Sketches

Slow life

The days of the digital watch are numbered. Tom Stoppard

Image by josef.suefer on flickr

Sitting in the meditation hall, I couldn’t quite my mind… I battled it for a few minutes then surrendered and opened my eyes.

I figured I would mindfully observe myself struggling with my crazy brain and allowed my eyes to take a stroll… eventually landing on the sign on the wall that says “please observe noble silence”.mind-silence rumi

The words halted me and created the focus of my thoughts for the rest of the practice as I contemplated the difference between regular silence and noble silence….

And yet, it was all really okay. More than okay. One of those wet mornings as I was sitting, my mind became very quiet. My attention opened gently and fully to the changing flow of experience—aching, waves of tiredness, fleeting thoughts, sounds of rain. Continuing to pay attention, I felt the subtle sense of aliveness (chi energy) that pervades my whole body. This aliveness was not solid, it was spacious, a dance of light. The more I opened to this aliveness, the more I could sense an alert inner stillness, the background inner space of pure being. And the more I rested in that stillness, the more vividly alive the world became.

Image by Denis Collette…!!!, on Flickr

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: it’s not about how you look in your yoga clothes or the cool advanced poses you can do. It’s not about how many friends you have on Facebook or how cute your kids are. It’s not about the exotic title your new promotion gives you, or the size of your house and yard. And it’s not about your blog, or the number of books you’ve written. The true practice of yoga asks you to connect the parts of you that seem “ugly” or “broken” with the ones that appear outwardly attractive and whole.

Image by wanderflechten on flickr

Image by CatDancing on flickr

If I were to suggest to you that tantra has little to do with intimacy and even less to do with sex you would probably think I was crazy; looking at most books and workshops around. Agehananda Bharati the great Indian scholar of tantra estimated that seven percent of tantric texts were to do with sex and sixty percent were to do with mantras.

Image by withrow on Flickr

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people–those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food. Elizabeth Goudge in The Little White Horse

Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests. Adam Grant

Image by CatDancing on flickr

In general, the basic attitude that works best in meditation is to let go of how things should be, and address how things appear to be. Addressing what arises through an attention based on good-will, empathy and letting go helps to lead the mind from a good position, and that in itself can ease the mind out of a hindrance. When we really find value in good will and letting go, then there’s much less room for hindrances to breed. Regard the mind as a treasure to be guarded, valued and polished: with this attitude one gets to live with the most reliable source of well-being.

Image by EJP Photo on flickr

  …Years later, after too many reverses, I suffered severe depression, and friends advised me to look up a psychiatrist. I told them that most of the psychiatrists I had met looked more depressed than I was. There had to be another solution. When I examined my mental state, I found most of the problem was having blamed myself for everything that had happened, and a huge armament of self-dislike picked up in the process. If only there were some way to reverse the process. Psychiatrists didn’t seem to know of one anyway.

Grids

A travel to a monastery

If identifying with thoughts about the self are ego. How can I build confidence, self esteem, believe in my capabilities without identifying with my thoughts?

You don’t build confidence, self esteem, or belief in your capabilities. You unlock it. There is a saying that “Zen mind is beginner’s mind.” That applies here. It means through meditation you return to beginner’s mind which is naturally confident, possesses self esteem, and lacks any negative belief about capabilities.

The ego is tricking you into thinking. It is saying meditation is just another skill to learn. It’s not a skill that you learn per se. It’s something that you UNlearn. Your has no concept of this, since all it can do is learn. It has no ability to unlearn. So you will sit down to meditate and your mind will think “what can I learn today” and so thinking happens. No! Instead, you must sit there watching your thoughts until the mind disappears. csmithers 7 in Reddit.com

  You don’t need an EEG or MRI to sit and observe your own mind, to open your heart and practice with sincerity. Rick Hanson

Image  by  withrow on flickr

Today [May 20th, 2013] marks the first day of trial in a lawsuit over whether yoga is a religious practice and should or should not be allowed in schools. The case of Sedlock vs. Baird, et al., has been brought by parents and guardians of children who attend an Encinitas school that includes yoga in the curriculum.

Image by  Garry – www.visionandimagination.com

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Inspirado en una imagen de pellaea en flickr As soon as this was read aloud the whole group fell silent. Jo Walton

Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something. William Goldman

Image  by  paul bica on flickr

I sat in a meditation hall, perfectly still and silent. Anyone looking at me would have seen an unmoving, serenely meditating being, but inside there was a full-fledged war taking place.

Inspired in an image of Ian’s Shutter Habit on flickr

Watching the heron

It might sound hard to pay attention to your sensations, and to be aware of your thoughts and taking responsibility for everything that happen to you. But in this dynamic life when everything keeps changing, and nothing is fixed — it’s much harder not to. Narkis Alon