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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 17 Mar 2021

Taken: 16 Mar 2021

3 favorites     2 comments    88 visits

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California •
Sacramento •
Garden •
Author •
Susan Blackmore •
The Meme Machine •
Second excerpt •
Solitude •
Robert Kull •

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this photo by Dinesh

Perhaps you have practised meditation or some other method of calming the mind. If so you will know that the task is not trivial. If you have not, I suggest you try now to empty your mind for a minute or so. When any thought comes along, as if certainly will, just acknowledge it and let it go. Do not get tangled up in the thoughts or follow them up. See whether you can find any space between them. The simplest forms of meditation are no more than this kind of practice. It is fiendishly difficult.


Why? You will doubtless notice that thoughts just seem to pop up of nowhere and grab your attention. You may also notice what kinds of thought they are. Typically, they are imagined conversations or arguments, reruns of events with new endings, self-justifications, complicated plans for the future, or difficult decisions that have to be made. They are rarely simple images, perceptions or feelings (which can come and go without causing trouble); rather, they use words, arguments, and ideas you have acquired from other peoples. In other words, these incessant thoughts are memes. ‘You cannot command them to cease. You cannot even command them to go slower nor tell yourself not to get sucked into them. They seem to have a life and power of their own.


Susan Blackmore

Richard Chamberlain, buonacoppi, Fred Fouarge have particularly liked this photo

Comments
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
The Meme Machine
22 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Meditation is an important part of my attempt to put aside personal biases and anxious thoughts to become open to each moment and discover what solitude will bring. Very simply the intention of the Buddhist meditation I practice is to reduce distractions and focus the mind in the nonjudgmental way on whatever is happening right here, right now: bodily sensations, emotions, feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness, restlessness, sleepiness, doubt, the sense of volition, the process of thinking. Sometimes restlessness prevails; sometimes there is peace; sometimes insight. The objective is not to cultivate any particular expereience, but to develop equanimity and compassion: to be with whatever arises; to release our habitual attachment to pleasant experience and avoidance of unpleasant experience; to release the desire to blame when we experience plain. ~ Page 78

SOLITUDE
22 months ago. Edited 22 months ago.

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