Remember, suffering does not exist independently. Nor does vexation. When we turn suffering and vexation into enemies by believing they are concrete and real, by reifying them, we are generating more vexation and suffering. When we realize this and release the entrenched habit of reifying suffering and vexations and reacting with aversion, the causal chain that leads to suffering is broken.
📚 Rebecca Li, Illumination
Silent Illumination is not passive, it is not a blank or dead mind. Remember: it is the method of no-method, not the method of no thoughts, feelings, or activities, nor the method of no discernment. It is about being willing to investigate our lives at an experiential level.
📚 Illumination, Rebecca Li
You might think: ‘I’m bored!’ ‘This is stupid.’ ‘I need to do something else right this minute.’ There may be old habits and old stories that are creating those thoughts and those feelings. What is getting in the way of your being able to experience the present moment? Keep breathing. Keep sitting. This is the practice.
📚 Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Sit
While you are thinking, “I see” or “my vision” or “seeing is mine,” the mere act of seeing is already gone, disappeared. This happens very quickly, in a split second. It is the nature of all conditioned things. They are fleeing any scene you create. … So quickly. Already gone. There is no immovable mover to say “I.” Mere action takes place.
📚 Bhante Gunaratana and Julia Harris, Impermanence in Plain English
My #meditation practice is primarily shikantaza — the Japanese #Zen term which is usually translated as "just sitting."
The characters in the word *shikantaza* mean something like "nothing but doing sitting," with that "za" being the same character which is in "zazen" — sitting meditation — and zafu and zabuton — sitting cushion and sitting futon.
Shikantaza for me is pretty much allowing the present moment to practice itself.
As the mind is less agitated and muddied by our habitual striving—directing the mind here and there—there is illumination of all as it is. With this clarity of a still mind, we can clearly see our interconnectedness and respond appropriately to do what needs to be done to benefit everyone, including ourselves, in accordance with wisdom and compassion.
📚 Rebecca Li, Illumination
#meditation #buddhism #chan #zen
Many of us have to work extra hard to finish the long list of tasks at work and home in order to set aside time to sit down to meditate. By the time you sit down to meditate, you are exhausted. … It is hence quite common that we feel drowsy in meditation. … Meditation is not torture; you are allowed to rest when tired! There is a saying in Chan: “Eat when you are hungry; sleep when you are tired.” … This is wisdom and self-compassion.
📚 Rebecca Li, Illumination
#meditation #buddhism #chan #zen
Think about this: You always have your body with you. This makes it a wonderful meditation tool because, guess what? Your body can only be here in the present moment. … Body and mind are intimately connected. This is why it is precious to have the body to practice with, so make use of it. Be grateful your mind can always follow your body back to the present moment.
📚 Rebecca Li, Illumination
…words like body, mind, and environment divide our practice into three different parts, but they are really all one. Until we cultivate total clear awareness, we tend to experience mind, body, and the environment as if they are separate entities. When we allow the body/mind in this space to be fully experienced as it is, moment to moment, there is a clear knowing that body, mind, and environment are really one. This knowing is experiential, not conceptual.
📚 Rebecca Li, Illumination
#meditation
Meditation is just a word we use to describe purposefully distracting ourselves from our usual auto-pilot mental habits, and works by replacing our current mental habits with new ones through repetition which is how we formed our current mental habits in the first place.
#meditation #mindfulness #subconscious #awareness #wisdom #peace #quiet #calm #psychology #happiness #happy
“With Silent Illumination, still mind and awakening are simultaneous—there is no separation. … Silent Illumination is not a step, not a sequence. It is not a thing. It is not a state. It is not first you are silent and then… /illumination/! In Chan, it is concurrent—the silence /with/ the illumination, the stilling of the mind /with/ the awakening.”
📚 Rebecca Li, Illumination
#buddhism #meditation #zen #chan
“[N]egative potency differs from simple impotence, the inability to act. … In Zen meditation, for example, one attempts to achieve the pure negativity of not-to—that is, the void—by freeing oneself from rushing, intrusive Something. Such meditation is an extremely active process; that is, it represents anything but passivity. The exercise seeks to attain a point of sovereignty within oneself, to be the middle.”
📚 Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
#meditation #zen
I had an epiphany when pondering upon the principle of non-self in Buddhism: as soon as we think about it from an ecological perspective, it makes every sense. Every organism lives in a complex web of interaction with innumerable others from the same and different species, that it's impossible to say any "single organism exists" except as it exists within the ecosystem. The concept of non-changing and dominant self just doesn't fit here.
#buddhism #ecology
I hadn’t meditated for weeks — too busy, too tired, always /too/ — but yesterday I just sat down and got started, and it wasn’t so hard after all.
“Zen: you just do it. To begin, begin.”
📚 Henry Shukman, One Blade of Grass
When a demon interrupts my zazen,
I vow with all beings
to explain I’m busy right now,
We’ll work things out later on.
Aitken, Robert. The Dragon Who Never Sleeps: Verses for #Zen Buddhist Practice.
The support is mutual.
Guarding the Walls
https://rustyring.blogspot.com/2023/11/guarding-walls.html
#100DaysontheMountain, #ango, #Christianity, #DesertFathers, #hermitpractice, #maple
#meditation #Zen
“Daily stillness was the crucible where the culture of well-being grew stronger.”
📚 Henry Shukman, One Blade of Grass
Queensland Supreme Court Justice Peter Applegarth has ruled that the man in the Toowoomba case can now be named as former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann. He is accused of two counts of rape. #qldpol #auspol https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-26/bruce-lehrmann-toowoomba-court-rape-charges/102962680
