Buddhism

rinpoche is reknowned for presenting the essentials of buddhism in a palatable way that makes sense to westerners. this is the book i started with, and i still refer to it all the time as a reference. he also founded the rigpa organization in the u.s.a. (www.rigpa.org).

i get the impression they went out of fashion in the 70s, perhaps not new age-y enough => my copy of his book abt zen has a hilarious cartoon of the bodidharma on the cover (grumpy old indian monk who went to china and invented a. zen and b. martial arts)

that what the world has to say is important and I should give it as much of my attention as possible.

that is really beautiful, i'm glad you're having that experience

Meditation can be hard precisely because it can amplify self-judgment, ie just another thing I can't do. The beauty of it is, there is nothing *to* do except be there and observe, getting used to watching your mental habits and quirks.

And Cow_Art's insight is a profound one in Buddhism, as I understand it, namely that you *are* that world - there is no distinction: materially, you are the world and the world is you. Conceit arises from thinking you are more important than any other agglomeration like that or, crucially, that you are less important than any other agglomeration like that.

To counter the fact that I sound like I'm disappearing up my own mystical fundament: the noble eightfold path as a system of ethics for how to live is a right bastard to a) parse and b) live by. So.

I had a profundity?!?

*struts agglomeration about like Mick Jagger chicken dance*

You go girl!

that sort of non-dualist consciousness is a nice place to be. i like to think of the phrase "you are the world and the world is you" as "you are god and god is you". there's an outsideness to "the world" that i think captures its unpredictability (presentness) and its size (unknowable). i like that the experience of meditation doesn't really make you feel small in comparison to the world or god - more traditional religion tends to go with that - instead it tells you that god is literally in your being. one image that keeps "sticking" for me when i'm meditating is this: imagining myself as a thimble in an ocean. when we're "thinking" or letting our ego take hold or not being present, we are trying to fill our thimble with water. when we're present, either in meditation or in its lingering effects on our perspective and experience, we are experiencing the water of the ocean flowing through the holes in our thimble.

there is no distinction: materially, you are the world and the world is you.

This is something that has really stuck with me since moving to Montana. Of course, I tend to approach it from what might seem like a nihilist perspective — you are part of nature, and nature can and will kill you without hesitation or concern. You could fall down a mountain. You could drown in a river. A bear could bite you. You could get caught in a fire, or a blizzard. But I find that concept very freeing. Today is today. Nobody's promised tomorrow. But look how beautiful the mountains are!

I’ll add that one of the things I’ve found motivating me is that I tried a different approach to meditation that also seem to click for me: instead of listening to a guided recording, or going into it with expectations (e.g. feeling calmer or more focused, or like I’m accomplishing something) or pressure to not let my mind wander, I just sat down, closed my eyes and went for it. Only rule is to hold out until the bell, even if all I’m noticing is impatience and distraction. This has been a lot more effective than the paint by numbers meditations I’ve done previously. Granted, I’m sure there’s a point where guidance will help, but for now, literally just doing it seems to work.

haha yeah totally! i have meditations where it's just an absolute shitshow and i can't keep my mind from running off to save my life. it's honestly pretty funny. but just the act of doing it makes a difference. and yeah, sitting there until your timer goes off. you may only reach awareness once or twice - or not at all! - but the fact that you're there for that time gives you the opportunity to for it to happen.

i will say that so many of the experiences i've had during meditation are .. not what i expected at all from reading about it? idk it's also really hard to write about it.

I think that's what I need to do. Just have faith in the process and put in the time.

That's the purpose of that meditation right? To notice that you have a maniac between your ears that will rarely, if ever, be still. That's the insight into the nature of mind. A thought is a little more than nothing and yet god do we ascribe meaning to to it.

Bear with me, this is probably bollocks but I was thinking about maps' point about opening up to 'god' and letting the universe flow through you. I got to thinking about christ on the cross, calling out to his father. There is a reading of that in which God's response is 'nothing is asked of you, son'.

