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  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    @FinneousPJ I'm not a Vulcan (unfortunately!). Most people assume something about the other person when they communicate. We can't be completely objective I think.
    FinneousPJmlneveseSkatan
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Arvia wrote: »
    @FinneousPJ I'm not a Vulcan (unfortunately!). Most people assume something about the other person when they communicate. We can't be completely objective I think.

    Of course.
  • JLeeJLee Member Posts: 650
    edited April 2019
    EDIT: Lol! It is not right to say @BelgarathMTH ninja'd me, because I took so long to write this, but I promise I did not see his post. I see you too also like the clouds and sky :smile:

    Many religious values mistake the end of the process as the beginning, Buddhism is no exception. Almost all religions require that you love before you can experience it. It requires faith, but before one can really live it. Love and faith can only develop as you progress down the path and cannot be the starting point. Likewise with its negative attitude towards anger, greed, lust and all the rest. If you start off being against anger, you can never understand it.

    How will you know the real love if you have adopted the false your whole life? In fact, you will end up having a false compassion, a false love, and a false faith. Those are all more destructive than really being angry, really experiencing faithlessness. It may take a while to see how anger works, but that cannot happen if you repress it for a false compassion. What can be a higher demonstration of faith than to let go of your repressions and see what happens, see just how you evolve without the false?

    A true emotion + awareness is far more helpful than a repressed emotion covered by a false positive value. Why are so many people so close to snapping? I see it all day in my profession. The slightest thing goes against their wishes and a grown person will have a tantrum worthy of any 5 year old. We have in so many ways covered real, but negative emotion for a shadow of the positive traits we value.

    Likewise with meditation. @BelgarathMTH mentioned the monkey mind. I love that metaphor. It is its nature to interpret, evaluate, project, imagine. Meditation is valuable as it stands aside to witness those processes. It cannot stop them directly and if it does, then that silence will not be true silence. It will simply be another repression. Monkey mind is the mind. It cannot be anything else. To suggest that one should start off with an empty mind is just as perilous to the practice as demanding love before one can love.

    Someone I follow on Twitter expressed it in this way, "the only thing that thinks something is wrong with the mind is the mind." When you want it to be quiet, who wants it to be quiet? It's still just the monkey mind wanting a quiet monkey mind. And that is a recipe for frustration.

    I find the metaphor of consciousness as the sky and thoughts as clouds really helpful. There will be days when it is cloudy and there will be days with clear skies. If you start off by disliking clouds, then it will only create frustration and division. Just say, "the sky is cloudy today" and watch the clouds. You can learn a lot from them by simply witnessing and not assigning a value judgement.

    The beginning of meditation will almost certainly be stormy. How can it be otherwise? We have been told to value the mind, intellect our whole lives. Our minds are our identities, our narrative has become who we are. When we first attempt to observe that process, it will of course be noisy. By and by, you can start to see gaps in the narrative. We will of course place a positive value on these gaps, but who is placing a value there? Again the mind. Just accept that as its nature.

    I try to find my blocks through meditation. I have physical blocks, holding tension in certain places. Also, mental blocks. There may be thought circles that go round and round. I do not wish to indulge them, nor do I wish to repress them. It can be difficult to be in the middle, but I just try to be aware and learn. It is easy to go from one extreme or the other, that's why the middle is called the razor's edge. I fall off all the time, but I have noticed that I don't fall down as far as time goes by.

    Lose yourself in art or craft. Just be present as often as you can in whatever you are doing. Sometimes even writing a check gives me an intentional space to create art. It sounds funny, but it helps!
    FinneousPJArviagorgonzolaBelgarathMTH
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    edited April 2019
    @BelgarathMTH @JLee
    Thank you both for sharing your experience. I like the "monkey mind", it's very fitting. Also, I had heard about the idea that you should observe your passing thoughts like clouds drifting in the sky, but I never really understood how it's supposed to work.
    "Keep practicing" is probably exactly the point. I wanted to understand everything about it before I ever tried again, but I'm beginning to understand that this is ridiculous because I was using my monkey mind to try to learn how to calm the monkey mind. Now that I see it written down, it looks quite silly.

