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New Year’s Res... Be More ConsciOS
Lately I’ve been experimenting with my own presence... after all, at 72 it might not be much longer!
It's nice to remember I’m still here. Inventing little games. Maybe you do, too.
One is counting the actions for particular tasks... for example, it takes me 32 sets of actions to get breakfast on the table. Of course, those actions can be further subdivided. Getting the half and half out of the fridge is one action, but it takes a lot of little actions to get there. Opening and closing the door, looking for the item, reaching in, etc. Then there’s the muscle movements of grasping, the slight slip of the hand on the moist carton... all the way down to the eye movements, the breathing, the heartbeat. It's a lot of stuff! And I have missed it most every day of my life, preoccupied with minding.
Another exercise is spending ten or fifteen minutes doing whatever I’m doing, but paying keen attention to what sounds I am hearing. I tell you, there’s a lot of layering going on. And a lot of hums... then there’s the sound of my own hearing process and it’s subtle whoosh and ring.
Maybe you have to be retired to be able to do this, maybe not. It requires putting the “big” stuff aside. I feel the pressure of my right hand fingertips holding the iPad horizontally... it feels good, but there is the fatigue of muscles. I have to adjust my grip. There is a sound that accompanies it. And on and on.
There was a monk... Zuikan... every so often he would speak in the empty air. “Zuikan!” and he would answer, “Yes!”. Just checking in, I guess.
What do you do to remind yourself you are alive? Or does it matter?
Happy New Year to come, everyone.😳👀😷📱🖥🔭🎧🎸🎹🤸🏼♀️🪃🍻🙏😻
Comments
I do a lot of zazen meditation which seems to go deeper all the time. I go for long walks in the bush where after a little bit of time I forget how long I've been there and then I just stop and look into a gulley of trees, listen to the dimensions of where every sound is (all the birds, a passing car, the wind in the trees), I smell the Eucalypts and the bush flowers, listen to the bees and just see how inside the dimensions of all this I can be. I pay attention to my pace of walking, where my thoughts are and bring myself into this moment. Sometimes I just stop and talk to a local Koala for a while. It's an amazing planet when we stop and just take it in without putting our own or other's filters over the top of everything.
Oh, and I always look up. Then I might see an Eagle flying over or notice how the clouds are changing with the weather and at night the stars that pop through.
Sitting still in nature is an amazing way to remember that life is a magical experience.
Wishing you all the best for the New Year.
Nice Post! @LinearLineman I'll keep this brief, as I'm trying to cut down on screen time, but I am a big fan of walking meditation. When you do this you have a lot of choices about how you do it and where you put your awareness. I generally do it focusing on increasing the sense of being embodied. Basically taking an approach similar to the 'body scan' that is popular at the end of a yoga class, but doing this while moving rather than while static. Even 5 or 10 mins of this is a great stress reducer and does a lot to slow breathing patterns down to maybe 3 breath cycles a minute for me (I have a lot of meditation experience, it takes a while to build up to that level of slow breathing usually), if I do a longer session, half an hour plus, I feel fantastic after. You can also of course extend the awareness out from the body into visual or auditory awareness of the outside world, and it is interesting to practice switching between these modes of being more internally focused and more externally focused.
Nice post. I don't tend to do much stuff like that, though I see its value. That sounds like mindfulness, which I've attempted in hard times to mixed results.
I would say it's appeal lies in contrast to the ability of all animals (including humans) to do so much unconsciously. People who've had the misfortune to need to relearn things - like how to walk - might have a lower tolerance for wanting to be conscious of every action
Or if you play an instrument well, to have to go back to moving every finger tediously in time and space.
Despite that, I do wish I could be more keen on the practice of meditation. Hard-core rationalists like Sam Harris have convinced me of its utility.
I once made a New Year's resolution which was never to make any more New Year's resolutions. However I made it retroactive so that it applied from the previous year. Thus my resolution was in contravention of itself and can't be enforced. It's a quandary alright.
HNY!
@SimonSomeone, indeed, it is mindfulness... which reminds me of Echardt Tolle asking a Buddhist monk why he was so calm. His response: “I don’t mind”.
@Gavinski, when I was studying tai chi, forty some years ago, I would walk with my teacher after class to get some Cuban Chinese food in Manhattan. He walked so slowly I could not keep up with him! Now I have walked so placidly for so long that my wives/girlfriends always walk ahead of me. Lol, I’m like a Japanese concubine!
Instrumental practice.... when practicing slow bowing on violin/viola, try to maintain the same dB level throughout the bow, while bowing a predetermined amount of time (eg. 4 sec, 8 sec., 10 sec.) in one direction. After switching direction, aim to bow the note for the same amount of time while keeping consistent dB level. dB in this case is measured by ear instead of some kind of measuring device, because the exact dB value doesn't matter as much as whether there is any change.
