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Continuing with Meditation Group. Or Sangha as Buddhists like to call it.
I suppose it is a Buddhist group. Anyone coming to it for the first time who was new to meditation wouldn’t know what a lot of the Buddhist terminology meant.
We’re all used to it. I’m used to it – and use it when speaking in the group; i talk about dharma and dhukka etc as if they were everyday words – which of course they are in this – i hate to say it – rather exclusive group.
In the outside “normal” world though i’m still policing my language very closely and carefully.
No Non-Bud would ever know i had Buddhist leanings.
Except for my Buddha haircut.Lol.
(Dead giveaway that)
Sitting with the Group last night was the first time i’ve sat in about a week.
And it was good. I could feel the collective resolve and intent around me pushing and lifting me up. My back felt positively straightened.
And then we listened to a talk on one of the 5 Hindrances: Sloth and Apathy. Which felt very apposite! Could have been talking about me really.
And then in the go-round of discussion later i heard how others are “struggling” to maintain their best intentions, slipping up, not sitting as much as they feel they ought, being lazy, being mindless etc.
Being all too human in other words.
Just like me!
We’re all in this together (was the comforting, reassuring, feeling i left with)
I’ve been going to the sitting group for about a year now.
It’s been surprising how “formal” it is considering the intimate nature of the situation: inside a living room next to personal belongings and cumfy chairs, sitting and lying around on soft carpet, drinking tea together, offering one another psychological insights and spiritual epiphanies.
There’s a sense of being with grown up “Adults” who take their spiritual practice as Buddhist practitioners pretty seriously (in 1 or 2 cases “too earnestly for me) Which is good – in a way – cus it means we moreorless stick to the brief: we come to further our aspirations re becoming more fully awakened, aware, mindful (whatever you want to call it) Our meetings don’t slip into therapy sessions of the psycho or pseudo kind (and on the occasions when they have i soon got to feel vaguely bored by the tedium of the self-absorbed psycho-babbling going on)
I like the sitting and meditating together. It gives me resolve.
I like the talks we listen to; usually talks downloaded off the Internet by Gil Fronsdal et al; talks with which i’m very familiar with and feel engaged by.
I kind of put up with the third part of the evening, the discussion part.
I might not go for much longer.
A lot of people at sitting group last night (10 of us – there’s usually about 5 or 6) The bigger size made the group dynamic interesting.
With less people you have to – or you feel obliged to – be more involved, put more commitment into the discussion part of the evening. There’s a sense of responsibility that feels personal.
But with more people present that personal responsibility diminishes. Well it did in me. I didn’t feel so obliged to be making a contribution. I didn’t have to be putting my ten penny worth of talk in – so i didn’t.
If i can get out of talking in a group i will.
All of which made me question where my integrity is re the sharing that goes on in this group. I shouldn’t be feeling any obligation to talk surely?
I’m talking to be self-expressed, to share myself authentically with these other people sitting in this room with me.
But it doesn’t feel like that. I don’t feel authentic. Impression management is going on: how to look good in front of others. Or rather, how not to come across as inadequate, sounding like the little unheard boy i often feel i am.
So i’m questioning what i’m doing in this group today. And whether i should stay, continue going.
Still continuing to go to Sitting Group.
I’ve shown dedication in supporting this “Sangha”. A community of like-minded people supposedly.
And yet – when we do discussion together – the minds we come out of don’t appear “like-minded” especially. In fact, its interesting to observe how unlike one another all these minds we have actually are. All so individually different.
All so Me-Minded. All so separate.
So what is it that brings us together into some kind of like-minded communal unity?
The breathing we share mostly.
Sitting group was hard going last night.
The sit and the talk were ok (like they usually are) But the discussion afterwards got bogged down in “Buddhism”.
Too much reference to the “Buddha this” and the “Buddha that”. I don’t care what the Buddha was supposed to have said. That was 2,500 years ago. It’s all history, part of the mythical “fiction” we like to kid ourselves is “fact”.
Sometimes Buddhists are as bad as Christians or Muslims; too much po-faced, pious, deference to holy scriptures and dharma sutras blah blah.
Don’t they get it? The Buddha is dead. Died a very very long time ago.
We’d be better off killing the Buddha. Once and for all.
So as to get back to being here with merely Us.
Us as UnBuddha’s.
Still continuing with sitting group.
I go to give to support to others, so that i don’t solely, or merely, do meditation for myself only.
My body as a body with their bodies.
My breathing as out breath for their in breath.
My resolve giving them strength.
My being there helping them to hold their slumpy backs up straight.
Just as they do all of this for me also.
We are supporting one another just by being there.
As beings being mindful with and for one another.
Still plodding along to the Sitting Group.
Sometimes – like last night – there are only 4 of us; but usually there’s about 6 or 7.
I don’t know any of this group socially. They aren’t “friends”. There seems to be a tacit agreement that we meet together for the specific purpose of forwarding and furthering “practice”. And this has to be done in quite a formal and structured way.
We sit for 45 minutes; listen to a talk for 45-50 minutes; talk about the talk for 45-50 minutes. We have a cup of tea while sharing our insights/experiences. Sometimes, we’ve deviated off into what felt like Therapy Talk (this mainly due to one particular woman, who seems in need of psychotherapy more than mindfulness meditation. She wasn’t there last night) But generally these group sittings don’t stray too far off the “Dharma” (the Teaching)
I’m not sure how supportive this so called “Sangha” actually is for me personally. Maybe it’s cus I’m not being Buddhist enough.
Still at the sitting group. It’s a steady thing. I like it’s constancy.
I like the going somewhere with the specific purpose of waking up Awareness.
I like sitting for 45 minutes.
I like listening to comforting dharma talks sat together with others.
I like the tea and biscuits.
I like the cosy familiarity of those others, although not always. Sometimes they can be a pain in the buttocks.
But mostly they’re ok. And we’re ok. And I’m ok.
Cus we’re in this mess of humanity together.
At sitting group last night.
Sometimes these evenings switch from a meditation-focus into some kind of therapy session.
I suppose because the context encourages intimacy; therefore there is going to be quite a lot of self-disclosure.
I don’t feel there is any deliberate intent in this switch; it happens cus some individuals want to authenticate themselves; and they want group validation in this authentification process.
But some people aren’t always as interesting as they self-interestedly think they are. It can feel like listening to over-indulgent, over-indulged, super-inflated, Egotism with a capital E.
It’s then i wish i were at home.
