Category Archives: compassion

Balancing attention during meditation

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Here’s a quote from Chogyam Trungpa that I find extremely helpful in knowing how to “hold” your attention and expectations during meditation. If you are new, you might try doing these one at a time, and then find a way to give them equal balance at the same time.

In the practice of meditation, concentrating too heavily on the technique brings all kinds of mental activities, frustrations, and sexual and aggressive fantasies. So you keep just on the verge of your technique, with 25 percent of your attention. Another 25 percent is relaxing, a further 25 percent relates to making friends with oneself, and the last 25 percent connects with expectation — your mind is open to the possibility of something happening during this practice session.These four aspects of mindfulness have been referred to as the four wheels of a chariot.The ideal number of wheels we should have on our chariot is four, the four techniques of meditation: concentration, openness, awareness, and expectation. That leaves a lot of room for play. That is the approach in the buddhadharma, the Buddhist teachings. A lot of people in the lineage have practiced that way and have actually achieved a perfect state of enlightenment in one lifetime.

Like Panhala, which sends a poem each day, Ocean of Dharma sends a Trungpa quote most days. Check it out at oceanofdharma.com.

Second breakthrough

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My second big breakthrough in this year of meditating for 30 minutes each day has evolved over the past few days, and I am still integrating it. I can’t say exactly what it’s about yet because it’s a process that must unfold over time, and I don’t want to blindside anyone who’s significantly involved.

This deserves my care and attention, and that means keeping it close until I am clear how to proceed with [what I think are] everyone’s best interests in mind, as best I can.

So, I’m sorry, dear readers, that I can’t say more right now. I am looking forward to the time (hopefully in the next couple of months) when I can just blurt it out and let the world know!

This breakthrough is different from the first breakthrough, which was a shift in my point of view. This one  involves actually making some big changes in interacting with the world.

Change within followed by change without.

I feel excited! I feel a little intimidated but not scared. There are a lot of details to be worked out. Say a prayer and send loving energy if you feel so inclined.

~~~

Speaking of readers, as of today there have been 607 hits on this blog. Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!

I haven’t gotten any feedback on my decision to slow down on posting. If you want to share your opinion, give feedback, ask questions, make comments, it’s pretty easy to leave a comment. I believe you can even be anonymous. I read them all, delete the ones that are obviously spam, and approve the others for posting. Pretty simple.

I’d love to hear from you, even just a hello.

Can the world be different?

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Spent much of the morning online, catching up on Facebook and email, and finishing reading a remarkable article I started last week, The Women’s Crusade.

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html

The article mentions a nonprofit in Hyderabad, India, called Prajwala, on page 3. A 14-year-old Hyderabad girl from a poor family was forced into prostitution in New Delhi under false pretenses (a job as a maid). She witnessed the murders of 3 other girls who resisted. She was never paid and often beaten.

Eventually the police freed her and returned her to Hyderabad. She was taken in by Prajwala, which teaches new skills to girls rescued from brothels. She now earns a decent living as a bookbinder, is getting an education and helping put her younger sisters through school.

The thesis of the article is this: “With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.”

Here’s another quote: “In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report…. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country.”

The wheels of my mind and heart began turning. Here, listen to them creak:

This is happening in India, the home of yoga, a practice that I love, that has given so much to me, and to so many other Americans, who are fortunate enough to be able to take yoga classes and go on yoga vacations and retreats.

Wow, this is the kind of reporting (from Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn) that I would pay for. It’s not just about how bad things are. The article notes a few organizations that are making a difference in places around the planet.

Most beautifully, it provides a big insight into how to make the seemingly impossible actually happen — end poverty by focusing on educating and empowering women.

Creak. What if, and this is a big what if, American yogis adopted Prajwala as their nonprofit of choice, to give something back to the country that gave us yoga?

I emailed Prajwala with questions. It’s not as easy as you think — they don’t take PayPal, for one. I want to know how to help — not just by giving money, but by connecting American yogis to Prajwala. How can I best proceed? Ideas welcome!

My mind was churning with this when I sat on the zafu. First my body became still, then my breath slowed, my mind slowly slowed, my energy softened.

It’s not about me. It’s something moving through me.

It comes from a heart that has repeatedly been horrified by how humans can treat each other and a mind that wants so much to believe that the world can be different.

I ask you, can it?

Sitting with compassion

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Third morning of sitting early. Only had time for 20 minutes; had to get my granddaughter up, dressed, and ready for school. Will pick up the other 10 minutes this evening.

I reset the alarm for earlier. I like getting 30 minutes in.

Yesterday after sitting, I went to my chiropractor, Dr. Chandler Collins, and after testing and doing what I think of as anchoring muscle combinations, he adjusted first my left ilium and then my right.

It seemed like not much moved. The adjustments were small, seemed to be only a couple of millimeters, if that. But then…I noticed feeling stronger when I stood, not like you could knock me over with a feather, which is how I’ve felt since April 25, 1996, the date of a serious car wreck that destabilized my sacrum/pelvis.

Yesterday was a day of getting used to it. Noticing how standing is different, how walking is different, how driving is different. By the end of the day, soreness in new places. Going to sleep, not being able to tell if my neck was crooked. Reorganizing, reorienting.

There are  more adjustments to be done next week. Something to do with the Hamstring Group. (They’re architects, you know. j/k) Another week of keeping my core stable and avoiding torque. And then, maybe he’ll give me some homework and I can really get strong.

Practice today centered on something Peg said on Sunday. I was attempting to convey how my realization that awareness is everything, everything is awareness, was rippling out into my life. How my dislike for certain characters, like Pat Robertson and Baby Doc Duvalier, were parts of my awareness. How I feel some responsibility for the quality of my awareness, and how it doesn’t feel good to feel contempt or scorn toward others.

She said, “Do you know them?”

No. I don’t. I only know what I’ve read or seen or heard about them. I’ve never met them.

Chances are, if I did know them, who they are would of course be different than how I judge them now. I’d know them with breath, voice, movement, energy, a family, relationships, desires, suffering, eye movements, context, filters. They’d be fuller and more complex, not demonized. I could find compassion for them. I would be curious about their awareness and compassion.