How to meditate: Don't "meditate"

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; KyleCease.com, KPFK.org

A kuti is a "meditation hut" or "cell," lodging to withdraw, absorb, and contemplate. It is likely to feel like a prison cell if one does not enter with the right intention and view.

Oh, to have a Thai Buddhist meditation hut like this shrine hall (Richard-Perry/flickr.com)

 
It is easy to meditate, too easy. So easy that one should not "do" and it will happen.

It will happen. So be meditated rather than meditating. In yoga class I say to practitioners, "Remember to breathe." Newcomers roll their eyes. But before long, they're forgetting. They're clenching, sucking in their guts, getting dizzy. "Breathe, breathe," I say.

Eventually, they ask, "O, you mean remember to do deep abdominal breathing without clenching." "Yes," I answer, "what else would I mean?" Breathing would just happen if we got out of our way.

Samsara or Bhavachakra thangka (Stephen Shephard)

But better than breathing, let the breath breathe you. That's tougher to get one's head around. No need. Just do it. It will happen if we allow. Look, it was just happening! You, reader, you were just doing it! The breath was breathing you...

By the same token, meditate. And remember to meditate. How? Pay attention. We're always paying attention to something. Choose. Rather than wandering and wandering -- endlessly wandering on in this tragic samsara (wheel), blinded by delusion, baited by craving, dejected by aversion -- choose. Focus. Stay.

Easy meditation steps: Stop. Stay. Awake. Too easy? Really stop, completely stop. If I were doing nothing, what would I be doing? Not nothing. "Nothing" is not something we do. There would be breathing going on. We wouldn't be breathing. In a sense, Breathing breathing us. We wouldn't be meditating. In a sense, Meditation would begin meditating us.

would be

• (Here "meditation" does not mean "contemplate" or "rotate in the mind." That comes later during the insight exercises for liberation. At this stage, it's all about acute-serenity, complete peace full of wakefulness and attention. For those of us with ADD, the two just don't seem to go together. But they will if the way we get to serenity is by prolonged attention. It purifies the heart/mind).

Downward Dog, also known as the Lululemon Test Pose (businessinsider.com)

 

All the words in the dictionary won't do it. Just do it. Practice. For one who practices -- who is persistent in following the directions, in "trying," as it were -- success comes. It can't help but come. Others go faster, still others go slower...some don't go at all. Look at yourself. Practice. It's not about them. It is about you.

The comedian on the radio

Christine Blosdale had comedian Kyle Cease on Pacifica on Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 11:00 am. He said it exactly, describing "flow," which is both a kind of yoga and a psychological state world class rappers like to enter. Athletes, too. And meditators can learn a lot from it. As a comedian and motivational speaker, Cease had something to say about meditation, realization, and having an epiphany about the illusions we live in:

• Christine Blosdale Special
• PLAY (or DOWNLOAD)

Evolving Out Loud (kylecease.com)

Tsoknyi Rinpoche on benefits of meditation

CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly, Chan Tse Chueen (South China Morning Post, scmp.com, 11-22-13) 

Tsoknyi Rinpoche III says meditation techniques he teaches fit easily into rhythm of city life.

 

City life is fast (Edward Wong/SCMP.com)

Visiting Tibetan Buddhist master explains the benefits of meditation. "If we are living in a nightmare, at least we try and turn it into a healthy dream," he says.

 

As the practice of meditation gains mainstream acceptance, a visiting Tibetan Buddhist master tells Chan Tse Chueen how it has helped him.

Enough of stardom!

For someone regarded by the Tibetan Buddhist [Vajrayana] faithful as a reincarnated master teacher of the Dharma, Tsoknyi Rinpoche III is remarkably frank about his own human frailties.

 

It took him seven years to stop drinking a certain popular brand of [sugar-laden] soda, which he knew was bad for his health.

 

Better health key to good hair!

This story, which he shared last month with a Hong Kong audience at a series of talks on death and meditation, is typical of his teaching style -- honest, amusing, and direct. It makes accessible the lofty topics of his concerns: the limitless potential of our mind, the nature of reality, and happiness.

 

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His soda anecdote speaks to those of us who find it difficult to bridge the gap between knowledge and action, which happens, he explains, when the head fails to communicate with the heart.

This disconnect, and how meditation can help us to bridge that gap, is a message Tsoknyi Rinpoche carries with him to lectures and retreats in Europe, America, and Asia. More

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Full Moon Observance/War Crimes

Wisdom Quarterly; LABuddhistVihara.org, 11-17-13

Lunar observance flyer

November 17: The Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara in Pasadena is a Sri Lankan Theravada monastery and temple complex. It observes the traditional lunar observances (uposathas), which include the practice of the Eight Precepts (sila or sill), meditation (bhavana), hearing the Dharma (bhana).

