Thank you Beth and Dale so much for yesterday. You hit the number with the importance of understanding the unquiet of mind within a relationship, dale, and funnily enough today I read some inspiring text about the very same subject and fully believe that if I can understand the state of my mind I will cause less pain in the world. I had a brief but nice candleit sit today. I forgot to warn J and he came bounding in saying "where's my wife? I've done a painting!!!!", which felt OK. I simply went with it.
I have a question about the object of a meditation. I was making an object of my meditation out of a concept or idea or philosophy, a thought even? So where does contemplation end and where do thoughts begin?
The terminology of this is complicated and inconsistant, so anyone prudent will just declare their definitions before they proceed :-)
I would *probably* call what you're doing a "contemplation" rather than a meditation, though it's hard to say. It's dangerous to try to define these things without having a solid background in the meditative tradition they come from-- it gets really confusing really fast if you mix things up. (For instance, what Catholics usually call meditation is what Tibetan Buddhists usually call contemplation, and what they call contemplation is what we call meditation.)
So it all depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to bring the mind to stillness, to experience the lucidity of awareness without the masks and filters of conceptual thought, then trying to do that with a conceptual object, as you describe, would be very very difficult. Not necessarily impossible, I guess, but I'm pretty sure that I couldn't do it. I would probably end up doing more of what I'd call a contemplation, i.e., a disciplined conceptual mulling over of some particular thought or verse or prayer or something. Which is also an extremely valuable thing to do.
And of course, beyond the words, there's what your mind *actually* does, which is anyone's guess, no matter what you're trying to do :-)
So I definitely wouldn't run away with the notion that you "haven't been meditating." I'm pretty sure you have been. But you may be trying to do something terribly difficult.
4 Comments:
Thank you Beth and Dale so much for yesterday. You hit the number with the importance of understanding the unquiet of mind within a relationship, dale, and funnily enough today I read some inspiring text about the very same subject and fully believe that if I can understand the state of my mind I will cause less pain in the world. I had a brief but nice candleit sit today. I forgot to warn J and he came bounding in saying "where's my wife? I've done a painting!!!!", which felt OK. I simply went with it.
I have a question about the object of a meditation. I was making an object of my meditation out of a concept or idea or philosophy, a thought even? So where does contemplation end and where do thoughts begin?
I wanted to thank you, Dale, for that last comment too.
The terminology of this is complicated and inconsistant, so anyone prudent will just declare their definitions before they proceed :-)
I would *probably* call what you're doing a "contemplation" rather than a meditation, though it's hard to say. It's dangerous to try to define these things without having a solid background in the meditative tradition they come from-- it gets really confusing really fast if you mix things up. (For instance, what Catholics usually call meditation is what Tibetan Buddhists usually call contemplation, and what they call contemplation is what we call meditation.)
So it all depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to bring the mind to stillness, to experience the lucidity of awareness without the masks and filters of conceptual thought, then trying to do that with a conceptual object, as you describe, would be very very difficult. Not necessarily impossible, I guess, but I'm pretty sure that I couldn't do it. I would probably end up doing more of what I'd call a contemplation, i.e., a disciplined conceptual mulling over of some particular thought or verse or prayer or something. Which is also an extremely valuable thing to do.
And of course, beyond the words, there's what your mind *actually* does, which is anyone's guess, no matter what you're trying to do :-)
So I definitely wouldn't run away with the notion that you "haven't been meditating." I'm pretty sure you have been. But you may be trying to do something terribly difficult.
15 minutes this morning. I was distracting myself with thoughts of the day's doings. Ah, practice, practice.
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