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Practice Logs

RE: New practice.

RE: New practice.
Answer
9/22/14 3:21 PM as a reply to ftw.
ftw

RE: New practice.
Answer
9/22/14 3:46 PM as a reply to stuart chas law.
ftw  ............... thank you for coming at me Man!  I feel the heat of the fire of your intention building and i'm using your positivity to start with myself, once more.  To be aiming at what level of practice you are, considering how much responcability you have with a job and child.  Wow!   I feel so privilaged to have been able to live so long as to have been able to get to the point that i can now place a large part of my life in front of this task!  Monkey Mind still in charge but can feel the desire to build a practice once again .... Yes

RE: New practice.
Answer
9/29/14 5:51 AM as a reply to stuart chas law.
Well!  Here i am again..... Just on four months since i "Rolled up the mat and walked away".  It never occured to me that i would be able to do that, but i did.  It's the perennial problem ... Better not start, once started, better finish!  I know the only way out of this situation is to practice or continue to practice.  It was really hard!  I'd sit and get perhapes two, three minutes into it and up would come the revoltion, aversion, inability to continue sitting.  Next thing you know i'm walking away from the cushion, dejected and pissed off that Mara and Co had had yet another win.  It was like i could feel Mara, coming down through the centurys just to fuck me over.  Sooo tired, sooo pissed off.  I had readied myself so well! Done so much study, hours and hours preparing my spiritual armour.  All to no avail.

But thats ok..... all grist for the mill mmm!

The one thing that kept my head above water was that dispite my comlete aversion to all things meditational, i had to check in with you guys, one, sometimes two, three times per day.  Hoping, beyond hope that someone, anyone, might show me "the way" wave the wand, gimme the magic pill!!!! knowing in my heart that this was not going to happen but holding fast to this one forlorn hope.  

Visiting this place so often and seeing others with so much less cushion time just cruising right on by served to just piss me off all the more.  But hey .... thats my burden ... envy.

I had been working towards rejoining you wonderful practitioners ... wondering where i might get the boost to get me restarted when out of the blue ftw pulled up my practice log thread and asked me what was going on (GOD BLESS THIS VESSEL AND ALL WHO SAIL ON HER!!!!!!) and there it was, the opportunity, the invitation to rejoin.   So today i decided to give it another good go and get back into the harness.

I'm not all that keen on walking meditation (my problem, i've purhapes not put in enough effort) so i decided that i would alternate between formal seated meditation and reading of the Dharma.  One hour cushion, one hour Dharma, one hour cushion, one hour Dharma. And thats the way it's happened....  Forteen hours of it today.  Seven cushion, seven Dharma.

I am so very pleased that the sittings have been really good.  Decided that i am going back to Samatha practice, being that i came to Buddhism via the Mahayana school and Calm Abiding or Samatha has been my first pratice and love.  Seven hours of Samatha on the breath and only about three discursive thought interuptions per hour and those were very minor, not really picking up on any internal converstions.  No waiting for meditation bells, very happy to just "be" meditating.

So...... once more into the breach Dear Friends and special thanks to ftw, good onya Dude.

RE: New practice.
Answer
9/29/14 7:28 AM as a reply to stuart chas law.
Good to hear you're on that pillow again. I've also done some sitting.
I was on a kind of mini weekend retreat that showed me a lot. Maybe I0-12 hours of cushion time. Not much but it was a first one and I didn't have all the time for myself. I've got some clarifications though. Intelectually and experientaly.
Firstly I believe it's finally clear to me what's the difference between samatha and vipassana. For example observing the object conceptually in whole vs observing all of it's characteristics in real time.
I'm glad I went to a local Theravada Buddhist seminar on a Saturday. It was the first time I practiced walking meditation. Next day, I did 30 minutes of walking meditation and it was enough for me to grasp - on intuitive level though - how important it is to be mindfull all the time. ALL THE F. TIME! And how blody hard it is. This was a second clarification I got over weekend, so I guess it was worth it. I don't know why I haven't tried walking meditation before. It was an eye opener. I'm finally getting this mindfulness thing. I hope so emoticon  Talks that I watch on youtube and books that I reread made much more sense! If I'm getting it, it means I need to be mindfull all the time either doing samatha or vipassana meditation. Samatha practice should increase the frequency of being mindfull by increasing shear concentration power and if one can be more mindfull one can be better at either samatha or vipassana practice... I hope I got that right.

I'm going to keep going with "X marking strategy/day" (thanks Robert Mclune wherever you are) and see where I land. I've just printed a calendar and I'm x marking the days. I aim for increasing my concentration power and tranquility first since I really need it. I will do walking meditation in between sits. It helps me relieve but/neck/shoulder/back pain from hour+ sittings. I need to find that perfect position with my zafu ;-). Experimenting with ear plugs too. Don't know what to think of them yet. I hear myself breathing more when using them, so I don't know wether it helps more...

Been thinking of you too in my meditations! I labeled/noted you, hahaha and sent some metta. 

With metta,
ftw

Edit:
PS: Forgot to ask. Still looking for that teacher? IIRC, you're from Australia. I believe you have some good "Thai forest tradition" monks down under. Maybe look there?
http://forestsangha.org/monasteries/

RE: New practice.
Answer
10/6/14 3:35 PM as a reply to ftw.
Please excuse my late and brief reply.  

Practice did a "dead cat bounce" 
Every thing came to a standstill.  Got another 4 hour day and  another 7 hour day in... then crash and burn.

Local contitions, local influences outside of practice, terminating practice.  

ftw.... Send more metta   Want soonest return to cushion.  Allowed someone to get too close in the real world.  Now paying for bad decision.  I am a fool!  In refuge, i throw myself at the Triple Gem, The Buddha.  Dharma and Sangha.  Would like to see the path a little clearer.

ftw  .....May have a line on Theavardin physical Sangha.  Dhammagiri Forest Hermitage, about 6/700klms from where i live.  Looks like they take in lay meditators. 

Be Positive.