Meditations on meditation

One of my goals here was to learn how to meditate. We have meditation practice at 8 every morning.

The first week we focused on following our breath, which is supposed to help you concentrate. I have difficulty not thinking, but it is an interesting experiment and definitely calming. It also helps me to feel disciplined.

This morning the nun led us through analytic meditation, which differs in that instead of releasing your thoughts, you think about specific things. For the first session, we focused on thinking about the suffering felt by all beings.

She started by having us imagine the suffering an insect must experience, then a dog or a monkey, then a starving or cold person (physical suffering), then a blind, deaf or paralyzed person (which to me represented the combination of physical and mental suffering, because you cannot fully experience the world or express yourself), then a mentally ill person and someone who only grasps for material possessions (which both seemed to represent mental suffering). Then we were supposed to think about how lucky we are to live comfortable lives.

I found this really difficult for a few reasons. Firstly, I have no idea what the suffering of an insect feels like. I tried to imagine a dog's suffering or a monkey's suffering, because hunger seems the same in all species. But then I started thinking about the monkey that stole my popcorn yesterday and got caught up in thinking that he was a selfish monkey. Clearly I am not yet good at the Buddhist way of thinking, because when I brought this up after the session one of the guys on the trip said he imagined how hungry the monkey must have been to steal my popcorn. Maybe this is true, and it's definitely a good way to think about it for meditation on suffering, but this was a fat monkey and they just steal food from everyone. (Just To clarify, I sound really angry about the monkey. I kind of am, not because I wanted the popcorn but because the monkey so blatantly stole it while I was right there. Also because the monkeys do things just to scare us.)

Secondly, much of the reading talks about how the ultimate truth is that the entire world is actually empty. This is a difficult concept, but part of it means that there is no distinction between me and you or me and a rock or whatnot. So while we were supposed to be thinking about how lucky we were to be born into a relatively good life, I started questioning why I should be thankful and why there are different levels of beingness (I.e. Insect, dog, people) if we are all ultimately the same. The Buddhists call this the conventional world, and the actual world is the empty one, but why should we all agree to live in the conventional world if there is inequality and whatever? Mostly meditation was frustrating.

Also a monkey just stole Claudia 's bananas. The most frustrating thing about india: meditation and monkeys.

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guest post 3

This guy. THIS guy. Picture this: so, there we are, having a nice little sit after our fab hike and shower party (Liz joined the show...great addition) waiting for tea and munching on some snacks Michelle bought. Great time. AND THEN we see this monkey creeping up behind us. Creeping hard. I run away, obviously, because I leave all the monkey business to Michelle. So its Michelle and the monkey staring each other down. And then the monkey lunges at michelles popcorn and darts back up the tree. Then the audacious thief rips open the bag and eats it right in front of us. Jerk. THEN to add insult to injury, mr. Monkeys friend, mr. Monkey 2 jumps up the tree and relieves himself right above where our stuff is, splashing and spraying all over the place.

The monkeys may have won this battle, but the war is definitely not over.

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Fun facts

Tibet has almost no roads because until the 20th century, the country had prayer wheels but no regular wheels.

My philosophy teacher is a nun, originally from germany, who completed sixteen years of study.

She says things like, "the Buddha said to test his words as you would gold. That was the standard then. Now you should test his words as you would a laptop."

A monkey ran down the length of a dorm hallway directly towards me today. It was one of the scarier moments of my life. I jumped out of the way and he turned to go up the stairs.

The resident dorm dog looks like the Grim.

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