decided to make this a separate entry as i didn’t want to distract or detract from it.
i find it very interesting how mindfulness and other tenets that rise from buddhism are finding increasing support as being really quite profound methods by which to cultivate not only a good and positive life, but health and healing on all levels, literally.
i will certainly be adding the books and studies referenced in that video to my reading list in the very near future. in the meantime, as usual when i find something that is highly informative and generally insightful, i took some notes along the way.
i’ll not bore you with all the reference notes, but i will post the more philosophical ones. they are ‘jumping off points’ for meditation and general practice here. you may or may not find them at all interesting. as usual, use what you like, ignore what you don’t.
i was intrigued with the chinese calligraphy for mindfulness. the two symbols, ‘presence’ and ‘of/in the heart’ reminded me of something i wrote not too long ago on having the ‘mind at the level of the heart’. but what really intrigued me was that the chinese word for mind and heart are synonymous. i find that telling and comforting at once.
it also occurs to me that many people tell me that i am ‘too this’ or ‘too that’, but i very rarely listen or give it much mind because i know this is who i am and i know all the things that no one outside of me can know about how and why being this way is, very precisely, what i really need to be.
more importantly, who i am in this moment is not who i was or who i will be. even though it might have been and it may yet be. (i’m grinning. either you get that or you don’t and it’s ok either way.) it’s all practice, just like it’s all meditation and it’s all mindfulness. i find as i become more mindful, meditative, etc, all the rest kind of falls away from me.
quite literally, everything is meditation. everything is mindfulness. it’s about being awake for this moment. refusing to sleep through it. refusing to let anything or anyone toss the veil over me. it’s about the awareness of this moment as it is.
what someone else thinks about it is interesting, often insightful (especially as pertains to how or where their perspective differs from my own. all life’s lessons are found in such ways), but frankly (and with as much tact as i can manage, which usually is not much) utterly irrelevant to the process of living, learning, and becoming except as a means of revelation and contemplation.
the last months have been less obvious here insofar as practice goes, but that is hardly a sign of it being less present in my life. in fact, much more indicator of work happening (as opposed to talking about it). the difference between being and doing… heh… which was also covered in that video to some degree.
ultimately, the point of practice is to hone mindfulness; the means by which to become awake, to stop living as if the past remains, or as if the future has arrived, to be awake and aware of now. fully. regardless.
being in the moment is only a platitude if you speak it rather than live it.
an interesting analogy occurred to me while watching that piece. if you’ve ever been in a place where there is snow or ice, one of the first things you learn is what to do if you are driving and you begin to skid. they tell you to turn INTO the skid, rather than trying to turn away from it. if you try to turn away from it, you inevitably skid all the worse. only by turning into it can you really move through it and regain your control and intended direction.
pretty cool, that. turning into struggle, accepting it as it is, embracing that there is learning in all experience and reminding myself of how much i have missed along the way for trying to turn away from any of it. (not that i do it often, mind you… still, a valuable thing to be mindful of).
i thought of some of my friends who have been a bit taken aback with my embrace of buddhism. it occurs to me that they do not really understand that it isn’t about the label. the labels and our orientation to them is what causes struggle and suffering. the labels do not matter. the outcomes, they are what matters. it doesn’t have to be buddhism or christianity or islam or wicca or anything at all or nothing at all. it doesn’t matter what the shelter is called that keeps you from the storm. the important thing is that you are sheltered.
it’s still rolling around in my head, of course. but in good ways. i love how any one meaningful thought these days creates this cascade of thoughts and they’re all helpful and positive and comforting.