Good morning, everyone! Another quick check-in from here in Dublin, now that we're back from our Internet-free trip to Galway and Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands off the Irish coast.
I've not spent a bit of "serious cushion time," which is fitting since I'm on vacation. But I've had lots of opportunity for sitting-on-the-train meditation and even more for drinking-pints-of-Guinness meditation, the latter of which I'm discovering is a fine art. :-)
Jean, I'm glad to hear your migraines have subsided: being unwell is no fun at all.
I'm so sorry you have been off colour jean, and glad you are back.
lorraine ireland sounds so delicious. did you eat oysters with your guinness?
I've had a very wayward week in terms of meditation but got back to it yesterday - sitting on the bank of the Salzach river where I am now on tour. It is a great angled slope down to the rushing milky green and I can even sit cross legged! Meditating by a fast flowing river is such a wonderful reminder of how to let things simply pass.
I am realising how easily I can have feelings of hatred towards strangers. This always comes up for me in places like salzburg where there is so much officiousness and snobbery, and where we are treated like second class citizens, but I am observing the feelings and trying to look them in the eye. It is also a reminder of how so many other people feel so much of the time when they are victims of any kind of prejudice themselves.
Decided my meditative time in church this morning counts - though it's pew-and-kneeler time rather than cushion time! (The most fruitful part for me is always the singing, though.)
Jean, so sorry about the migraines - do you know what triggered them? Glad you're back with us, I missed you.
Ruth, you've named somethign I revognize and often feel - not even so much with strangers in other palces, but with the hoards of Americans with whom I disagree so strongly, and whose lifestyles I find so alien. When I'm in a mall, for instance, I really struggle with those feelings of alienation and dislike, then the recognition of my own arrogance, then shame. I try to practice with this and not get caught in the guilt, either. I truly do believe I am no better than anyone else and that the same spark of divinity is within all of us - therefore I must treat everyone with compassion and as an equal. So much easier for me to do with a beggar in the city than with a slobby, rude, loud person, or someone who is arrogant, snobbish, rich and self-satisfied! It's very difficult, but it does make me calmer and better able to deal with a wide cross-section of humanity.
oh darling beth thqank you for being more honest than i even dared. it is one of the things i feel so guilty about in my life and, like you, feel it so much more among the self satisfied than the downtrodden. your frankness has reconfirmed my commitment to looking at this straight in the eye and sitting with it and not just the beauty....
4 Comments:
Good morning, everyone! Another quick check-in from here in Dublin, now that we're back from our Internet-free trip to Galway and Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands off the Irish coast.
I've not spent a bit of "serious cushion time," which is fitting since I'm on vacation. But I've had lots of opportunity for sitting-on-the-train meditation and even more for drinking-pints-of-Guinness meditation, the latter of which I'm discovering is a fine art. :-)
Jean, I'm glad to hear your migraines have subsided: being unwell is no fun at all.
I'm so sorry you have been off colour jean, and glad you are back.
lorraine ireland sounds so delicious. did you eat oysters with your guinness?
I've had a very wayward week in terms of meditation but got back to it yesterday - sitting on the bank of the Salzach river where I am now on tour. It is a great angled slope down to the rushing milky green and I can even sit cross legged! Meditating by a fast flowing river is such a wonderful reminder of how to let things simply pass.
I am realising how easily I can have feelings of hatred towards strangers. This always comes up for me in places like salzburg where there is so much officiousness and snobbery, and where we are treated like second class citizens, but I am observing the feelings and trying to look them in the eye. It is also a reminder of how so many other people feel so much of the time when they are victims of any kind of prejudice themselves.
Decided my meditative time in church this morning counts - though it's pew-and-kneeler time rather than cushion time! (The most fruitful part for me is always the singing, though.)
Jean, so sorry about the migraines - do you know what triggered them? Glad you're back with us, I missed you.
Ruth, you've named somethign I revognize and often feel - not even so much with strangers in other palces, but with the hoards of Americans with whom I disagree so strongly, and whose lifestyles I find so alien. When I'm in a mall, for instance, I really struggle with those feelings of alienation and dislike, then the recognition of my own arrogance, then shame. I try to practice with this and not get caught in the guilt, either. I truly do believe I am no better than anyone else and that the same spark of divinity is within all of us - therefore I must treat everyone with compassion and as an equal. So much easier for me to do with a beggar in the city than with a slobby, rude, loud person, or someone who is arrogant, snobbish, rich and self-satisfied! It's very difficult, but it does make me calmer and better able to deal with a wide cross-section of humanity.
oh darling beth thqank you for being more honest than i even dared. it is one of the things i feel so guilty about in my life and, like you, feel it so much more among the self satisfied than the downtrodden. your frankness has reconfirmed my commitment to looking at this straight in the eye and sitting with it and not just the beauty....
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