Monday, December 30, 2013

Regarding a place to meditate

1.The place should be clean and quiet.
2. Its temperature should be comfortable during all seasons.
3. It should be well ventilated.
4. The place should be neither too dark nor too light.
5. It should not offer any any view that might be distracting.
7. Beginners in meditation should avoid association with either well-known or           argumentative people.
8. Beginners should avoid those who are competitive.
9. Beginners should avoid all places and situations such as fire , flood, and the haunts of criminals.
10. Beginners should not meditate by the sea or in the vicinity of popular resorts.

-Buddhism and Zen, Nyogen Senzaki, Ruth Strout McCandless

Please add any suggestions you think may be appropriate.

47 comments:

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Maybe go over the The Macho Response and ask Crack for meditation and yoga advice?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

...ask Crack for meditation and yoga advice

Ha-ha.

The Dude said...

Don't meditate while underwater.

Do not meditate while running power tools.

Skydiving and meditation do not mix.

Avoid ingesting huge amounts of methamphetamine prior to meditating.

That is all.

AllenS said...

You need plenty of containers of hand sanitizer. Also, a lot of rolls of toilet paper. Not in that order, obviously.

AllenS said...

A necklace of garlic. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean someone doesn't want to suck your blood.

ricpic said...

Gay schlafen, kinder.

deborah said...

lol Is there anything you guys don't know?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Or...you could just take an nice long comfy nap under a down comforter with the cats laying on your feet.

:-D

Unknown said...

I'm with DBQ on this one. easy peasy.

YoungHegelian said...

Don't meditate in the same room with chicks who wear those LuluLemon yoga pants. You know, the transparent ones.

Just don't. Okay?

Unknown said...

A quiet room in your dwelling or a portion of a room that you carve out and make comfortable. That place could be named: "This is the special quiet place where Deborah Meditates." Look within.

deborah said...

Not remotely in my thoughts, YH :)

Nothing better than a comfy cozy nap with pets, but the meditation thing is to seek the realization that your thoughts are not YOU. Never got around to doing it correctly, but it's time to grow up. I nominate the Lemmings to be my sensei :)

We need only look at Allen's first answer to see that it contains the wisdom of the ages.

The Dude said...

I first meditated at a commune outside of Baltimore back in the '60s.

Did some breathing exercises with Swami Satchidananda in August '69.

Then, for a long time, nothing.

In the late '90s I went to meditation classes with a good looking redhead. It's always about a redhead, am I right?

Well, it didn't take, as I tended to fall asleep. Naps good, meditation so boring it makes one desire the sweet, sweet peace of slumber.

Not sure if there is much of a difference.

Avoid hot redheads if you want to meditate correctly.

deborah said...

This just in: redhead attracted to redhead. Hmmmm.

deborah said...

It's something that takes a lot of concentration, at first. Once you get over the hump of the first task, and it becomes automatic, I think things progress more smoothly.

deborah said...

What is hard is giving up desires. That is, things you've set your heart on.

deborah said...

April, I like that idea.

Michael Haz said...

Comfy leather chair. 2AM, not in bed because I can't sleep. No lights, no music, no noise. Perfect time to meditate.

Or outside without clothes on a sunny afternoon. Don't let the comments from others in the picnic area cause you to Lise focus.

Michael Haz said...

lose, not Lise.

deborah said...

:) Indeed. That would only increase your powers of concentration.

sakredkow said...
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deborah said...

Some forms of prayer are meditation, and if more people on the right than on the left are religious...

sakredkow said...
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deborah said...

Catholics are big on meditation, esp priests, monks, nuns, the old desert fathers. Praying the Rosary is meditation, because as you repeat the prayers, your mind is freed up to dwell upon the Mysteries, such as the Resurrection, Anunciation, etc, depending on the season of the year.

There's a good Protestant book I started once that talks of meditation in one of the early chapters...Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster. Quite well done.

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Michael Haz said...

Meditation may be an anti- inflammatory according to researchers.

deborah said...

What do you base that on, phx?

Michael, that's fascinating...I'll read it more closely tomorrow.