Back to profundity, that strikes me as a good framing of insight meditation and the doctrine of no-self. Not only is there no self underlying our agitations and ruminatioms, the agonies of selfhood, there is no being in the universe with a self and therefore no Other to make demands of us to be anything at all. That's freedom and it's fucking exhilarating/terrifying.

That's not to police your language or deny your experience map - just wondering out loud really.

xxp just show up for yourself. i've had so many times when i'm not feeling it at all. during those times i've thought of it like mental hygiene - paying attention to my thoughts for 20 minutes. getting to know yourself from moment to moment, even when that's the last thing you feel like doing.

oh yeah that's the stuff. definitely exhilarating. i don't know if i've felt terrified. overwhelmed maybe to the point of tears. it's very beautiful. there's a quietness and a stillness to it. the thread of the present moment. it leads to great love, great capacity for love.

the christ thing where it gets to the resurrection and the trinity and stuff... that stuff still kind of loses me sometimes. but there are powerful things there. i'm just not always sure it's where i want to go. i like to keep things as simple as i can.

but i think what you said about it is beautiful and interesting.

xxp just show up for yourself. i've had so many times when i'm not feeling it at all. during those times i've thought of it like mental hygiene - paying attention to my thoughts for 20 minutes. getting to know yourself from moment to moment, even when that's the last thing you feel like doing.

I think that's the key to it and the point of cultivation of metta. And it speaks to Unperson's point too and it's where Buddhism and Nihilism could be said to intersect I think. That at the moment of the realisation of nothingness, ethics is born.

Can you elaborate on that last bit? I like the sound of it a lot but can't say I really get it.

Screw this, I’m off to meditate.

i do feel like at a certain point in life you gotta have some discipline to progress. just to turn it into a habit. lots of ways you can think about it, probably more important to be gentle with ourselves, gentle but persistent. little structures so we can process the noise.

xp have fun, i just did a little while ago, it was a super good one. i'm kind of on edge today having called in sick as a birthday present to myself and not being used to being not-at-work on monday (but thoroughly enjoying sitting on my couch in shorts). all this talk and everything you've all shared though made it really deep, really intentional. especially that cynthia bourgeault vid that i hadn't seen before - imagining my mind as a drop of mercury sort of quivering in the breeze of being lol.

one thing i liked about that video is she has this expression when she smiles almost of a devil taking great pleasure in life. that's been an important part of my meditation experience, that it liberates pleasure in all sorts of ways - it shows you that pleasure is part of the tapestry, and that greater pleasure is found in seeing the tapestry or noticing it. there is an ecstatic element to it. a goofy, wicked ecstasy. it illuminates all of those sides of you and brings them to the surface. they feel more accessible in your day to day. not always unfortunately - sometimes the weight of the grind just cancels everything for me and i'm barely getting through it - but just the fact that it's there at all. that it shows up every few days and takes over. ugh i feel like i'm about to yell praise jesus or something. but i'll never do that bullshit :)

The Bourgeault clip is amazing: her stillness, the smile and the hair. And that Rumi quote is perfect.

Can you elaborate on that last bit? I like the sound of it a lot but can't say I really get it.

It's something the existentialists glommed onto as well: once you acknowledge that you are alone in the universe, you are free to live precisely how you see fit. In a Buddhist sense, you are reincarnated every second with the freedom to live ethically in the full knowledge of the truth of existence. (That truth being that every other bugger is suffering, however unconsciously, so let's make a world that acknowledges that fact.)

i kind of tend to avoid or get turned off by "traditions" or instituted religions, even small relatively democratic groups of people, and i now believe that you can start a "true" and transformative spiritual journey on your own, with occasional dips into sources that "find you" more than you finding them. so... i guess this is all to say that if the "body" of buddhist discourse or the search for a group of people that you like feels daunting, that isn't the only way forward. in fact i think i believe, and this is maybe more personal, that a lot of that stuff can "get in the way" of a richer relationship with god

100% agree with this. When you’re starting out, it’s hard not to assume that everyone who’s written a book is an authority. There’s a lot of dogma and I went from that to “everyone who has written a book is at best throttling my bandwidth, or potentially a charlatan” very quickly. And i still believe that’s the healthier of the two extremes. how to stay open to the ideas of others and use them to make my connection to the source more personal and emotional is something i still struggle with

Like a lot of pseudo enlightened Americans, I’m drawn to buddhism but actually engaging with the nuts and bolts of it feels… distant? Probably because I’m have affection for these practices built on pop culture nonsense that doesn’t really get at the meat of things.

I don’t have a clue about Buddhism and i’m not drawn to it particularly, and my interest in Daoism is at least somewhat academic (as a consequence of what i said above) but i definitely have trouble with the presentation of Daoism as a healing device or self-help technique and i think it’s extractive

Hearing all of the sounds around me and trying to expand that into listening to the world and becoming a sensory organ for something bigger. Telling myself that what the world has to say is important and I should give it as much of my attention as possible.

I agree.
And it’s so painful!!
Again, this is obviously not from a Buddhist perspective, probably more of an animist perspective. But rn this is not something that makes me feel better for being less isolated, it fills me with sadness and fear and dread. I mean heightened sensitivity to all the beauty & to the dystopian nightmare seem to go hand in hand.

Ok, I’m going to try an introductory workshop at the Zen Centre here and also try a drop-in class or two at the Kadampa centre, to see if either feel right. But also empathizing with the original post: overwhelmed by all the sub-lineages to choose from and afraid I’ll end up with the Evil one. Well, not evil, but ones that might turn me off. And there’s so many variables you can’t control for, like what if it’s the right tradition but wrong teacher or environment?

I suppose that, without having actually tried it, I’m most drawn to Zen because it’s the only tradition I’m at all familiar with. Or really, because ideas from Zen that have filtered into western academic ideas have appealed to me. I guess I’ll just have to try it.

I studied with one of the Great American Daoist Masters (TM), a typically theatrical and charismatic guy. But considered the oddest of GADM's for his contrarian nature and prob also being a Jewish guy from Brooklyn. Now, that I was drawn to. I was, and am, very angry. As well as his biography and his credentials (standard practice!!), he spun a lot of good yarns about the historical context of ancient Chinese texts and practices. That had some basis in truth, but didn’t check out. My *real* education, that provided the source material I have worked with, was thoroughly and aggressively fact-checking him (an ongoing project more than a decade on that compelled me to study Old Chinese and eventually landed my dropout ass in a peer review seminar on early China research). Nevertheless, as a way of delegitimizing the popular traditions that grew out of the foundations of Daoism in both China and the West, his stories were very effective. I found the right teacher. In the end it was okay that he was full of shit.

The reason I’m so resentful of the western “spiritual quest culture” is not because it’s too light, or too pop, or too inauthentic. IMO that’s not important- The attitude of Daoism from its earliest foundations has always been extremely eclectic, whatever works.

It’s because what I see most often is just a Protestant work ethic in a different Winamp skin: Suffering is virtue, pleasure is sin, there is nothing deny yourself, negate yourself, erase yourself (balancing fucking everything until you've completely flattened out your Myers-Briggsian personality curve). The only thing you can do that will result in genuine personal development is to struggle. RUN like hell from these people imo. You don’t need to fix yourself, and fucking “spirituality” shouldn’t be punitive.

The reason I mostly stick to academic studies of foundational texts is I think they are much less prone to this kind of spin nowadays, even though this tradition of scholarship began with Christian missionaries. And probably Needham (a science historian) is the one who first had the epiphany that Daoism could be 'the antidote to modernity'

There has been a dialog between Buddhism and Daoism for 1500-ish years, particularly the tradition of monastic Daoism in China (that is very rigorous! and that does have traditions of punishment!), it isn't strictly and Xtian thing but like I said Daoism is extremely eclectic and it's not in the foundations.

