:-) Meditation goes with snow like toast with butter.
I hope you Easterners are all keeping toasty, speaking of that -- Sat an hour at the sangha, last night. Made the mistake of wearing jeans instead of sweatpants. My legs don't fold very well these days in my jeans, so I need a higher cushion if I wear them. Of course I figured that out 3 minutes into the session, and spent much of the next 57 minutes considering whether I should snaffle the (unoccupied) cushion ahead of me, and wondering just how silly I'd look trying to stuff a second cushion under my rear while pretending to be sitting still. Enlightenment, as we say at my house, is just around the corner :-)
I did make it to the bell, apparently still and serene and unruffled, though my back and thighs were complaining loudly in my head. This being a Tibetan center, it would have been perfectly fine if I'd snaffled the cushion; it's just vanity. My ego's all wrapped up in sitting still. Gah.
Though actually my mind quieted down nicely from time to time, and at least I was onto myself enough to have to work at refraining from giggling a couple times at how determinedly my mind returned to the problem of how to get that cushion without looking silly :-)
Love to y'all. Nicole, that's great! Fifteen minutes doesn't seem that short to me, not when you're coming back from a fallow week. Is there anyone or any group you could sit with, there? Then you could be like me and have vanity on your side. A powerful ally :-)
Dale :-) yes, jeans and sitting meditation do not mix!!
Nicole, good to see you again. Every single time is a milestone, I think.
Snow, yes, lovely, as long as you're warm enough. I remember a meditation teacher once recounting a similar struggle to Dale's with her vanity - the issue being whether to react to the snow settling on her nose in a very cold, leaky meditation hall in the North of England. It was here, I think: http://www.throssel.org.uk/
Sitting, which I keep faithfully doing, is about the only thing not falling apart just now. Sitting with everything falling apart and realising that this may not be the worst thing is kind of scary but beautiful. (totally overdramatic - nothing is falling apart, really. It just feels that way because I have been ill and failed to meet any commitments for the past week or so. The sky is not going to fall, but gosh there is an endlessly arising feeling that it is and that I need to DO something about it...)
Devon: I can imagine you sitting quietly with big flakes of snow falling outside ..
I agree with everything that has been said re jeans.
Jean: sorry things feel overwhelming - do hope work evens out soon.
I've actually got the opposite problem, and am looking for temp work, which seems to dry up in February. You'd think therefore that making time for meditation would be easier. It isn't, which demonstrates to me where the problem lies, i.e. with me.
I am going to have to renew my commitment tomorrow (well now to start tomorrow). Everything here seems to at be breaking point from physical to emotional to J putting deisel in the loaned petrol car on the way home from Lyon. It seems we are both feeling lost and lonely now I'm home. All too wierd and I'm going to need to sit again soon.
This being a Tibetan center, it would have been perfectly fine if I'd snaffled the cushion; it's just vanity. My ego's all wrapped up in sitting still. Gah.
My kinda place. I find this (and yesterday's discussion of trying to direct the pace of one's breathing) very reassuring. Ruth: you count in halves? I do three/five or four/seven rhythms :-) Though I have been getting better at not trying to guide it.
Jean, I hope things slow down a bit for you, and that they speed up a bit for you, Mary!
(I too have noticed that it becomes harder to sit, not easier, when I have more time free.)
Udge, sometime you'll have to do a reconnaissance of German Zen & Tibetan centers for me; I'm really curious about whether the different branches of Buddhism maintain their cultural identities in the same way there as they do here... Americans I suspect amplify Tibetan informality and easygoingness -- I wonder if Germans damp it down?
Hugs and love to everyone who is struggling right now, especially Jean, Ruth and Mary. How hard it is sometimes to just let things be as they are! I know the problem so well.
Just arrived back in Montreal, which always makes me happy. But I also need to renew my commitment - I've bene managing the early morning minutes but not the longer sit in the afternoon. I hope to be sitting later this evening.
MB, if your link, like mine, is to http://cassandrapages.com, then you can fix it by relinking to http://www.cassandrapages.com. I have no idea why, but it seems usually not to work now without the www. The net moves in mysterious ways.
Thanks, Dale, that's exactly it. The problem was with TypePad, who stopped supporting the kind of "pointer" I was using. We thought we'd fixed it; if not, just use www.cassandrapages.com and that should work.
11 Comments:
:-) Meditation goes with snow like toast with butter.
