Hi DhOers,
So, it's just about a year since starting down the DhO road. This forum's members have helped me shift from a place where some deep sadness and impotency about existing in the world/life were welling up to a point of giving up. It was make-the-call-or-get-out-of-the-booth* mind.
I was raised a monotheist (with a cheery and sensible Jain friend from earliest years who passed me Hindu comic books and the Bhagavagita). Practiced zen meditation from mid-teens to mid-thirties. Discovered tibetan buddhist philosophy at a week-long class with Tenzin Gyatso in 2008. Actualism since earlier this year. I have never wanted a single answer, a pill, so to speak. Great tools have come from all of those sources, for my use.
I have no idea what this stage is called, if anything, but am engaged. I experience no need to embrace buddhism, deism or actualism or any exclusive argument of any kind (excluding forming plastic solutions that often need to be devised in consideration of improving a process or reducing a harm). There's no search, no desire for another state, no desire for any extirpation. There is practical aversion to things like disease and putridity, but I don't encounter those too much at the present and when I do there are best efforts to deal with them.
(Hmm, I continue to have desire to see composting code developed to permit the built-in decay of online posting; everything decays/changes. An algorithm for such code could approximate nature. Posts would decay over time/views. Anyone?)
A fine flow of feelings and tears from me joined a friend's flow of feelings and tears tonight as we said goodbye to kindly family member just deceased. The feelings left no headache, no heartache, no woe, no prejudice, no question. They were just par for the moment. Friend is gone, tears for a lovely friend. Not hooked.
I sat in formal meditation this morning just for kicks: it was absorptive, still, quiet. I would almost say fun, but it was quiet and still, so 'fun' is a bit too rowdy.
Last night, falling asleep to the crickets and the breeze, only these hearing objects, the change in temperature, my breathe and the hearing-feeling sensations themselves occupied my head for a long time. There was awareness of how the mind was calm, silent and head structure from the nose up was gone and the night itself was moving through and through: open sky, temperature falling, rustling branches, crickets. There was no feeling of remove (i.e., no dispassion) nor clinging, but soft awareness that there was no head to feel pressures, no mind or structure to block the fluidity with what was happening, like the upper head contents were replaced with the view of the sky and events of that moment.
This continues, but can be snagged and funny. (I.e., it was not the toilet overflowing at 5pm, it was the partner interrupting several times (bad cell phone connection) to assert/query, "Do you understand how it works. do you understand how it works?". Yes. Hello? Yes. Please shut up. Yes, Hello, yes I understand the float in the toilet. Hello? Snagged, funny.
I have been getting involved in what could be said to be painful issues recently - harmful processes that cease/reduce in the presence of sensible attention over time - or are compelling processes of which to be apart, and I experience pangs for the persons subject to such harmful processes, but these pangs do not dissuade a willingness to be involved, nor divert from dwelling in other pleasant ongoings.
With so many ways to change at any moment, looking back on the start last summer it is a fact that I would not be here in this comfortable place without you in this forum.
If this is a stage and you think there is something to consider at this point, you are welcome to share it. This open-sourcing has been useful so far. Two days ago, I experienced a short window of what I think is meant by cycling. So, I'll let you know if this post is ultimately a part of a cycle.
thank you.
____
* that's telephone booth for the young folk.