I'm auditing a class on Buddhism and Psychology, and during the lectures it's like this is it. I'm getting used to meditating regularly, too. But from my recent experiences at 1) a workshop at a Zen Centre and 2) A class a Tibetan Buddhist centre, my feeling there was decidedly this ain't it. Not surprising, given my ingrained resistance to any kind of conventional religious service / liturgy, and my preference for classroom learning. I wonder if I'm better off finding a buddhist-sympathetic meditation group? I dunno, where else does one learn to integrate buddhist ideas into life while also connecting with others doing the same?

tough questions. i just have to say i'm glad you've been sharing your experiences here. do you think that the class - the this is it feeling is there after all - might lead to other connections? say through the professor or through other students.

Yeah there's a huge range. Hard to know where to point you but what I've done is find famous teachers I'm into via books, videos etc and then found locals who are practicing within that tradition (where "tradition" might be something very recent.)

There's also just a huge range within any given family of traditions, eg just because on Zen center didn't work for you doesn't mean another might not (although they do tend to be more formal.)

A lot of Westerners who are looking for Buddhism with fewer trappings of religions end up in basically Theravadan groups - I'm thinking Gaia House in the UK, IMS / IMC / Spirit Rock in the US.

Ordinary Mind “school,” the late Charlotte Joko Beck and her student Barry Magid have books I have found appealing to the non-religious.

do you think that the class - the this is it feeling is there after all - might lead to other connections? say through the professor...

Yes! I'm planning to talk to the professor, who has already noted a meditation group at the university I'll probably check out (it might be a primarily undergrad thing, I just hope I'm not the random old guy that's also not a student) and a research group for people who study "contemplative science", which might be a bit too academic and scientific. IF I end up going back to school for psychotherapy, the stakes would be different (as in, far more approachable), but right now I can only speculate about that.

that's cool, sounds promising :)

I've found I'm still very much in that intellectual 'this is it' state. One way I've found of thinking about it, is to acknowledge that in Buddhist teaching, the mind is a sense in and of itself; when I'm reading and intellectualising the Dharma, I'm feeding that mind sense. What I've found is that sticking around for the more ritualised stuff - however resistant to it I am - unlocks something *else*, something else I don't really understand, or am slowly coming to assimilate into my practice. Pujas a strong and peculiar affective response from me.

I can see why Zen might be a bit austere on this front. I'm sure you've mentioned this, but are other centres available to you from other denominations?

What I've found is that sticking around for the more ritualised stuff - however resistant to it I am - unlocks something *else*, something else I don't really understand, or am slowly coming to assimilate into my practice. Pujas a strong and peculiar affective response from me.

for sure! i pretty much don't read anything or listen to any speakers about it. i sort of trust that when my interest goes there from time to time i'm looking for something to "try" - like a new cue or something. the experience of meditation itself has been so wide open that it has room for all of it. lately i've been focusing on silence - the sound of silence - "hearing" silence with my being. it's been leading to some really rich experiences that are somehow so effortless. i get this immediate sense of presence. forgive me here because i started with a meditation practice that comes out of christianity, so i use the word "god" as shorthand and it's generally a "he." so i sit and start, turn the volume of my mind down, and start feeling silence through breath. and i feel .. it kind of feels like northern lights in my soul. and i say "there he is". and i try to stay there, i want to stay there, it's like dipping in a hot bath you don't really want to get out of. but sometimes you kind of step out for a moment. and sort of half-thoughts might come out of the "northern lights" feeling that are like... knots unraveling. like there's an actual healing effect of doing it. and i kind of marvel at that but then i just sort of turn my mind back down and go in again.

You clearly have a strong imaginative response to (within?) meditation map, and I'm kind of jealous of it tbh! I've read and heard about different dhyana states in meditation, and aside from some very low-level states of bliss, I've mostly found meditation to be quite mundane. Not saying I don't crave these states, or wouldn't welcome them, but for some reason - neurological, perhaps, temperemental - things remain pretty level. I suppose I would say that in the way I'm being taught, dhyana states are seen as almost beside the point, or simply quirks of the mind-sense. I dunno: they sound pretty great to me.