'Night all.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Some forms of prayer are meditation

Exactly. As Deborah said. Saying the Rosary is meditation. Repetition of the prayers while feeling the beads of the Rosary or Om Mani Padme Hum to infinity and beyond. Both methods of de-focusing and re-focusing your mind both at the same time.

And a good nap! cocooned in crisp sheets, soft pillows and a fuzzy blanket. Focus your dreams while napping. There is great Zen in a great nap.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Not to be flippant, as in my last comment. To be serious.

Meditation and mindfulness seems to be something not that difficult or esoteric. I don't get it.

Maybe it is my surroundings? being in the country? I mean. I can sit on my deck in the afternoons and become aware of the silence, and at the same time the enormous variety of sounds from the life around me, if you only listen, birds, frogs, crickets, wind, water in the river and fields below. Sometimes it is cool winds that chafe. Sometimes warm and balmy that caress. Hot sun that scalds. I can look over the valley below and see the trees and wild rice in the fields moving in the wind: dancing, swaying and bending. Faster, slower. Moving from side to side as the wind blows. See each individual leaf moving and the movement of all of them at the same time as a coordinated yet chaotic whole....OK....acid flashback. [not kidding]

In the mornings when I walk out to feed the animals, now, in the 18 degree weather, the crisp sharp air is beautiful. Sometimes painfully, delightfully crisp because I know that a hot cup of coffee is back inside when I'm done. The sky is wonderful and different each morning. The moon is often still showing even while setting and the sun is just peeking up in the East lighting up the sky in gorgeous reds and purples. I can see stars and planets and feel small and expansive all at once.

Is this Zen? Whatever. I love it. Never will I live in a dead overcrowded city again.

AllenS said...

Meditation is over-rated. I look at pictures of Christy Brinkley and meditate. I have impure thoughts.

sakredkow said...
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The Dude said...

I think liberals do well with meditation because the goal is to empty your mind. They start with next to nothing in there, so becoming mindless is but a small step for them.

Next step, worship Obama and any other empty suit they are told to worship. Even a pant suit will do.

AllenS said...

Oops. It's spelled Christie. I must have been in a trance.

The Dude said...

Chris?

deborah said...

DBQ:
"And a good nap! cocooned in crisp sheets, soft pillows and a fuzzy blanket. Focus your dreams while napping. There is great Zen in a great nap."

When hungry eat, when tired sleep :)

"Meditation and mindfulness seems to be something not that difficult or esoteric. I don't get it."

Your 12:51 is beautiful. When many people speak of mindfulness today, they mean in more of a stop-letting-your-thoughts-think-you context. From Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are:

"Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself...By watching your thoughts without being drawn into them, you can learn something profoundly liberating about thinking itself...

Another way to view the process of thinking itself as a waterfall, a continual cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness, we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantage point in a cave or depression in the rock behind a waterfall. We see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.

Practicing in this way our thought patterns change by themselves...

http://books.google.com/books?id=QnYBXlX2bPwC&q=
waterfall#v=snippet&q=waterfall&f=false

Trooper York said...

phx said...
I think it'd be an interesting discussion about relationship between political ideology and meditation/religion/prayer.


That's a great idea phx.

I meditate all the time while I am praying. Sitting in church before Mass is the perfect time to meditate on your failings and sins and try to come up with ways to be a better person. We all fail so much it is important to take stock and try to figure out how you can do better.

Trooper York said...

I think what phx is getting at is that meditation is a "liberal thing." You know a crunchy granola prius driving global warming lifestyle that us rock ribbed racist rasscallly republicans want no part of in the real world.

But I think many religious traditional conservatives meditate all the time. They might not use all the rituals that the libtards do but they meditate just the same.

It is just in church and not at the ashram. Just sayn'

deborah said...

Yes, I figured that was the direction phx was coming from, and it's an understandable misconception.

sakredkow said...
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deborah said...

Yes, I think you mean Eastern mediation for the libs, and Christian for the Westerners. It will depend if you assign Christian prayer as meditation. Yes, I'm being difficult :)

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deborah said...

phx, I don't think you came here to scorn anyone's beliefs. I think you had an assumption that libs do more of the yoga-guru sixties type meditation, and that's correct I think. But now the new thing is mindfulness, as I quoted above, which is encouraged for all people in this stressed out world.

sakredkow said...
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