the partaking of it.
Who knows? That might also lend itself to experiencing enlightenment but do not go looking for it, gib.
It will run from you. O/K - I think.
Fixed Cross
Hmmm, Still thinking? 
Rest assured that it was a misunderstanding, Fixed Cross. Clean slate - insofar as human beings can make of their selves clean slates considering all of the past baggage which we carry along with us. (speaking universally here).
Well, I suppose that is because perhaps we think along different lines. Now you would probably be very happy about that and I would not blame you in the least. As for myself, I do see the question of “Why stay alive” as a serious question and that is why I chose to answer it in my own way.
Consider someone who is pondering suicide because life seems to be going downhill and very little meaning is being derived from it in their case. Posing the question “Why stay alive” might just give one pause and open to possibilities not thought of or wonderful memories forgotten about.
Aside from that, when we ask a question like that the world can become our oyster. Now who knows. My perspective is just mine and maybe it is also a faulty one but…
???
I do know a bit about Nietzsche. I have read a few of his books ~ believe it or not.
That can be a really dangerous concept. We can see how that twisted and half-baked concept worked for Hitler and his nazi pigs.
There does not seem to be much room to breath or to enjoy or to really grow in that way. But I suppose that even a despotic pig would have his moments of letting go and enjoyment. Otherwise, how could one live in that way? But again I may be wrong.
There are times when I can actually “see” this myself or at least sense it. One will come home from work tired and/or moody and all one hears is the saga of dog eat dog, dog killing dog, dog’s inhumanity to dog (humans). Does that necessarily make it so though? I suppose that the Nietzscheans are right to a certain degrees.
Anyway, is “will to power” necessarily always a negative or evil thing? What about the will to power which it takes for human beings to fight for the rights of other human beings or animals, to save endangered species, even those beautiful endangered species like the trees, for clean air or oceans, et cetera? I think that it all depends on what it is that we are willing and how we are about to use the power which we want to summon up.
Do Nietzscheans believe that humanity’s main focus is only on feeling exhilarated over the rush of despotic power being used for evil coursing through their veins or can it also be “other” focused on the common good?
This can even easily be seen here in ILP. Dog eat dog, one trying to dominate another, to gain so-called power over another. What kind of “real” inner power is there when one feels the need to go on attack in order to win points during a discussion! What kind f confidence in one’s own intellect is that? That is not so much power but inner weakness. As Pittacus said: "The measure of a man is what he does with po