It's during puja and chanting that I have the most profound reactions. I'm quite often moved to tears, and I don't really know what's going on with it.

Re-reading that, I hope it doesn't sound dismissive of your experience!

I remember hearing a Zen student talking about how, a few years into their practice, they started having these incredible dreams - shit like galaxies colliding, vast operatic space dramas. They interpreted these dreams as the breakdown of the ego, or the realisation of forces shifting within themselves.

They spoke to their teacher, who nodded and said, yep, maybe, but you're still focusing on the 'you' having these experiences. Back to the mat.

I mean, I get it but that is a Zen bastard in full effect hahaha.

not dismissive at all, no! honestly i find "back to the mat" really refreshing. i have so many sits that are .. unremarkable really. it makes the ones that have strong sensation stick out i guess.

It's during puja and chanting that I have the most profound reactions. I'm quite often moved to tears, and I don't really know what's going on with it.

i'm assuming this is a little different than meditation and involves some action or thought but i want to say that it sounds like some of the emotions i'll feel too and that it must not be that different from meditation as a practice and that .. it sounds like you are experiencing a strong sensation if you're moved to tears after all :)

Yeah, puja is a Buddhist ceremony. The first time I ever went to my local Buddhist centre, there was a period of meditation and then a puja. A few members said 'are you sure you want to stay for this?' I was confused but the question 100% meant I did want to stay just to see haha.

I'm so anti any kind of religious iconography and ceremony that I wasn't prepared for my reponse to it. I'm still not, really. It's the one thing I'm not 'out' about to my friends, for fear of sounding like a nutcase. Hangs up, much?

But yeah. It can be anything up to an hour long, involves lots of chanting and call and response and culminates in kneeling before the shrine and presenting an offering (usually a lit candle or some incense) and you're totally right in that it's another way of inducing certain states accessible in meditation. For whatever reason, I seem to be able to bypass the ego far more easily during puja, and can access the deep workings more profoundly.

I try not to question it too much, basically. I decided pretty early on to trust that it was doing some serious work to/for me.

I’ve never been comfortable chanting, whether at protests, religious services, or concerts. I can’t get past the feeling I’m just reciting a script, one I never signed off on, which can feel inauthentic and futile. I’m also uncomfortable raising my voice in public, prob because I’m shy about drawing attention to myself. To be sure, I realize chanting isn’t about actually manifesting ideas so much as collectively aligning with a value to live by while losing your individual voice in the collective. Still, it’s an obstacle, and it’s hard to know whether that falls under “doing this feels inauthentic in a way that undermines my spiritual growth”, vs “overcoming my internal resistance is where growth happens.” I guess the thing to do is just try it?

Meanwhile, I like meditation because nothing has to happen. Or rather, whatever happens is what happens. It took a long time to realize meditation isn’t about achieving a “natural high” or some mild approximation of psychedelic experience. I think part of me still aims for profound feelings and cool visuals, but am ok with 20 minutes of nothing special and no expectations.

I recognise all of that, Ed, and totally agree with you about chanting and ritual. I'm genuinely happy that I stumbled into that first session; otherwise, I don't think I would have done it voluntarily for precisely the reasons you outline. My response was so interesting to me, that I decided to work *with* the feelings instead of against them.

nb, I don't want to present this as a Damascene moment; this has taken a couple of years to work out.

