Tag: meditation

On this, World Meditation Day, a few random thoughts on practice:

  • You can’t do meditation wrong. There’s no success or failure.
  • In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal— quite the opposite. We’re just being with our experience, whatever it is…
  • Ordinary everyday life is meditation enough if we attend to it in the moment with simplicity, an open curious mind and without taking ownership of any of it.
  • The only way one really gets any of the most important benefits of meditation practice is by giving up on the notion that there are any benefits to meditation practice.
  • The heart of meditation is simply being interested in what is here now – being more interested in what is… rather than in what was, what will be, or what should be.

And finally…

What we’re really in the business of doing is helping people stay with the thoughts and feelings they are coming to meditation to escape.

— Ordinary Mind Zen teacher Barry Magid

Apparently it’s World Meditation Day today. Who knew? Not me for one!

If I had any advice for anyone embarking on any meditative/ contemplative self inquiry I recommend letting go of any notions of improvement, solving problems, betterment, attaining or gaining anything. Open ended curiosity is all you need. Doing it simply for the sake of doing it, just to see what happens instead of hoping for something. There is no path towards a goal, only the present moment eternally unfolding.

The whole social structure—which is to be competitive, aggressive, comparing oneself with another, accepting an ideology, a belief, and so on—is based on conflict, not only within oneself but also outwardly…

Poetic Outlaws

The bold emphasis above is mine. Reading the original article this phrase leapt out at me.

I find it difficult to articulate just how profound and transformative the shift from inner and outer conflict to inner and outer wholeness can be.

I’m no expert in these matters but, as a lay reader, I have long sensed a commonality between spiritual non-duality and Jung’s individuation.

I have a meditative/ contemplative practice and also had periods of psychotherapy. In spite of coming from different directions, for me at least, they converge on the same point – the recognition of and freedom from one’s own mind.

As my therapist once said as I was trying in vain for something to say to him: ‘If there’s no problem, there’s no problem.’

When the duality of subject and object dissolves conflict of any kind is impossible. As has been articulated for thousands of years in myriad different ways – whatever this is, is impossible to say, but it isn’t two.

A nice meditation circle this evening. A modest six attendees in contrast to the fourteen last week. It had a very intimate feel and the dialogue between sits flowed more easily and freely.

I still don’t know why I go.

I’m fascinated by the visual tropes of spiritual materialism which almost always accompany or illustrate books, blogs, talks, retreats etc.

The visual language employed is mostly confined to some variation of pristine nature, evoking purity, clarity, beauty, colour and, above all, light. Lots of light. Sunrises, sunsets, the colour spectrum refracted through drops of dew, perfectly smooth polished stones, light reflected off mill pond still water.

All this beauty and perfection seems to perpetuate the myth of the spiritual goal as some eternally bright place out there somewhere in which we can dwell if we just follow this or that method.

Anyone who has really practiced any form of spiritual meditation, inquiry or contemplation for a significant period of time can attest to the vast spectrum of experience that constitutes one’s ongoing practice. To deny or avoid the inevitable and necessary murk and darkness is to deceive oneself and others. It is literally the case that without the dark there is no light.

Of all the traditions, I have always found myself drawn to Zen and its associated art seems entirely appropriate. Simple, ordinary and modest. Promising nothing yet evoking the inevitability of the present moment – whatever, however that may be.

This refreshing book cover avoids most of the usual clichés.

Peter Brown’s Dirty Enlightenment.

I love the title for a start. The only gaffe is the circular rainbow motif but I appreciate the rest of the image – ordinary, everyday, and relatable.

Practice includes everything, nothing left out. If we are honest we can come to accept the entirety of our life which, if we’re being truthful, rarely features an impossibly radiant sunset or mirror still water, even metaphorically.