    @BelgarathMTH you said that with enough practice, you even manage to enter a kind of meditative state at work when there is total chaos around you.
    The weird thing is, those are almost the only moments when I, without conscious choice, always drop into a state of total calm, stay centered, focused, aware, busy mind shut down, reassuring the others, doing what has to be done. The noisy mind comes afterwards.
    This is useful of course, but it is also very frustrating that my mind is able to do that on its own only in emergency situations. To know that state of mind is there but you can't reach it when you want to by conscious choice and don't know how to get there on your own is ... well, very frustrating.
    JLeeBelgarathMTH
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    edited April 2019
    content erased
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    edited April 2019
    yoga, at least the form of yoga most known in the western word, the hata yoga, is meditation.
    reading patanjali's yoga sutra we see that asana, the "yoga gym" is only the 3rd of a path of 7 steps, that should not be done before yama and niyama, the 5 avoidances and the 5 virtues.
    then comes pranayama, the art of breathing. and is the last of the preparatory steps.
    then the last steps, the ones that lead to the final goal, are purely meditative.
    (technically the patanjali's yoga is called raja yoga, the yoga of the king, but here i refer to it as hata cause most of the western yoga teachers refer to that school and hata is (wrongly) used instead of raja.

    and if we read the hata yoga pradipika, the main text about hata yoga, we see how is something very different from "gym" and definitely meditative.

    whatever form of yoga or spiritual practice is really important to try to avoid the ahamkara (aham=i karana=to do), the feeling "i do" and specifically that we are doing the things for one scope, lord krishna is very clear about it while teaching the path to arjuna: "you have the right to act, you can't avoid to act, but the result of the action is not in your hands".

    this is why to force the mind to stop does not work, you do the action independently to the results, whether it is looking at what happens in the mind, listening the breath or other practice like japa, the repetition of a mantra. then, if it has to happen, the mind will stop. but it is not the goal, setting it as goal makes it impossible to happen and at the end if it happens or not is not important at all.
    JLeeArviamlneveseBelgarathMTH
  • JLeeJLee Member Posts: 650
    These two texts have been very beneficial to my practice (with a brief excerpt):


    Pith Instructions on Mahamudra from Mahasiddha Tilopa: The Ganges Mahamudra Upadesha
    (The introduction by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche is helpful, scroll down for the whole text)

    At first, practice is a river rushing through a gorge.
    In the middle, it’s the river Ganges, smooth and flowing.
    In the end, it’s where all rivers meet, mother and child.


    Verses on the Faith Mind
    by Chien-Chih Seng-ts'an
    Third Zen Patriarch
    When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
    your very effort fills you with activity.
    - (What you wrote reminded me of this @gorgonzola)

    I also appreciate you and @BelgarathMTH bringing yoga into the conversation. I know I would benefit greatly from it, but have not explored it much at all.
    ArviamlnevesegorgonzolaBelgarathMTH
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    Just a quick additional thought to the subject of meditation and its benefits - I often reach a very satisfying meditative state while playing various RPG's on my computer, such as Baldur's Gate or Titan Quest.

    I think many masters might ridicule me for it, but, having reached a beginner's stage of enlightenment where I really don't care very much what other people think, I smile, I breathe, I relax, and I feel the absolute contentment of that relaxation, and I continue connecting to the Source of Life, by focusing on, of all things, playing Dungeons and Dragons style video games on my computer. Namaste. :)
    JLeegorgonzolaArviaSkatan
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    @BelgarathMTH when you have found the way home you never forget it, cause you know you have never really have been away from there :D
    BelgarathMTHJLee
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    edited April 2019
    @BelgarathMTH you are absolutely right about the "more physical, more active" meditation disciplines probably being better (for me). I have come to the same conclusion yesterday.
    I had got it backwards. I had seen or heard how other people do it (sitting still, staring at the wall, let your thoughts drift by like clouds...) and thought that's how it's supposed to work, and when I got frustrated with that method, I gave up.
    Instead, I should have looked when and where in my life I come close to that calm, centered state, and use that knowledge to find a method that works.
    As I said, it happens at work, and I thought it's just because I know there is no alternative. I'm a doctor, in a hospital. If I don't keep calm in an emergency, very bad things happen. But it's more than that. The worse the emergency, the simpler it is what you do. It's all just algorithms and automatic responses. Check 1,2,3 then do A,B,C. You don't need the mind to analyze what you do. The monkey shuts up and organises the actions, and the self can be calm and detached because the thoughts aren't all over the place.
    I also noticed that I feel similar when I swim. The regular armstrokes and breathing, the world shut out by the water, again the thoughts are mostly quiet because the mind is coordinating the movements and not running wild like a sack full of bumblebees.