Chinaski what you're saying resonates for me. I've only dipped a toe into devotional practices but they seem like a really direct route for bypassing an egocentric approach and surrendering. One of those things I keep telling myself "oh I should do more of that", along with metta.

xpost: To be sure, what you’re describing is… not my exact goal but a kind of experience I’m aiming for (I was just thinking about how, once going to dance parties and music events stopped being fun, it left me without that kind of experience of losing yourself in a crowd through a collective, embodied, sensory experience). But it’s confusing, trying to be become something different while being true to myself, all while letting go of the whole idea of what my self is or is supposed to be.
A more mundane example is that I might be reading something (eg the book by tara brach I’m working through) and think “I like the idea, but this sounds too corny for me.” I know my cynicism is something I want to let go of, if only to let myself feel more, but also know that if something strikes me as a sentimental platitude, it might do more to alienate me. Not really going anywhere with this other than to say, this may be an interesting process ahead.

just echoing that what you described chinaski sounds really cool. i think it's lovely that you leaned into it.

i think one of the reasons i'm hesitant to seek out more ummm "content" for lack of a better word, around my practice, is that i have this sensation sometimes when i'm opening up to someone else's scripture, in a sense, that like i'm worried that i'll be let down, that too much of their human-ness will be in it - does that make sense? but on the other hand i've really been wowed by a couple of people in a couple of moments in the 'centering prayer' realm. and like i've been moved by certain people and certain things, certain words, in other places - pema chodron, hafiz. they're like parallel pings from across a sound? reassurances maybe. adding a little bit of reference and shape. but i think i'm fine with discovering one only occasionally. one of the things out of centering prayer that has stuck with me i got from thomas keating i think (a lovely, jolly man) - that prayer/meditation is about developing a personal and highly intimate relationship with god. so "going to the mat" for me is going to be with a friend. who loves me with an unending depth, one that encompasses all of me and all of creation. one that never, ever asks anything of me, one that if i listen to, i also listen to my true self.

one of the developments out of meditation for me has been realizing that "love" is not just a feeling of good will, though i think that's an effect of it, but that it arises out of being in the present. it's sort of like the ultimate clarity. it's seeing but also understanding the mystery of seeing. it's understanding that everything is permitted and always related back to god, even if the route is not always clear.

where i struggle most when it comes to keeping a connection to silence is during the work week lol. i have so much difficulty with not feeling trapped and suffocated by a job where i'm barely making enough to scrape by and so much of the work itself is so arbitrary and meaningless. i think i've made huge strides in my ability to "keep in touch with silence" so to speak, to walk upright, to be present in myself and my surroundings, to remember what i'm learning in meditation - and i think that in turn has made it so that i'm responding to people differently, with more of a measured approach in the case of people i don't trust, or with more of a free feeling, more of an authentic spontaneous happiness, with people i am close to.

today i had a quarterly performance review with my manager, which is always a painful meeting. the feeling is maybe evoked by thinking of a cat being forced to take a bath. my manager is a nightmare to work under. she can't plan anything. she's very self-involved and reactive and afraid. she seems to do everything for made-up reasons. i can see she deals with pain through denial, a very ingrained head-in-the-sand approach, and that particular combination has been like nails on a chalkboard for me. i'm less easily sent into an internal rage because of it, but there's no denying that it ripples out and affects the morale of everyone who works with her and everyone in the organization. the heaviness of weekly exposure feels like a lead blanket on my soul. i've wanted so badly to change my job. i've flailed at two possible career changes in the past 5 years. i've tried multiple times to move laterally. but nothing ever pans out. i remain in what has felt like an impossible situation. is the point for me to stay and change internally until the impossible becomes possible? maybe until i can find more acceptance? clearly, more acceptance equals less unhappiness, and in that i've been successful. but i still have a feeling that this is not the best place for me. so without a clear course of action i tend to my garden and wait.

what meditation has pointed me towards, the craving that it has brought to me, is to spend more time outside. not outside like driving around the city, outside like on a trail in the desert. where nature takes over the threshold of the environment from the influence of humans. although meditation has definitely allowed me to find a lot more room for the behaviors of others - i can't remember the last time i've had road rage, for example - i still find that being in a sea of humans going to work and hustling and relishing the material and witnessing the consequences of that - more and more people trapped in a liminal hell on the street - is not nourishing to me. what is? being on land. being in a larger ecosystem. finding a relationship with it.