• Next lunar observance: Sunday, Dec. 11, 2013 - Sill Program (Eight Precept observance and meditation)

Sinhalese war crimes against Tamil minority

Krishnadev Calamur (NPR.org, Nov. 15, 2013)

Rajapaksa (Chris Jackson/PA/Landov)

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa defended his country's human rights record amid a barrage of criticism as the [largely Buddhist] Indian Ocean island-nation hosts the Commonwealth summit [with prominent nations boycotting].

 

"Civilians, women, children, and pregnant women were brutally killed by the terrorists continuously for 30 years, and none are being killed now," Rajapaksa said [as if to justify the war crimes he committed and those of previous administrations]. "That is the peace the country has won."

 

Sri Lanka has only recently emerged from a bloody decades-long civil war [the longest in Asia], which pitted the country's Sinhalese [Buddhist] majority with separatist [Hindu] Tamil rebels in the north and east of the island nation. [Tamils have lived on the island, coming from neighboring Tamil Nadu, India, a few miles away by a strait, Palk Bay, that is sometimes traversable by foot.] 

 

Buddhism traveled through Asia from India

Human rights groups allege that tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed [in a genocide that followed decades of prejudicial treatment by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese] in the final push against the few rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

 

The issue has dominated the Commonwealth meeting, which begins in [the Sri Lankan capital of] Colombo this week. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Canada's Stephen Harper are among the leaders who have stayed away [boycotting the meeting to demonstrate against human rights abuses by Pres. Rajapaksa and previous administrations]. India has a significant Tamil population of its own.

 

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is attending the meeting, says he will ask Rajapaksa "tough questions" on human rights and war crimes charges.

Rajapaksa heads the Commonwealth for the next two years. The group comprises countries that were former British colonies. [Sadly, not all Buddhist monks stayed neutral during the civil war, evincing nationalist sympathies against the direct calls of elder Sangha leader pleading for peace and neutrality.]

Sri Lankan war crimes

North was once a Tamil majority area

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Wisdom Quarterly is a great fan and supporter of Sri Lanka, a beautiful Buddhist island nation and former colony of the British and Portuguese. But one need not be blind to love it. We will not defend, conceal, minimize, or collude with ANY country's government engaging in systematic institutional racism, war crimes, genocide, or abuse of its citizens, not even if that country is our own.

 

Our weapon-dealing, conflict-loving USA is much to blame for the civil strife in Sri Lanka, playing the Gandhi Family's India and Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan against Sri Lanka's majority government. There is perhaps no country in the world that is not touched and ruined by our CIA, which has now become a transnational institution unto itself, an ally of the military-industrial complex rather than the vast majority of American citizens. Americans know more about the secret NSA and its illegal activities than we even begin to suspect about the CIA and its push to destabilize governments worldwide to serve the interests of business and multinational corporations.

While we do not agree with the Tamil separatist movement, it is certainly understandable why it happened: decades, perhaps centuries, of abuse by the majority Sinhalese population. The island's civil war was never a religious conflict, but it certainly got painted as such. Nearly all Tamils are traditional Hindus. And there are sizable Muslim (as in the nearby Maldives), Christian (remnants of British rule), and Catholic (remnants of Portuguese) minorities.

Sri Lanka's government repeatedly colluded to lengthen the war rather than rushing to end it at all costs. A previous president was assassinated for playing both sides (Tamil and Sinhala) to advance his own hold on power. A Gandhi was taken out by a disgruntled Tamil on account of the civil war, India never being able to overtly support the Tamil separatists, though perhaps aiding them covertly. CIA and British involvement is implicated, with America working its own strategy of supporting and pressuring all sides and all countries involved. The US trained Sri Lankan government and police services, so their draconian use of force was not completely unexpected. 

Indian atrocities

The same outrages occur in Kashmir between India and Pakistan and China. It is impossible to fully side with India against Pakistan because of its unconscionable abuse of Kashmiri Muslims. Indian militants -- sent to occupy the Himalayas by the Indian government to maintain its Line of Control (border) with Pakistan, China/Tibet, and Afghanistan -- disappears, imprisons, tortures, recruits, beats, and murders Kashmiris on a regular basis. This behavior against its Muslim-majority neighbor (Pakistan), created by the exiting colonial British with their successful "divide and conquer" strategy, is not limited to a sworn enemy. It is visited upon tiny landlocked Nepal, which is utterly dependent on India economically and politically. 

Nepal is mainly Buddhist, as all Himalayan nations (former kingdoms) traditionally were. But it is now the world's only "Hindu nation." This is brought about by Indian influence and census manipulation. Nepalese cry out every time we point out that the Buddha came from India. The Buddha was not born in India. He came, according to Dr. Ranajit Pal, from what is now Afghanistan and what was then the northwest frontier of greater India (Bharat) in the region of ancient Gandhara. There was no organized or united "India" at that time, only loosely affiliated maha janapadas (great clan territories).