Why my bum keeps sitting

Trying to get underneath my possible motivations for meditating.

Is it to be a good – as in more ethical – person? Not sure, but doesn’t feel very strong if i’m honest.

It’s probably got something self-serving at the bottom of it. Meaning: i want something for myself which will make this “myself” feel better; better about itself/me, and better about being in the world, being alive still.

I suppose there’s an element of curiosity there too; I’m curious to know, to find out, more about myself. I want to delve into my depths. I want to explore the psyche that appears to be me in a psychological way, an experiential way.

There is also a transformation agenda going on.

I’m bored with the patterns of behaviour i’ve been run around all my life; ignorantly repeating the same small “stuff”, mindlessly repeating myself around the same loops of small thought. I want to break out of the narrow traps that got set to catch me and condition me as a kid.

Yes, i don’t want to be caught. I don’t want to feel trapped small and helpless inside – like it always used to feel when i was a kid.

Cultivating Awareness (with a capital A) is my way of feeling less powerless, less helpless, less trapped.

Awareness makes me feel big. More Awareness makes me feel bigger. But not in a big-headed or self-important way.

Self-enlargement and self (re) invention – yes; they feel like possible motives behind what’s keeping me on this meditation malarkey.

Desiring is different to craving

I’d often thought that desire and craving were the same thing. But they aren’t.

Desire is the energy that motivates and moves your life to be in the world – as a Life.

Craving is desire thats being clung onto too tight; too much identity is being caught up in the wanting, too much attachment invested in the attaining – as if anything you momentarily want or crave for, ultimately means anything, or is going to mean anything in the long run.

I’m becoming more and more adept at catching my desires early. So as to not get caught up in all that waste of energy that turns simple desiring into gross craving.

I’m feeling less “had” by my want to have than i used to be.

Not just about seemingly desirable material possessions.

But about all those apparently desirable experiences i”m meant to be having also.

Clinging & Craving

Could just about sum up what – from a Buddhist perspective – all the suffering we do as human beings is about.

If you’re experiencing some kind of dissatisfaction in the moment craving is probably present.

Or you’re clinging on

To delusions that everything good or desirable in life should remain the same

My house is permanent; my job is for life; my relationship is never going to end; my life – is forever.

We may  - theoretically – know that life isn’t forever; but we live as if life would go on, and on, being how it always is – and somehow, that death out there – the death waiting for me, won’t actually be reached….yet… or not yet…. not yet a while….not for years and years and years…..not till i’m 90…..

I get to see – with a clarity that sometimes startles me – how clinging and craving hurts me

Whenever suffering is present in me, some sort of craving or clinging is always there too – like a cancer.

The hunting mind

I tried reverting to breathing focus this morning. It lasted about 5 minutes.

Then my mind wanted to be off; be diverted, be into whatever distraction came its way.

I was aware of the need in me, in my mind, to be hunting out “other” stimulation:

the noise of a car revving up outside;

thoughts of the day ahead, and how it might be being;

thoughts about people, speculating about how they might be being;

and now a memory has come in, totally unrelated to anything; and now thoughts swim that way, down that memory lane, wanting to embellish it and fill it in like you would a colouring book.

a sensation of feeling (too) cold

a feeling of tiredness still

more thoughts come rattling in carrying carriages of words – as if to be alive – this very living – made up into sentences is actually what, really how, life is

And on and on this goes….. from one thought to the next…. from feeling….to sensation… back to thought…another feeling…. another thought…. another memory…

chasing and jumping across my awareness

is one stimulus after another

never ending….a chaotic flux of…of whatever my mind wants to be producing and receiving….

I’ll try again tomorrow

To get more focus onto breathing into my awareness.

Well – we’ll see…..Lol

Back to basics

The focus of my meditating has moved around quite abit over the last couple of years.

Initially the focus was on the breath, building up a level of sustained concentration by watching the breath; that then became less “watching” the breath as if it were some kind of outside phenomena i was spectating – and more about being in the breath, or being within “my” breathing.

That changed again: “my” breath dropped in favour of simply, merely, “being breathing”; the emphasis there placed on breathing being synonymous with awareness: breathing as an expression of my awareness.

I suppose if you want to sound clever about it, you could say: my awareness was being breathed.

My awareness was in receipt of breathing whether it liked it or not, or was present or it. The breathing carried on regardless.