I’m soto zen mostly. for me, it says what it means to do quite easily, which is nice. I find this type of practice good for trying to wipe everything else away as i try to concentrate on the 8 fold path in regular life. And the 4 noble truths. I’ve read rather a lot about many other ways of viewing buddhism, and chan and zen. i did a lot of reading from many historical writings from zen writings, and i decided i was overfilling my head with guidance and finer points. I really needed to sit more, and focus on that. still, i wanted to know more about the core scripture. I looked at tipitaka stuff, but the best form for me i found was to look at pali scripture through theravada monk writer bhikku bodhi. His book _In the Buddha’s Words_, with another book _The Noble Eightfold Path_ as a clarifier, these really set me straight as an approach to what right view and right understanding were intending to get me to do. my takeaway was/is that there’s not really not so much a core or essence out of that path— it is all simultaneous and interrelated. still that dip into that theravada presentation of scripture was refreshing and useful. i find theravada’s apparent focus on arahants/arhats not to be the aspect of practice i choose. i find the mahayana bodhisattva vision to be a more true interpretation and outcome for the path. the bodhisattva mission seems less striving, and more in keeping with my understanding of how to achieve freedom here and ultimately.
after first reading the mentioned _The Noble Eightfold Path_ i then found _In the Buddha’s Words_ as a no-credit Audible book. it is a funny listen because it so repetitive, but things from oral tradition had to be. my go-to readings for zen guidance are mostly the usual dogen stuff.
but for real progress i think i just need to sit a lot more. and i need a teacher. lately i have been suffering from too much distraction— even in sitting.

i was thinking it seems like Buddhism is cognitive psychology way before the west developed it, in practice, as a daily therapy. I am not Buddhist but have been using the Plum Village app a lot - its a good experience

Some great recent posts.

Map, I totally recognise that fear (if that's the right word) of approaching scripture and doctrine. I always have in the back of my mind that the Buddha's whole approach was 'don't take my word for it - try this shit out for yourself' (or words to that effect, and without the em dash).

As for the work thing, god, I hear you and have nothing really useful to say. I did hear about the concept of the 'tantric guru' recently, which was essentially, your practice is wherever you need it most. Your boss certainly seems to demand the best of your practice, so you could see it as a chance to try some new approaches out. There's that thing where in meditation you should try (always with the fucking *try* these Buddhists) to welcome difficult states and emotions with curiosity and compassion. Obviously easy for me to say!

I'm really trying to meditate first thing in the morning. I'm generally pretty bad in the mornings - sullen, grumpy, often very weighed down. It can take me a couple of hours to shake that mood off. It struck me recently (which is very obvious, really) that *that's* the version of myself I need to sit with and understand. There's a Larkin poem where he talks about trying to 'blank out whatever's doing the damage': if this is where I feel the damage most keenly, then I guess I should sit with it, try to understand it. Not to blank it out, ofc, but to know it better. Survive it.

kinda went looking at other threads about spirituality / meditation, but i think this one fits me best right now.

i'm still just chugging along with my practice and it just keeps offering more and more. i find myself able to really go deeper into all kinds of moments. and, crucially, albeit slowly, i'm starting to be, more often, outside of the small shell i've habitually retreated into whenever i'm feeling overwhelmed. i feel relaxed more often. i'm able to relax with more decisiveness.

i'm also starting to notice that a lot of barriers i have up when it comes to being around other people are dissolving. there is still a lot there but i notice little pieces floating away. there was a moment i had yesterday in the car when the thought occurred to me "we are all god's children." i used to hate that phrase. it was used as a sunday school cudgel in my experience. super corny. but it just struck me like lightning the other day. realizing that i believe it's true. in the way that the infinite variety and aliveness of people, really the fact that they are, is always an extension of god. everyone is an extension of god. and was and will be. their suffering and their joy. now, i'm noticing just how much i don't act like this is true sometimes, and i can even shake off the habit of judging people by coming back to the present. the feeling of freedom in believing it hit like... a bubble popping, maybe.