slow loss

just started doing timed zazen meditations to strengthen my stamina for unfocused focus.  its always been hard for me to stay in an out-of-body thought function, keeping my mind distant from my physical self for extended amounts of time.  setting an alarm for any amount of time in the future is good in that respect as it trains the mind to stop worrying about how long ive been sitting for so it may relax and absorb, as the alarm will come when it needs to.

hoping to build up to somewhere near an hour of straight meditation by the end of the summer.

June 24, 2012, 12:34pm

The relevance of za-zen to Zen is obvious when it is remembered that Zen is seeing reality directly, in its “suchness.”  To see the world as it is concretely, undivided by categories and abstractions, one must certainly look at it with a mind which is not thinking—which is to say, forming symbols—about it.  Za-zen is not, therefore, sitting with a blank mind which excludes all the impressions of the inner and outer senses.  It is not “concentration” in the usual sense of restricting the attention to a single sense object, such as a point of light or the tip of one’s nose.  It is simply a quiet awareness, without comment, of whatever happens to be here and now.  This awareness is attended by the most vivid sensation of “nondifference” between oneself and the external world, between the mind and its contents—the various sounds, sights, and other impressions of the surrounding environment.  Naturally, this sensation does not arise by trying to acquire it; it just comes by itself when one is sitting and watching without any purpose in mind—even the purpose of getting rid of purpose.

-Alan Watts, from The Way of Zen

May 19, 2012, 12:34pm

meditating is allowing your consciousness to be absorbed by everything

May 09, 2012, 8:07pm

always my destination

April 11, 2012, 3:55pm

Sitting meditation is not, as is often supposed, a spiritual “exercise,” a practice followed for some ulterior object.  From a Buddhist standpoint, it is simply the proper way to sit, and it seems perfectly natural to remain sitting so long as there is nothing else to be done, and so long as one is not consumed with nervous agitation.  To the restless temperament of the West, sitting meditation may seem to be an unpleasant discipline, because we do not seem to be able to sit “just to sit” without qualms of conscience, without feeling that we out to be doing something more important to justify our existence.  To propitiate this restless conscience, sitting meditation must therefore be regarded as an exercise, a discipline with an ulterior motive.  Yet at that very point it ceases to be meditation (dhyana) in the Buddhist sense, for where there is purpose, where there is seeking and grasping for results, there is no dhyana.

-Alan Watts, from The Way of Zen

April 07, 2012, 2:06pm

for the past two months whilst meditating ive been feeling a slight pressure right between my eyes, above the line of my eyebrows; the position where the third eye is usually depicted.  not too sure what this means, but its the first thing i become subconsciously aware of when sitting in quiet, closed-eye trance.

February 09, 2012, 11:51pm

house is almost cleaned.  after i finish cleaning, going to head down to pick up some sage bundles/smudge sticks to cleanse the house, get some nails so i can finish my beer bottle cap project on my computer desk, and head to the strutt for the used record vendor fair.  meditation after full house cleanse and by then it will be evening.

but now for whiskey and coffee.

December 17, 2011, 12:47pm

i gave john my cassette to give to his advanced meditation professor.  hopefully he will play my cassette during a session.  also asked john to see if i could play a live set for an entire hour for them.  ive always wanted to play music for a yoga/meditation session!

November 03, 2011, 12:37pm

True dhyana is to realize that one’s own nature is like space, and that thoughts and sensations come and go in this “original mind” like birds through the sky, leaving no trace.

- Alan Watts, from The Way of Zen

August 24, 2011, 8:27pm