    It was also very helpful when you mentioned Christian traditions. In many monasteries, Catholic monks will walk in slow circles around the courtyard or the garden when the pray the rosary (the beads you mentioned, which are indeed a kind of meditation, though it's many words and therefore easy to lose track when you do it alone).
    So, whoever said I had to sit and stare at a wall, except my own narrow understanding or rather misunderstanding?
    I'm glad I decided to stay in this discussion. Putting my own ideas into words and reading other opinions has helped me to see several things much more clearly. Thank you.
    And seeing the way you explain things, you are either a teacher, or you should be one.

    @gorgonzola @JLee I like the detailed information you give about your experiences, seeing as I know almost nothing, least of all about myself, it is very helpful to read how others have found their own way. I think several more people who read that will learn something useful.
    Post edited by Arvia on
    mlneveseBelgarathMTHgorgonzolaJLee
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    @Arvia a couple of things that maybe can help you focus better on the way that is good for you.
    Arvia wrote: »
    I had seen or heard how other people do it (sitting still, staring at the wall, let your thoughts drift by like clouds...) and thought that's how it's supposed to work, and when I got frustrated with that method, I gave up.
    there is a misconception here. to witness the thoughts drift like clouds is only the preparatory phase, but the real method is to focus on the origin of the thoughts, the source. only doing so you can suddenly "fall" into the source itself, and is at that moment that the "miracle" happens.
    when @BelgarathMTH tells
    Just a quick additional thought to the subject of meditation and its benefits - I often reach a very satisfying meditative state while playing various RPG's on my computer, such as Baldur's Gate or Titan Quest.

    is cause he has already found the source, has already fallen into it. and i use to fall and not to enter cause there is no intention, it "happens", and cause is not going somewhere, is being what you already are.
    having reached a beginner's stage of enlightenment where I really don't care very much what other people think, I smile, I breathe, I relax, and I feel the absolute contentment of that relaxation, and I continue connecting to the Source of Life,

    also
    Arvia wrote: »
    As I said, it happens at work, and I thought it's just because I know there is no alternative. I'm a doctor, in a hospital. If I don't keep calm in an emergency, very bad things happen. But it's more than that. The worse the emergency, the simpler it is what you do. It's all just algorithms and automatic responses. Check 1,2,3 then do A,B,C. You don't need the mind to analyze what you do. The monkey shuts up and organises the actions, and the self can be calm and detached because the thoughts aren't all over the place.
    this is acting without ahamkara, without the ego interfering, feeling "i do". is pure reaction, here and now.
    the body and the mind know perfectly what to do as the ego cease to interfere, use the emergency situations and activities like swimming to experience the acting without ahamkara, by practicing it you can bring it also in the other parts of your life, and again it happens, you don't do it, non intention is the key.
    the Real Self is the sun that make the clouds that shade it fade away, the ego can only watch them pass by, but will never be able to make them fade away.

    mlneveseArviaJLeeBelgarathMTH
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    i just stumbled into 2 you tube videos that maybe can give more insight about meditation. i was not searching for them, only opening the main you tube page and my eye was "attracted" by them, so i opened them.



    BelgarathMTHArvia
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    edited April 2019
    Arvia wrote: »
    As I said, it happens at work, and I thought it's just because I know there is no alternative. I'm a doctor, in a hospital. If I don't keep calm in an emergency, very bad things happen. But it's more than that. The worse the emergency, the simpler it is what you do. It's all just algorithms and automatic responses. Check 1,2,3 then do A,B,C. You don't need the mind to analyze what you do. The monkey shuts up and organises the actions, and the self can be calm and detached because the thoughts aren't all over the place.

    Well, that's interesting. Do you use the same tools to figure out what is true in religion as you do to decide what is true in medicine?
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    I don't think I understand your question. Could you be a little more specific please?
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Arvia wrote: »
    I don't think I understand your question. Could you be a little more specific please?

