The Head and the Heart

When your mind is like a roller coaster,
you could sit still and enjoy the ride!

My meditation practice has felt a little off this week. My department at work went on a team retreat early this week and there are lots of changes coming, so my mind was filled with thoughts about work. On top of that I've felt angry and aggressive lately. I'm not sure where it is coming from. Maybe it is the coming winter season. Maybe it is anxiety about my wife losing her job. Maybe it is dealing with some of the ideas around Karma that are rocking my world view (see recent posts about Karma).

My morning meditations have felt off balance in the sense that my mind wanders during most of the time that I am sitting. I get anxious and look at the clock

Karma and Rebirth (part 2 of 2): the Solidity of Your Actions

This post is building from last week's post, which talks about karma and the concept of rebirth.

If there is no heaven and if there is no reincarnation, what’s with all the talk about re-birth? I don’t have all the answers to that question and maybe later I'll have another conclusion, but there is a lesson here that I’m going to take away for the time being: if we have no soul, then the only solid thing, which carries on after we die, is the momentum of our actions.

Here is where the concept of Karma kicks in. The concept of re-death and re-birth can be taken on a very practical level, forgetting the metaphysics. In every split-second, we are making choices and we are engaged in actions. Those choices and actions generate karma in a network of interdependent causes and consequences. They create momentum that carries on for a while and sets off other chain reactions. 

Karma and Rebirth (part 1 of 2)

I’ve been taking a class on Karma (action) and the 12 Nidanas (links of causation) and what surprises me most is my difficulty in letting go of the concept of the soul. Throughout my studies as a Buddhist I’ve always been agnostic about the concept of reincarnation. My attitude for a long time has been that there is no way for me to know whether reincarnation is real; so why bother thinking much about it? What I didn’t realize, despite my ability to feign indifference to the questions of what happens when we die, is that I have been secretly holding onto the view that we all have a soul.  

After studying the cycle of samsara in more detail, I realize that I’m confused. If you are raised as a Muslim, Jew or Christian, you might be taught that there is a soul that goes to heaven; this soul is believed to be the essential element of your self, which is not dependent on a body to exist.

Advice on Irritation from Pema Chodron

I've heard it said that "irritation is the vanguard of basic goodness." When I'm really pissed off or find myself irritable, I often hear this phrase in my head and it helps to calm me down. I like to feel the sensation in my body and then touch into my mind and my heart (which is where Tibetans believe the mind resides). If I have the discipline to actually try this, I'm usually amazed by how well it works. The problem is that sometimes I'd rather just keep complaining or play video games or read the news when I'm irritated.

The video below is Pema Chodron offering a great analogy about how we could just work with our minds to rise above aggression.

Remembrance of Things Past

Beautiful memories are like comets hurtling through space, dazzlingly brilliant, but growing ever distant. I fear the stories that encapsulate my most beautiful memories will travel so deep into darkness that they will disappear from sight. Eventually they will become imperceptible even to the most powerful telescope, forever lost in the vastness of space.

That's how it feels to think about old friendships, or the feverish days of solidarity and angst in the punk scene, or the glory days on the high school football team, when things seemed intense, alive, maybe even perfect.

The "Touch and Go" Technique

At some point in meditation training, a teacher might suggest that the student use the "touch and go" technique. It was quite a few years ago when I first received this instruction, but I feel like I only understood it last week, during a weekend program with Acharya Christie Cashman.

Thoughts will come and thoughts will go. The issue is not that we have thoughts. The issue is our attachment to thoughts.

Aren't You Supposed to be Somewhere?

This is actually an advertisement for meditation cushions, but it is great on so many levels: