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Tag Archives: Meditation

Meditating with Miranda Kerr? and keeping sane in India

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by opus125 in India

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Meditation, miranda kerr, Tara Brach

meditation-miranda-kerr-model-pretty-Favim.com-661134

As a Westerner drawn o India I see both sides – the beauty and flaws of the East. There are beauties in Western  thought too – as this article reminds us. Sadly the rush to Capitalism, fuelled by a need to never be content for too long – lest you don’t chase after your next purchase! – means so few realise there are many thoughts worth considering in the West as well.

But at heart, I’m with Miranda Kerr. ….. Om Bhuh Bhuvah Svaha ok for Miranda it’s Nam Myoho renge Kyo ….and I don’t blame her don’t we all want peace of mind?

 

I thought when I moved to india I would find peace. Instead I found noise, irritation, nonstop honking and the horns of trains and te endless pressure to conform.

Strangely, it was in those moments of distress I discovered my greatest peace.

There have been spiritual gurus in India because of the endless restless movement of the people.  We see the same genius rise in the struggles of Jews, or the peace Rumi expressed during the tumults of Islam.

Gitanjali, the beautiful Nobel prize winning poems of Tagore find love or God (they seem to my reading of many poets to be interchangeable) in the very design and fabric of life’s struggles.

“What we call being depressed is, at heart, an inability to alter how we can tell our story” tweeted Alain De Botton recently.

He was highlighting the Philosophers Guide to Gratitude that pointed out “the call to be more grateful stands in deep conflict with a central drive in human nature: ambition … Capitalism stimulates constant ambition and longing and rewards astute, intense assaults on excellence. Restlessness is the precondition of progress. Nothing should be good enough for very long. “

Contentment is almost dangerous …….. Especially for the market!

There is another point: “encouragement to be ‘grateful’ is not always the kindly act it seems. It may just be another person’s convenient way of disguising their fear of competition or their refusal to engage with the stress and turmoil of aspiration. The insistence that we be more grateful could just be a jealous friend’s way of sidestepping our anxieties while ennobling their lack of effort.”

Marcus Aurelius, like Biblical Solomon, knew the power of gratitude because they both had success.

Appreciating the flowers need not be opting out of life. It is not about naively ignoring lifes shadow. Lack of gratitude may be from a fear of loss, nrvous swings between safety and anxious dissatisfaction.

‘Western’ culture (and I admit thats a faulty distinction) culture has brainwashed us with a ridiculous idea of what is ‘normal’ as if to be happy you need to have miss universe wrapped around yor arm or if you a woman an anorexic waist with the silicon enhanced chest size.

What about appreciating the rhythm of the washing machine? The trancelike simplicity of enjoying Karate Kid style the rhythm of life as you paint a fence?

Perhaps this is why the sense of presence offered in Eastern meditation traditions appeals.

But they exist in the West too. Unfortunately they seem shrouded in a tradition of heady – even ego driven – debate. Which so many of us want to escape.

Nor does gratitude mean to escape future aspiration.

Buddhist teachers like Tara Brach remind us to go into our body and sense were we are  contracted. Knowing how we feel in the moment reminds us where we are now. Now matter where you want to go, you have to start where you are. Physically, emotionally and spiritually.

The push for consumerist success however, risks promoting the dissatisfaction to push economic growth. It may help push your personal growth too, but when can you find rest if you are told never stop long enough to smell the roses?

Perhaps that is why some traditions meditate with, or on the dead. The old Hebrew reminded that “everything is vanity” is not pessimistic, but rather a reminder to stop chasing and to be grateful.

Eccl 12:13, 14 “The end of the matter, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the entire man. For every deed God will bring to judgment-for every hidden thing, whether good or bad.”

I’m with Miranda Kerr. ….. Om Bhuh Bhuvah Svaha ok for Miranda it’s Nam Myoho renge Kyo ….and I don’t blame her don’t we all want peace of mind?

 

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Racism? Or the power of a hug?

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in Caste & Social position

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Circle Groups, compassion, Meditation, Paul Tillich, racism, Sacral Existence, Tara Brach

RACISM1

My Indian experience has made me far more sensitive to racism, especially the subtle forms that pass our minds as if somehow they appear obvious unquestioned truths.

So I found myself returned to Brisbane for a few weeks . I was waiting for a bus at a train station where an African family spread out infront of the bus shelter. Dressed in a Kurta perhaps I relaxed the larger woman, with her traditional head gear. A kurta sometimes is construed as Muslim here. Was  she an African Muslim perhaps?

