Meditation basics

greenspun.com : LUSENET : bodhi : One Thread
The base camp of meditation includes How's your base camp?

-- Gary Gach (gary@word.to), August 24, 2001

Answers

hey, if you liked In Thin Air, i highly recommend the Imax movie Everest!

Anyway ---
it's true for me too, Greg!

I know that the more I've zeroed in on what is right livelihood for me, then my path becomes so much more easier and wide.

(makes me wonder: maybe some people meditate because their job fills them w/ such turmoil ... and so their meditation is always somehow dependent on the job, rather than on meditation in and of itself ... make sense?)

this IS america, after all, where money is idolized, and "chasing after the yankee dollar" is kinda our national religion, no?

having struggled for most of my life to become a full-time writer, and worked in a slew of liferoles, it's a personally fascinating topic to me.

but as for meditation, and base camp ...
i too would like to hear what others say.

-- gary (gary@word.to), September 07, 2002.

Interesting that I would read your mountainclimbing metaphor applied to practice not long after I have read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, about climbing Everest.

I have recently returned to a more active practice after a lot of busyness related to finishing a dissertation. Forgive me if I stray from the topic at hand here, but one of the things that helped bring me back into practice was finding more of a true vocational path (right livelihood) after finishing the Ph.D. I'm really a poet and the Ph.D. in literature was more of a secondary interest, more of something that should help me secure poetry teaching jobs. So, when I visited an old poet who was a professor of mine in college, he put me back on the right path again. I am joyfully retyping a book- length manuscript to send to presses.

What does this have to do with my "base camp?" Well, I found (though perhaps I'm just lazy) that practice is more possible when the rest of my life is more aligned. I guess this would apply to the "overcoming hindrances" aspect. I find my posture is better and my mind has quieted down so that I'm not so figity when I sit. I haven't done walking meditation, so I can't speak to that.

Should anyone care to reply, I'd be interested to see if anyone else has had similar experiences.

Peace,

Greg

-- Greg Byrd (greg.byrd@verizon.net), September 07, 2002.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