Death is coming

The closer death creeps up upon me the less I am able to understand the reasons for life or living.

Yes I have experienced a close family member dying and unlike television it takes decades to handle such a thing. To think I am going to put my family through such a thing when I finally leave is more horrific to me than the thought of death itself.

My life was and is still a learning experience but when all said and done what am I to do with all this accumulated learning over my lifetime if I just die. There is no logic or reason to this.

Long ago I became aware that the God story that is sold to the majority is just a nice story to give mankind with a message of a basic layout of how nice life could be if everyone followed these ideas. Not many in life do and if one thinks about it the good and evil structures actually depend on each other. The good that can be experienced in life is only understood as good when there is it's opposite to compare it to. This is not rocket science only common sense in reality. I am not saying we need to experience bad but understanding in it is needed to appreciate the great things many of us can have in our lives. From birth to death there are many ways mankind helps his fellow man. How many ways can you help?


Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Preparing To Meditate

By Owen Jones


There is a great deal of rubbish talked about meditation. I do not mean what it can do for you because that is difficult to prove one way or the other. I have read people saying that they found all sorts of things in meditation and who am I to say that they did not merely because I have not had the precisely same experience.

I believe that there are numerous stages of evolution and so what one person experiences in one way another may experience in a completely different way.

No, I mean that there is a lot of rubbish talked about how one has to meditate. I am reading an piece right now by someone who says: '... for a successful meditation practice, everything has to be perfect ..... the room has to be set up in such a way ...' and so it goes on. The person who wrote that piece seems never to have even thought leave alone ever meditated.

Meditation has always been most frequently carried out by people with a spiritual bent. Of those people, most people who meditated were monks, because they were seeking enlightenment and had the time and tranquility to meditate. It was difficult to find the time or the peacefulness if you were a subsistence farmer with ten kids running around.

Anyway, lower orders of monks are not famous for living opulent lives where 'everything ... is ideal'. They live quiet lives and when they want to meditate, they will not be disturbed, no matter where they are but particularly in their cells.

My father used to drive out to a cliff top and meditate behind a bush gazing out 100 feet over the Bristol Channel. Frequently he did it in the middle of the night.

It is best that the people you live with understand that when you want to meditate that they should endeavor not to make a great deal of noise and certainly not call you by name or barge into the room where you are.

How you can accomplish this in your household, you know better than I, but talking to cohabitants and displaying a sign in a prominent position can help as can always meditating at the same hour of the day, but is not usually practical. Most of us have to take our free time while we can.

Turn off anything that makes a noise. Turn off phones and even the door bell, if you can. Open the window, if it is not unbearably cold or raining cats and dogs. Take a shower and put on loose-fitting comfortable clothes like pyjamas.

Sit on the floor, if you can; cross-legged, if you can. If you are nearly there, try sitting on a cushion or pillow. There are things called zafu or meditation pillows, which are small and thick.

Some are round and others are square, but a round zafu may be 12 inches in diameter and four to six inches thick. This is to raise you off the ground enough to take the strain off your hips and knees, if you are not used to sitting cross-legged.

It will encourage a good posture, that is a straight back. It is also softer on the behind and when you are sitting comfortably, you may begin.




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