I explained the timetable to her, declined her offer of a seat, and moved past the the box of bananas, a troop of kids splayed out among the pages of the MX newspaper.

Two other woman in the seats nearby were grumbling as another woman asked if she could sit down.   Sitting, head down, body tight and glaring at them with such intensity I asked if she was alright.

“Yes! Are you?” she snapped.

I then walked closer to the family and talked to a baby girl that walked over toward me.

I admit hoping that my bad habit of thinking aloud did not utter my thoughts. “White kids act worse here. So their black? There not drunk.”

Of course their only sin was hogging a bus shelter with news papers scattered amongst the children.

The mother moved a sjhopping troolet her son pushed onto the road, telling him off for it, and I persuaded the little girl that perhaps the big Cheezels wrapper belonged in the bin.

Around that time the bus parked around the corner, a few minutes earlier than the beginning of its run.  The mother immediately commandeered her troopes cleaned the area meticulously,  and waited.

However, it was among my scowling Aussie compatriot that surprised me. Immediately she noticed the younger girl fingers in mouth near the rubbish bin. A maternal smile with calls of “Yukkie” followed. Thee girl and her youngest brother were soon being hugged and kissed, tothe delight of their mother, all white teeth from black skin.

They boarded the bus together, my Aussie   “racist” helping carry the box of bananas, getting off at the same stop with children hand in hand..

Had I misread the ladies ‘scowls” entirely? I had judged her harshy and yet she was acting with kindness. Or on seeing the mother clean up, did she change her mind?

It was later I watched Utopia by John Pilger. I have read Pilger before and wondered at first if he pushed too far, but living outside of the country I now see my country with less blinded eyes.

However, I thought Pilgers askng people about Aboriginal treatment during an Austrlia Day celebration was like criticising a mans lover while making love. Thee Greeks used the word Eros to also mean patriotism, short term and intense! … And also blinding. But his point is valid. There are questions to be asked.

Australia was a nation founded on a fear. We are so be we could be easily invaded, we needed to be protected whic hat fist meant being more British than Britain “just in case”.   There were very definite expectations of what was “civilized” and “acceptable”.

All nation have their myths. In India problems are hidden in the numbers. “It’s not so bad. We have so much of population. It looks worse.” Often true, but many times not.

Australia myth is denial. It happens out there across the seas. We dont have the problems of say Europe which is often true.

But then we have hidden our “Aboriginal Problem” in the outback. We hear the occasional complaint over policy costing’s as if some how the problem is Aboriginals “should be like whites”.

In an age where it is easier to brand people with condemnatory slogans it is easy to hide the facts.

We don’t have to meet a person in the eye.

A Hafiz says “We all remain too frightened.”

In the past official who ordered oppression were distant from the foot soldiers perpetrating their crimes.

As far back as 1988. researchers found that focusing on loving kindness or compassion changes the brain. A hug releases oxytocin, the love hormone. As meditation teacher Tara Brach wrote:

 “Either imagining a hug, or feeling our own touch — on our cheek, on our chest — can arouse the same positive affect experienced with the release of oxytocin. Whether through visualization, words, or touch, meditations on love can shift brain activity in a way that arouses positive emotions and reduces traumatic reactivity. Where attention goes, energy flows: We have the capacity to cultivate an inner refuge of safety and love.”

I want to believe I misread the face and body language of the lady in the bus stop.  If so, then I am being guilty of being judgemental. But then, just perhaps, the warmth of an innocent child melted her maternal heart.  The power of a Hug.

Tara Brach also tells a story of a circle group. Equal numbers of woman from each side of the Bosnian Serbian conflict met. Eventually one broke down torn, shredded by the past rape and abuse of her past.  Most of the women became defensive, what can you say, faces tightened. They didn’t do it. No one could angrily deny the woman her truth.

Then one simply approached her and said “I believe you.”

What if,  when we find someone whose past hurts confront us, we stopped, listened, and even if we could not change the past, looked inn their eyes with the words “I believe you.”

What if, as I have done, politicians slept in the slums of people they demonised as “illegal”  refugees? What if instead of being annoyed by a cultural mistake by a migrant, we listened too where they came from and said “I believe you.”

The act of connection is in itself a group meditation.

Believing anothers story offers a connection. If after that, like a parent you must offer tough love, at least you come from a position of understanding and will be respected for your integrity.

“The first duty of love is to listen” wrote Paul Tillich. It is not to do something for you, but to be there for you.

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