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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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
I’m not brushing this off. I think some people do practice meditation in all their daily activities. It wouldn’t be the activity itself that counts as meditation, but how they do it–how mindful or “present” they are when they do it. I think that beats sitting in the lotus position doing nothing.
I’ve always been confused at people’s use of the word “meaning”. I think they mean something different by it than what I mean. They seem to mean something like purpose. Or worthwhile goal. So cleaning dishes in order to get rid of bacteria would be meaningful–that’s a purpose, a worthwhile goal–not a deep one, but a goal nonetheless.
True dat.
Well, to bring in some perspective from my I Don’t Get Budhism thread: who even knows what enlightenment is? Let alone knows how to look for it.
Hey Gib, I think all of the experiences in this thread must have happened in the period I wasn’t here, just wanted to say good job, I’ve been through some of the things you have, and know it ain’t easy to put a leash on your life sometimes.
I think that it would be both, gib if something is being used as a form of meditation. I do not think that you can dismiss the activity itself and only place the emphasis on the mindfulness. I am very mindful and focused when I type up a set of interrogatories but I do not consider that to be a form of meditation.
Why do you assume that nothing is being done or happening as they sit in that lotus position?
I think that meaning and purpose are different. One can derive meaning from doing something which one finds to be purposeful although one may not find meaning in that. So they may swim in the some waters but they can be different.
Meaning to me is the emotional and also perhaps intellectual sense (for lack of a better word) which is derived from how our senses are influenced by and interpret the world around us. It depends on who we are as individuals.
That is my thinking anyway.
I had a moment a few years back where I feel I had a moment of enlightenment. It really almost felt to me like “a bright light went on” though I realize that one did not. Do you know where it came from? I accidentally stepped in some pretty thick mud while out walking in the part and it was not so easy to pull out of it. In that instant, it came to me and I laughed out loud. Of course, I do think that it came to me as a result of a process which had been going on in mind for awhile.
Nooo, just the damn site’s avatar requirements won’t accept anything bigger than a postage stamp. I have a lot of ravens flap about in front of my house most days, smart little buggers. And Odin’s Huginn and Muninn.
More to the relevance of the op, my secret way of giving up pot.
[tab]I moved from the UK to Turkey, and read Midnight Express on the flight.[/tab]
Worked like a charm. The reality is somewhat less unforgiving over here, but the risks of getting hold of it and keeping it around waaaaaay outweigh an occaisional spliff. Pity, I was really good at rolling 3-rizla specials.
Then you must think it’s not just being mindful in your activities that makes for meditation, but something in the activity as well. What do you think makes an activity meditation (besides mindfulness).
idunno. Maybe there’s a lot going on. I just think it’s boring is all. It’s a personal preference. Pay it no mind.
That makes sense out of how others seem to use the word “meaning” as well. They seem to mean: emotionally fulfilling. (Is it always fulfillment?) But in that case, doing dishes is hardly meaningful at all.
There was a time in my youth when a part of me thought I was enlightened. Drugs will do that to you. I knew people who were overcoming with such delusions of grandeur from drugs that they thought they were prophets, sent by God. I was never that bad, but my experiences with drugs were so bizarre and warped, they gave me plenty of material with which to build a theory of consciousness (yes, the same one we’ve discussed numerous times). It turned out to be eerily similar to many Eastern philosophies and religions, Buddhism in particular; it didn’t take much, therefore, for me to entertain the idea that I had become “enlightened” to the truth–very much in the Eastern sense–and I didn’t even have to account for it by heightened intelligence or personal greatest–it was the drugs!!!–who knows how drugs can affect the mind and the human spirit–it’s not unheard of for drugs to bring “spiritual awakening” to people–but I was young and naive, and way too cloud bound; today I look back on it and I see a couple things: 1) a good theory, and 2) drug induced flights of fancy, delusions of grandeur. That’s not a recipe for enlightenment. I might even need to let go of one or both to truly find enlightenment. I certainly wasn’t at peace, and I certainly didn’t understand the world as an emptiness, or a non-being, certainly not the ‘I’ as illusory. I certainly didn’t see the world in that mystical way those rare enlightened ones seem to see it, except maybe theoretically. I don’t think I was enlightened, but I do think I was on a very different and unique spiritual path. But I have since come back down to Earth to join the living.
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).