DM2 WR

  

I shall never have the garden I have in my mind, but that for me is the joy of it; certain things can never be realized and so all the more reason to attempt them.

–JAMAICA KINCAID

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Question:

While meditating, not even once have I listened to the whole meditation, there are variety of things happening every single time:

1. As soon as I close my eyes, even when I am paying attention to the voice, my mind starts drifting.
2. or a dreamlike state comes about where I cannot even hear the voice.
3. or I think I sleep but I am not sure. I am sure the breathing pattern must become as if I am sleeping as I automatically lean on one side, slouch
4. or at the beginning when the voice says ‘just notice the room’ – that doesn’t happen to me. when I notice the room, my mind goes to details right away and off goes the switch. 🙂

About 5 minutes before the meditation is to end, the mind comes back. 🙂 as if it has a timer set. Is it worth me trying to sit through the sessions or I can change something or maybe meditation is not for me after all?

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“Don’t believe everything you think.” ~Unknown

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“The master leads by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve.” ~Tao Te Ching

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It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man! -George Gamow, physicist and cosmologist (4 Mar 1904-1968)

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B "You have to think of the Buddha’s image of the world after he gained awakening: Everybody is on fire. If you think about it, we go for a pleasure and it goes away as it’s coming. And as soon as we focus on something, as the Buddha said, you try to base your happiness on something and it’s already become otherwise than what it was. It slips away, slips away. Time just keeps going so fast, and there’s no way you can call it back, no way you can stop it. It’s like we’re on fire.

So when you see somebody that you really don’t like, remember: That person is on fire, as the Buddha said. They’re suffering. So if it’s hard to find a good side to their character or good side to their behavior, at the very least remind yourself that they’re suffering, so you can manage a little bit of sympathy for them. In that way, you rise up above the common back and forth of liking people who do nice things to you and disliking people who do bad things to you."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Pleasure Principle Made Noble"

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The creation is a mix of cyclic and linear events. One's lifetime is a linear event. The seasons are cyclic events.

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Self-realization is the realization of the law of truth. The law of truth is oneness. To act according to the law is dharma. We usually act in adharma, i.e. that is in not-oneness or separativeness. Only a self liberated Jivan Mu'ta acts in dharma

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(LS7). These lifestyle factors include the following:

1. Smoking
2. Body weight
3. Nutrition
4. Physical activity
5. Blood pressure
6. Total cholesterol
7. Fasting blood sugar

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Answer:

Meditation is an art. The art to be yourself….. the art to be silent! It is like learning to play the piano. It takes some amount of trial and error to get the beautiful music playing. But unlike the piano, it is definitely for everyone because it is our basic nature to be silent. That is what we actually are…. just silence!

Mind is that pretense that says ‘I am something else besides this silence’. Mind likes to prove its identity whereas silence has no identity. You are silence! You are beauty! You are separate from the mind, you are not the mind, you have a mind.

Silence is nothingness! Therefore you are nothingness! In nothingness, the mind loses its false identity. It becomes ‘no mind’. Mind does not like this state of ‘No mind’. It wants to make its presence felt, that is why like a monkey, it keeps dancing from one thought to another. So what should you do?

You have to practice to be a ‘madaari’ – monkey trainer. It takes some skill to train a monkey. And not every monkey is the same. So every madaari develops his own skill to train his monkey. So keep at it, don’t give up. One day you will be a skilled madaari, don’t stop until then.

Charetveti! Charetveti! Keep moving skillfully on this spiritual path!

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"I myself haven’t been to many meditation retreats but I do remember one in particular where, halfway through the retreat, one guy just broke down and started sobbing deeply in the middle of the afternoon. It went on for about ten, fifteen minutes. I found it very disturbing. But everybody else in the room was sitting there quietly as if nothing were happening. I learned later that this is a normal occurrence on retreats. It turned out this particular person had been a cocaine dealer and some of the stuff that he’d been engaged in while selling cocaine was coming up in his awareness.

I was also told that this happens on modern meditation retreats all the time: People come in with no background in virtue, and the stillness of the retreat provides a space for their remorse to suddenly erupt. This may provide a moment of catharsis, but not much more. If you have big wounds in your life caused by your misbehavior, it’s very difficult for the mind to settle down and really be mindful and alert with enough stability to see things as they’re actually happening and to direct your attention in a wise direction."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Virtue Contains the Practice" (Meditations6)

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