I recently got an Isochain to see if isometric training could help fix nagging shoulder and hip/back issues. Isometrics using a chain-and-bar device requires attention to the buildup of whole-body tension. The Isochain bar has built-in force-sensing electronics. So when the amount of force applied to the chain reaches a target load, the bar starts beeping . The bar lets me know immediately when I have dropped my tension level below the target load, so I am encouraged to be mindful of maintaining the target load force for the prescribed amount of time (default 6 seconds).
Zhan Zhuang ("standing pole") from Taiji (tai chi) is an exercise which I treat as a practice of awareness of tension, gravity, etc. When I was first exposed to this exercise, I would struggle with shoulder tension building up to where I simply had to stop because the shoulders were so sore. Even just 5 min. of zhan zhuang was difficult. Teachers would admonish me to relax, relax, relax, but I just couldn't figure out how to do something so seemingly simple. Finally, somebody showed me how to "put my feet in my hands". Zhan zhuang is not about setting a world record in standing time, but one time I forgot to set a timer, and ended up practicing more than 17 min. in one go, using ground/gravity to drain tension away from my upper body. The only indication that I was practicing longer than normal was involuntary shaking of the legs, which eventually subsided.
I read quite a few Andre Norton scifi novels when I was in junior high. One of them took place in a future Earth that was ruled by walking and talking evolved cats and rats. One training practice for the young cats was simply to go for a hike outdoors and observe as many details as possible. That inspired me to do the same when I go for a walk outdoors.
Nice! Yes it is unfortunate that some approaches to mindfulness put so much focus on passivity (Goenka style vipassana, for example), because having an aim during mindfulness practices - like you described with the bowing - is such a great way to calm and focus the mind, as long as the aim is not grasped after excessively.
Thank you.
On a tangential note, some teachers instructed me to think of nothing at all, to "shut up the monkey mind", during their version of zhan zhuang/standing meditation. I could never do it. Some thought or another always appeared in my mind, no matter what. Perhaps it was too passive for me.
Happy New Year!
@GovernorSilver, I think the key to intrusive thoughts is not to banish them, but to let them hang around and don’t pay much attention to them. I can rarely stop my thoughts when I improvise. It is too much recognition that helps them grow and disturb.
Again, I think that’s what Tolle’s monk meant when he said “l don’t mind”. Stopping thought is a red herring. Not “minding” thoughts is much more attainable. Maybe no thought comes later... but maybe it’s like driving a car... I don’t want to focus on every little noise the engine might be making... imagining something bad is happening... but I don’t think I want the engine to go away either. Then I’d have a real problem!
Thank you @LinearLineman .
While I find thinking of zero things to be impossible, I do find thinking of only one thing to be more attainable, after some preparation.
Happy New Year!
Right back at ya @GovernorSilver. 🧠🔍👀💔...😂🥳🙈
I think the problem is that a lot of traditions forget the difference between the goal and the path. It's like teaching a kid to read. If u give a small kid heavy duty textbooks to try to make them smart, they will never learn. They need the picture books first. Fewer thoughts might - or might not - be the goal, but it is not necessarily the way. Work with the mind initially, giving it a task to get absorbed in. This is a great way to unify the mind, later the mind will quieten of its own accord.
happy new year man! i think being more conscious of every day tasks is a good thing, funny you mention keeping track of every day tasks and how many steps it takes to complete, i’vefound myself doing that thru out my life, and def when it comes to setting up stuff on an ios jam session.
my ios goals for the year include, deleting files and apps that waste space that i’ll never use as i go instead of a big clean up here and there that takes forever to do. all those audio share files of random recordings that “ i’m going to sample later “ yet never have 😂 i need to label everything better, the bpm, the key, the style , the source of the sample etc so if i do want to use it maybe i can get better use of it and even modify the patch if i know what synth it is from.
also focus on the synths i have and try to get more out of them. i think gadget is going to get a lot of use this year, i find myself getting a lot further on finishing songs there as the workflow is much less tedious and straightforward. i just grabbed, finally after a year of debate, arp odyssei and i really want to get good at sound design with it, it sounds so good and can entire songs with it alone in gadget
Some enlightening reading here.
Just to add, there's a relevant 'Mind Like Sky' Buddhist meditation from the 'Song of Mahamudra':
The clouds that wander through the sky
Have no roots, no home;
Nor do the distinctive thoughts floating through the mind.
Once this is seen, discrimination stops.
Thanks for starting this thread @LinearLineman
Happy New Year!
Great thread @LinearLineman
I’ve realised that it doesn’t matter if anyone hears music that I make. I have a certain amount of hours on this planet and what’s important is how I use the hours. I choose to lose myself in the moments of creation and hope to look back on my life knowing that I immersed myself in the thing I love.
When you do something so enjoyable that you forget that you exist, that is bliss.
Peace and best wishes to all music makers.
I do both: vipassana and practice instrument every day ... not the same goal I think ...
Thanks @rud. What you said was very meaningful to me.