two more thoughts on mediation

I was looking at a painting with my glasses off last night and I realized that there's this interesting tension between looking actively and having the visual world roll over you that becomes heightened by the blurriness of vision. When I am forced to exist in the world without my glasses, everything visual becomes sort of less important. It's just there, and I can roughly tell where, but I can't see anything distinct until its within a foot of my eyes. The two responses to this, as I see them, are to fight it and squint your way through the world, attempting to make sense of what can never be sharp, or to relax and think of other things, relying less on vision to navigate your space. Maybe this is something like meditation, the way meditation's goal is, in a sense, to relax out of your mind, letting it fall away to be replaced by something else, some higher version of thought.

Yes, the interesting part of looking at this painting with my glasses off was that I could see all the same things that I can see with glasses on. I could see the way the shapes are abstracted, and the forms that they can become if I open myself up to that transfiguration. And by thinking about those things, those possible interpretations, I completely forgot that I wasn't wearing glasses. I'm sure this was a work out for my eyes, but it was amazing to me to think that I could still interpret the world without the perceptual clarity that I am used to. It makes me wonder what kind of world I would understand if I were deaf, or blind.

And, more specifically about mediation, I've been thinking that it is one of my main issues with Buddhism. I feel as though I pretty much agree with and understand most of the issue based teachings that we have gone over in class. I dont feel like I have any batles to fight there: I place importance in my life in almost all of the same places it seems Buddhists place importance. With one critical exception: meditaion. I could never be a Buddhist because I could never sustain mediation. I squirm, and I think, and I hate the discipline of it. I love the idea, of course, but in practice, I can't see how it would work for me. I've never been one for physical practice of any sort (practicing instruments, going to the gym, etc... I've tried doing them on a regime and it has never worked for me.) And its interesting, too, because while all of Buddhism's other doctrines are so situationally specific, meditation is a "medicine" for just about every ailment. Different kinds of meditiation, yes, but meditiation none the less.

Is there a Buddhism without meditation? What would that look like? Or to put it another way, could Buddhism in fact be too attached to meditiation?

"You can't just dis capitalism."

WHY NOT?

Laughing Meditation

I didn't do a silent breathing meditation this (or last) week, but I did do a laughing meditation with a group of friends.

I learned laughing meditation (by learned I mean did once) in Yoga Class last year, and I enjoyed it surprisingly more than the breathing meditations we did for every class. I actually don't remember if I experienced that feeling of separation from my thoughts, because laughing meditation, to me, is more physically taxing than meditation where you concentrate on your breath. That's what I remember about it: it made my stomach muscles feel tighter.

This time, the laughing meditation was relatively spontaneous. A group of friends and I had just finished a large potluck dinner and were sitting around talking about silly things, when we decided to all do a laughing meditation. We lay down on the floor in a (rough) circle with our heads to the center and we began laughing. The plan was to laugh for five minutes. One friend sat out of the meditation to time us.

We all laughed together. Laughed at each other and ourselves, and it was indeed becoming tiring when some of my friends decided to get physical and start tickling each other to keep the laughter going. It broke the mood for me. I was trying to be serious about this laughing thing. I wanted to really laugh until I meditated (that's how I conceptualized it). I wanted to achieve that goal.

People started getting up off the floor. They were doing it wrong! You cant do laughing meditation by tickling and getting tickled.

I stopped laughing. Eventually, everyone stopped laughing. We checked how long it had been. Just over 2 minutes. Amazing: it felt like so much longer.

Conclusions from this experience? It was annoying not to have everyone invested as much as I was. Like the time I had tried laughing meditation in yoga class: it required everyone to be present and aware. It also seemed to require everyone, period. I didn't (don't) feel as though I could do a laughing meditation solo. For one thin, the laughter comes from other people, it shifts from them to me, ebbs and flows collectively, requiring a collective presence.

I wonder if you could do laughing meditation with two people, looking at each other. I think that seeing the person who is laughing feels a little more unkind, as though you are actually laughing a the other person, as though they are the butt of a joke. Maybe just lying together on your backs would work...

continuation of what I posted on the discussion site...

responding specifically to Ashley's comment about how compassion and selfishness are both practical responses to our environment....

The application of survival of the fittest Darwinism to human interaction is called social dawinism, and it was used in the early 20th century to justify the oppression of many groups, and the insitution of problematic policies like eugenics. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_darwinism

I think the reason humans choose selfishness over compassion is not a result of their fundamental selfishness, but instead their socialization towards selfishness. This socialization is created and perpetuated by capitalism.

I am not denying that selfishness would exist outside of capitalist socialization, I am just denying that it would be so big a force, or that we would even think of it as something that is "natural" unless we were socialized to do so. I don't really think it makes sense to say that humans should compete with each other in order to be happy, unless your idea of happiness is very materially based.

If you acceppt that capitalism (or even some other method of socialization) is the cause of selfishness, it seems almost beside the point to ask questions about the "true nature" of humans. The reality is: Some of us live awesome lives under capitalism, which promotes and encourages (through material rewards) selfishness over compassion. As first world dwellers, we already get some of the awesome life at birth as an inheritance. In this sense, we already have a greater tendency to conform to capitalism/socialization because it has already provided us with awesome things. Most people in the third world dont get that kind of inheritance, and never achieve it because of the way the global system of power is oriented, thus, many of them have comparatively painful, difficult lives.

In other words, selfishness helps first world dwellers live (or have meterial rewards), and it helps third world dwellers die (or not have material rewards).

(this is a simplification.)

If you were to remove capitalism from the picture, people would be more compassionate, because it would be in their best interest to support others rather than compete with them. Compassion would (will/does) benefit everyone more than competition and selfishness would (will/does). This is the principle of mutual aid (google it).

The specific alternative models to capitalism vary, and many can be described as utopic, idealistic, or impossible. I believe that utopias are not impossible: they are just very difficult to sustain in general, and particularly difficult to sustain on a large scale. One "utopic" example (not sure if the people living there would describe themselves this way) is a commune/community called Twin Oaks (google it).