But when awareness was within this breathing, coterminous with each breath, congruent with each breath – i could feel completely concentrated, like my concentration was being perfectly completed.

That level of concentration was exceptional; i couldn’t seem to produce it at will, whenever i wanted. I felt like i was achieving something special, or extraordinary if i managed to meditate like that. Occasionally i could. And those sits would flash by….20 minutes becoming like one, brief, continuous moment.

I’m using the past tense here cus i don’t  do breathing/concentration meditation as much as i did. I either forget to. Or don’t want to. Or feel that breathing is too “basic” to be bothering with.

But maybe i should start getting back to it, getting back to basics again.

The blog should have ended here

I was gonna finish the blog at the end of this month (today)

Cus that would be the 2 years up, and i’ve felt there should be some kind of cutting off point.

I can’t keep doing this forever, blogging and churning out post after post about my trite little meditation practice.

But here i am, i’ve reached the day to be finishing with it.

And i can’t.

Can’t seem to let go of it.

Suffering is mostly all there is

Not all there is – but mostly all there is.

Suffering is unstoppable.

The suffering can feel gross sometimes: as anxiety, or panic, or fear or anger etc

And sometimes it can feel more subtle: as a gentle kind of longing, or a hidden kind of yearning, or a special kind of melancholy.

Or a suffering that wants to hang onto sublime moments….stretch desirable feelings out as long as possible, as far as they will go….

….happy….happier….

…..calm…calmer….

….pleasant….pleasurable…. ecstatic….

And the bit of my life that doesn’t seem to about suffering….

Is when i’m in bed

Fast asleep.

I will always suffer

There’s no end to suffering.

I suppose thats why i can’t call myself a Buddhist. Cus a committed Buddhist believes that there is an end to suffering (3rd Noble Truth) and the means to end suffering is enshrined in the Eightfold Buddhist Path (The 4th Noble Truth)

I don’t ever see my suffering coming to an end. I feel chronically conditioned to suffer.

It’s not gonna stop.

Until i stop.

When i’m dead.

Until then, i’m gonna keep on suffering.

Always.

Pain or Suffering?

A distinction can be made.

There is physical pain. Which can be acute: i’ve dropped a statue of the Buddha on my toe. Or chronic: reading books on Buddhism is giving me a headache.

There’s readymade cures for pain: stick on a plaster, drop a pill… throw that book or Buddha statue out the window.

And there is suffering. And suffering is mental.

Suffering is anguish. Suffering is dissatisfaction.

Suffering is wanting but not having (craving) Suffering is having but not wanting (aversion)

And there’s a cure for suffering too.

Only its not so readymade.

You can get some immediate momentary relief for the acute kind of suffering (through simple mindfulness of breathing)

So as to not want so much. Or not not want so much.

But chronic suffering? I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any cure for that really if i’m honest.

Chronic suffering seems to be here to stay.

The perpetual condition of being a human being.

Bhante Bodhidharma

A flesh and blood teacher i’ve liked is Bhante Bodhidharma. He used to teach Mahasi Method at Gaia House.  He was the resident monk, did all the robes and shaved head thing, wore cheap NHS glasses.

I think his Christian name used to be Adrian, originally from Hull or Goole, bought up on a working class council estate. You could talk to him about things like Bovril and Prog Rock. You could say “Fuck” to him and he’d just smile, in his wry dry Goolian sort of way. A straight talking, straightforward, Yorkshireman. Down to earth.

I’ll forgive him calling himself Bhante Bodhidharma ( i don’t like when people give themselves, or get given, “spiritual names”; i think it confers too much grandiosity on them, makes them sound too preciously other, conspicuously different)

Actually, i’m gonna appear a bit inconsistent here – but being around him didn’t make me feel especially liberated, or transformed. He could/can sound a bit long-winded and obtuse at times in his talks. A tendency to complicate Buddhist ideas has our Adrian – rather than lay them out for you in simple steps. Occasionally I’ve got bogged down inside his thinking – rather than made to feel that life was becoming increasingly clear, or transparently self-evident.

So not one of those teachers you could stick up on a pedestal as a (self-appointed) Guru.

Maybe thats a good thing.

Probably why i liked – and related – to him.

If i were to become a monk i’d probably want to be like him.