I hope you Easterners are all keeping toasty, speaking of that --
Sat an hour at the sangha, last night. Made the mistake of wearing jeans instead of sweatpants. My legs don't fold very well these days in my jeans, so I need a higher cushion if I wear them. Of course I figured that out 3 minutes into the session, and spent much of the next 57 minutes considering whether I should snaffle the (unoccupied) cushion ahead of me, and wondering just how silly I'd look trying to stuff a second cushion under my rear while pretending to be sitting still. Enlightenment, as we say at my house, is just around the corner :-)
I did make it to the bell, apparently still and serene and unruffled, though my back and thighs were complaining loudly in my head. This being a Tibetan center, it would have been perfectly fine if I'd snaffled the cushion; it's just vanity. My ego's all wrapped up in sitting still. Gah.
Though actually my mind quieted down nicely from time to time, and at least I was onto myself enough to have to work at refraining from giggling a couple times at how determinedly my mind returned to the problem of how to get that cushion without looking silly :-)
Love to y'all. Nicole, that's great! Fifteen minutes doesn't seem that short to me, not when you're coming back from a fallow week. Is there anyone or any group you could sit with, there? Then you could be like me and have vanity on your side. A powerful ally :-)
Dale :-) yes, jeans and sitting meditation do not mix!!
Nicole, good to see you again. Every single time is a milestone, I think.
Snow, yes, lovely, as long as you're warm enough. I remember a meditation teacher once recounting a similar struggle to Dale's with her vanity - the issue being whether to react to the snow settling on her nose in a very cold, leaky meditation hall in the North of England. It was here, I think: http://www.throssel.org.uk/
Sitting, which I keep faithfully doing, is about the only thing not falling apart just now. Sitting with everything falling apart and realising that this may not be the worst thing is kind of scary but beautiful. (totally overdramatic - nothing is falling apart, really. It just feels that way because I have been ill and failed to meet any commitments for the past week or so. The sky is not going to fall, but gosh there is an endlessly arising feeling that it is and that I need to DO something about it...)
Nicole: 15 mins is around my average too .... :-)
Devon: I can imagine you sitting quietly with big flakes of snow falling outside ..
I agree with everything that has been said re jeans.
Jean: sorry things feel overwhelming - do hope work evens out soon.
I've actually got the opposite problem, and am looking for temp work, which seems to dry up in February. You'd think therefore that making time for meditation would be easier. It isn't, which demonstrates to me where the problem lies, i.e. with me.
hello.
I am going to have to renew my commitment tomorrow (well now to start tomorrow). Everything here seems to at be breaking point from physical to emotional to J putting deisel in the loaned petrol car on the way home from Lyon. It seems we are both feeling lost and lonely now I'm home. All too wierd and I'm going to need to sit again soon.
Welcome newbies!
This being a Tibetan center, it would have been perfectly fine if I'd snaffled the cushion; it's just vanity. My ego's all wrapped up in sitting still. Gah.
My kinda place. I find this (and yesterday's discussion of trying to direct the pace of one's breathing) very reassuring. Ruth: you count in halves? I do three/five or four/seven rhythms :-) Though I have been getting better at not trying to guide it.
{{{Ruth}}}
(As we sloppy Americans say :->)
Jean, I hope things slow down a bit for you, and that they speed up a bit for you, Mary!
(I too have noticed that it becomes harder to sit, not easier, when I have more time free.)
Udge, sometime you'll have to do a reconnaissance of German Zen & Tibetan centers for me; I'm really curious about whether the different branches of Buddhism maintain their cultural identities in the same way there as they do here... Americans I suspect amplify Tibetan informality and easygoingness -- I wonder if Germans damp it down?
Hugs and love to everyone who is struggling right now, especially Jean, Ruth and Mary. How hard it is sometimes to just let things be as they are! I know the problem so well.
Just arrived back in Montreal, which always makes me happy. But I also need to renew my commitment - I've bene managing the early morning minutes but not the longer sit in the afternoon. I hope to be sitting later this evening.
Beth, my link to your page won't work anymore. I don't think I changed anything...??
MB, if your link, like mine, is to http://cassandrapages.com, then you can fix it by relinking to http://www.cassandrapages.com. I have no idea why, but it seems usually not to work now without the www. The net moves in mysterious ways.
Thanks, Dale, that's exactly it. The problem was with TypePad, who stopped supporting the kind of "pointer" I was using. We thought we'd fixed it; if not, just use www.cassandrapages.com and that should work.
Thanks, both. That must be it. I'll change the link.
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