    How do you figure out what is true in medicine? How do you figure out what is true in religion? Simple enough.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @gorgonzola , I watched the first video, and it was a very good refresher course for me in a lot of the basics. I don't have time to watch the second video right now, but I'll come back and watch it later. Thank you for sharing them.
    gorgonzola
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    @FinneousPJ i am not sure that your way to have a dialogue is productive. you quote something of @Arvia where she clearly tells that in certain situations her mind cease to ask questions like to determine the method to figure out what is true in medicine (or by the way in religion) and act in a different operative mode, doing what has to be done quick and efficiently to save people's life, without loosing time and energy to consider such silly questions, and then you ask her the criteria she uses to ask to those questions.
    silly cause in an emergency situation to discuss about logic and/or methodology is not useful at all.

    i am asking myself if your purpose is to understand what the other people think and/or feel or believe or if it is to have fun putting the other people in a difficult position using your logic, that i find borderline to sophism, to using logic tricks, and splitting hairs in every time smaller parts. i am asking myself, but it has no sense, much better to ask it to you, what is your real purpose? i am asking with the greater respect, i am not judgmental, only curious.
    BelgarathMTH
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    edited April 2019
    @FinneousPJ
    Do you use the same approach to write a poem and an astrophysics essay?
    The same strategy and tools to paint a seashore in watercolours or draw the building plan of a sewage plant?

    Edited: I don't remember claiming to possess any truth about religion
    Post edited by Arvia on
    JLee
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Arvia wrote: »
    @FinneousPJ
    Do you use the same approach to write a poem and an astrophysics essay?
    The same strategy and tools to paint a seashore in watercolours or draw the building plan of a sewage plant?

    Edited: I don't remember claiming to possess any truth about religion

    I take it your answer is a no. Why do you think you should use one tool to examine religion and another to examine medicine?
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    gorgonzola wrote: »
    @FinneousPJ i am not sure that your way to have a dialogue is productive. you quote something of @Arvia where she clearly tells that in certain situations her mind cease to ask questions like to determine the method to figure out what is true in medicine (or by the way in religion) and act in a different operative mode, doing what has to be done quick and efficiently to save people's life, without loosing time and energy to consider such silly questions, and then you ask her the criteria she uses to ask to those questions.
    silly cause in an emergency situation to discuss about logic and/or methodology is not useful at all.

    i am asking myself if your purpose is to understand what the other people think and/or feel or believe or if it is to have fun putting the other people in a difficult position using your logic, that i find borderline to sophism, to using logic tricks, and splitting hairs in every time smaller parts. i am asking myself, but it has no sense, much better to ask it to you, what is your real purpose? i am asking with the greater respect, i am not judgmental, only curious.

    My question is not related to that, it's a separate issue.
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    @FinneousPJ what your question is related to is not important. i asked one question to you, and i ask it again, why are you after @Arvia like an odor sleuth that that has sensed a prey?
    what is your purpose, what is the reason you are doing it?
    i ask it in a respectful and polite way, and obviously you have the right to not answer, i have no right to investigate into your life and know about your motivations.
    but as it seems that you put so much effort in investigating in someone else life and beliefs i would find odd if you refuse to have your life, your motivations, investigated.
    as i ask you about your motivations i want also tell you about my motivation, it is only curiosity, i want to know more about you. my question is related to my curiosity about you, so also my question is a separate issue.
    r.s.v.p.
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    I'm asking them questions because they chose to share their viewpoint which I find fascinating, especially coupled with science-y education.
    gorgonzolaArvia
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    thank you for the kind answer, now my curiosity is pleased :)
    BelgarathMTHmlneveseArvia
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    @arvia, i will ever protect you, even if i know that it is not really needed, because i am a chaotic good paladin :),
    but as paladin usually i don't lie, what i told is true. i was really interested in knowing the @FinneousPJ 's motivations cause she (if i am not wrong, other way he) really puzzles and amazes me, we had a quite intese exchange of pm a couple of days ago, and i found some common pattern with how she behaved with you.
    BelgarathMTHArvia
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    edited April 2019
    @gorgonzola understood and accepted. Paladins must stick together (although I'm a beginner), and to refuse support is false pride.
    I never doubted your question was genuine. I had kept quiet after @FinneousPJ 's last post because I also didn't know the motive behind it and was wondering how to ask it. I thought, it must be more than a provocation, who would waste their time with that? And the discussion between you two made it clear.

    @FinneousPJ , gorgonzola is right. I have re-read the discussion of this last week and I see a pattern there that I recognise. There have been many discussions (in other subjects) in my life where, out of honest interest and curiosity, I have used a kind of "advocatus diaboli" position to try to understand the other side and point out their failures (and probably didn't make them very happy). I think that's part of the reason why I felt offended (apart from the fact that lack of sleep makes the skin grow thinner). I wasn't used to finding myself on the other side of that particular knife.
    I respect your position and your approach, and your attitude to question everything and make others question their reasoning.

