Butterfly on a Heap of Trash
Om mane padme hum
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Limits and Creativity
For over a week, the WordPress app on my phone has not worked. First it would not let me upload photos. After trying uninstall/reinstall, it would no longer recognize my username/password combination. I know I have that right because I can sign in through the browser. It’s a bit awkward to use the browser on the phone as opposed to the phone format friendly app, but sometimes we need to explore alternative methods and be grateful for skills and creativity, and managing to function in a computer world reminds me of this regularly. For example, every time I sign in at work computer, I first have to engage in a counterintuitive activity before I can get to the password screen. But I think about it in terms of yoga: control, i.e., disciplined and educated practice; alternatives, i.e., if something doesn’t work, try something else; and delete, i.e., let go of what does not serve. Only then can I get started.
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A Matter of Semantics–Possibly
This past weekend I went to a group meditation practice with a friend because I was in the mood for companionable silence. I am not formally trained in “mindfulness meditation,” but I attend group practices occasionally and have read a number of books and incorporated aspects of the practice into my own over the years, so I expected to be comfortable attending.
Because I was new to the group, the leader asked me questions about what I experienced after most of the segments of the practice.
After the “meditation” segment, the leader asked me whether I’d had any thoughts. Of course I had thoughts. If not, as I think of thought, I would be brain dead.
For me the question is not whether I had thoughts (I include meditative awareness as thought), but whether I got stuck in dwelling on something from the past or some kind of planning or problem-solving. My training would have me let go of attention on such thoughts to refocus on the chosen focus for my meditation, i.e., the breath or a mantra, but for me, that is not the absence of thought.
Some of the quibble might be semantics. Part may be an underpinning philosophy to a practice that categorizes an ideal of pure awareness/consciousness as something higher or better than human thought.
If you practice or teach meditation, feel free to weigh in.
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