Nibbana tangent part 2 (Agnosticism)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, May 16, 2024, 22:07 (71 days ago) @ David Turell

Forgiveness meditations for me, have helped immensely to heal exactly these sorts of things. Beyond just the logical "it's the past, you can't change it." It's like peeling back layers of an onion and finding bits of sand... that's the best analogy I can think of.

^^^I didn't control the construction of that analogy either, I asked myself, 'what's a good analogy for this,' and after a few seconds of buzzing, an onion appeared in my mind, and a reference to the princess and the pea. I then actively put those bits together, recognizing that we never actually find grains of sand in an onion, now do we? I better qualify that with 'best analogy I can think of...'

I am fascinated by your exposition of how your brain seems to struggle so actively. My mind is quiet by comparison. Perhaps it is because I'm not looking deeper as you do. I don 't have the desire but for some reason you do. Can tell us why you had to do this in Buddhism?

So the first meditation anyone learns is breath meditation. And basically everybody--struggles in this way. The Buddha referred to this as "monkey mind." This article discusses it in modern psychological terms, and yes, it's worse now than it was decades ago.

The goal in the beginning, is to relax to the point where the only thing you're focusing on is the breath. The first "fruit" of the teaching is in learning how difficult it is to simply focus on this one thing. As your relaxation deepens your mind naturally silences and the stillness you experience makes the normal everyday mind very obviously brash and loud. I've had enough experience of the silence that when my mind moves, it's very obvious.

Surgeons and professional athletes that learn this meditation regard the silence precisely like "being in the zone" when they're working.

As to "why looking deeper," you can't help it. Once you've identified the silence, all thoughts screech by like Hulk leaping from building to building. Every meditation session results in that being staved off for a time, and time in has a linear effect with time-out, meaning, if I'm still for an hour, my mind takes at least that long before returning to normal.

Deeper and deeper meditations lead to longer periods of silence and a sharped ability to perceive mental phenomena. I'm as attuned to what's going on in my head as my botanist friend is in identifying plants from a distance on a walk. Habitual thinking does lead to predictable results, but alot of stuff in that stream of consciousness is... just like I said, a radio dial where depending on where I pause I get a different station.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"