Varanasi, India: cleansing meditation in the Holy Ganges River
Chuck was supposed to lead the discussion this week, but there might have been some miscommunication. At any rate we ended up doing a make shift Bake Off.
Eric mentioned that he had been angry at someone and he went to mow the lawn. At first he was aggressively mowing the lawn and thinking aggressive thoughts but then there was a switch to accepting the anger, naming it, and then focusing on the present moment. We discussed how this could have happened. The Buddhists, if angry, often do walking meditation.
You need to name the anger, recognize it, tell the person you are angry and that you are suffering with it, try to talk it out, then one needs to let it go. Forgiveness may be involved at this point. Anger itself if allowed to proceed reinforces the process of getting angry. If we are able to stop this circling process, we will be able to take the novelty and surprise out of the anger, move the anger from the amygdala and put it in the frontal lobes where it becomes less threatening and less damaging.
Our heart become involved in this as well and even as in HeartMath, gratitude and appreciation enter into the thinking. We may even be able to walk with tonglen during our walking meditation. Some traditions try to throw anger and negative emotions into the earth just as we do with our human waste at the dump site, and earth will transform these wastes into flowers and trees. Just so with our anger, it will transform the anger into positive emotions.
Hitting pillows does not work. You just get very good at hitting pillows. The only value to such an aggressive practice such as hitting pillows would be to get over repression of the anger to bring it forward so that it might be recognized, named and then dealt with.
The idea that someone made you angry is a faulty perception. This perception waters the seeds of anger. A better term is to say or think: "I have anger" rather than "I am angry."
Dick showed us a form of walking meditation that uses the phrase: "Lift up your heart." While walking, hold one hand on your heart and the other hand over your abdomen. While meditating and walking, try to separate these hands slightly; the movement apart with only be a centimeter or so. But this is actually lifting up your heart, as it says in the Bible. We tried this walking meditation briefly. Someone else recalls a form of meditation where one puts one's hand on another's heart and even breath together with the other person. Some say in certain yoga practices, your "lead with your heart." Jean described that during her yoga practice she has moved to put her hands one on top of the other in front of her heart with the palms facing upward as though receiving a gift. All of these comments proved to us how important posture is during these different practices, especially if the posture is symbolic and becomes a natural part of the practice.
Again we discussed about the necessity of regular meditation practice. People often give excuses why they are not meditating regularly, sometimes saying they forgot to meditate. Indeed, change to a regular practice is hard. There is a part of our brain that doesn't want us to meditate because such regular practice is putting that part of the brain out of business, so to speak. There are two recommendations for overcoming these excuses and moving to regular meditation practice: 1.) Have a place set up for meditation that you go to regularly. It might be set up with your cushion, with a Buddha, or with candles, other paraphenalia for meditation, or it just might be a corner or wall with a comfortable chair. 2.) Hook meditation to something that you do every day. For example, take your toothbrush with you to meditation and only put the toothbrush away after your meditation. Then if you do not do the meditation, and put your toothbrush away first, you will feel strongly that something is missing.
In the end, our discussion shifted to work and jobs Sharleen asked two questions about work. 1) Do we work to serve others in the workplace? or 2) What in the work makes you happy? The former is extrinsic, and the latter intrinsic. Tim discussed this briefly and gave us a preview of his planned discussion on the schedule for August.
Next week is Jean's healing prayer service for Todd. Be sure to come.
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