    FinneousPJgorgonzolaBelgarathMTH
  • ArtonaArtona Member Posts: 1,077
    @gorgonzola - I appreciate that you took time to answer to my post, and I apologize that my reply comes so late. :)
    (...) for me an atheist is a person that is convinced, believes, that there is no god. (...) so use this definition of atheist for the sake of understanding what i tell other way we are just disagreeing on the meaning of words, not on the logic of our reasoning.
    Okay, for the sake of discussion. Still - it doesn't make it a religion, and I would argue that believing in God and believing in no-God (non-existence of God) aren't comparable positions. This isn't exactly betting on which side the coin will land. For an instance, hard atheism (or simply atheism, as you call it) is compatible with cognitive directive, that demands to assume as little as possible. Theists, however, will face a question: "why one God, not two or three?". Sure, you can answer "that's what I believe in", but atheists belief let them answer that question with general notion about gaining knowledge (that is following directive).
    i call act of faith and arbitrary decision to assume that there is no god only for the lack of evidence of his existence, if there is no evidence of its not existence. and seems that no incontrovertible evidence of both has been proved.
    When it comes to God, then there are at least two problems I see:
    1. In most religions God is beyond epistemology by its nature. It is impossible to provide any proof. So strong believe that God doesn't exist isn't just based on act of faith, but rather on the notion that if anything exists, then there is - or was - trace of that existence.
    2. I can think of matters where we have no evidence one way or another, but still we would favor one position, and not just reserve judgement. For example, we do not know how big is the biggest natural ore of gold in the world. We would, however - with no strong evidence - rather say that it's more likely to be 10m in radius, than 10km.
    so i stand on my position, an atheist (someone that is convinced that there is no god) and a religious person (someone that is convinced that there is a god, or maybe many gods) are both basing their belief on other then a scientific evidence, as both the positions can not be proved. i call it act of faith.
    I'd like to point out that scientific apparatus is not the only way to base and form your opinions and beliefs. You can have various philosophies, scepticism, various types of logics and so on. Just because something isn't based on science, it doesn't mean it's and act of faith.
    FinneousPJmlnevesegorgonzola
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    edited April 2019
    Artona wrote: »
    1. In most religions God is beyond epistemology by its nature. It is impossible to provide any proof. So strong believe that God doesn't exist isn't just based on act of faith, but rather on the notion that if anything exists, then there is - or was - trace of that existence.
    imho this statement of yours has 2 conceptual errors.
    you assume that there can not be a proof, an evidence about the existence, or by the way the not existence of god, proving each one would prove the other false.
    you assume also that if there would have been an evidence the human race should have been able to find it.
    only in very recent times, on a history scale, the mankind has proved the existence of radio activity and a little before the existence of bacteria. unless you have the philosophical position that radio activity and bacteria started to exist only at the moment that they was discovered you must admit that the existence of an evidence, that can transform a faith/guessing into a sure and proof knowledge, is independent by the human kind having it discovered/demonstrated or not.

    Artona wrote: »
    For an instance, hard atheism (or simply atheism, as you call it) is compatible with cognitive directive, that demands to assume as little as possible.
    to assume as little as possible is exactly my position on the matter. in my opinion hard atheists assume too much (i don't ever assume that there is a real body in a real world behind conscience and perception). there are hypothesis that explain the perceptions without implying a real world behind them, like the whole humanity and universe being a super computer simulation, matrix like, or being lila, the dream/game of god, and even some of the last developments of physics seem to hypothesize that the image of the world we have trough the perception is not true to the real form of it.
    i adopted that position, to assume as little as possible, way before the matrix movie or reading hindu texts or some scientists talking of entanglement or more then 4 dimensions. my quest, my research, use only what i am sure of, conscience and perceptions superimposing on it. so i regard as faith, as assuming more then the minimum possible, not only religions but also hard atheism.


    the results of my quest, that still is not concluded, make me believe that 1 single hour of meditation/yoga/japa/whatever spiritual practice is much more useful then years of logic or years of faith.
    trough practice, effort not focused on a goal (i lack of better english words to express the concept), and by the intervention of grace a better comprehension of from where i come, who am i and where i am going can be attained. practice lead to the connection to the source that is never ending not focused pure joy. even if to debate about the source, to define what it is, is pointless. unless someone does not practice until the obstacles are removed and he becomes aware of the connection, that has always been there, real knowledge about the source is impossible.



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