Link to meditation, guided by Ajahn Brahm
Came to the meditation feeling tired, weary, mostly mentally, a little bit physically. A busy and agitated mind some of yesterday, outside of times of concentration on creative work, and working late, till after midnight, must have contributed to that.
I lost the volume to the guidance for the meditation almost as soon as it had started, so I meditated without guidance and found myself drifting a little in thoughts, but not distinctly except for a time where I was feeling that seeking unhappiness, through focussing on difficulties whilst pushing aside pleasures as being unequal in worth for consideration, is a waste of life.
The pressure of 'achieving' a certain status or goal that may or may not come and striving to the point that excludes allowing happiness in simple living is a modern western paradigm, and one that causes ill health both mentally and physically.
Of course, some, or much, of this pressure comes from competing for money, which has been given central importance as the currency of reward. We have to fit this into our lives if we wish to be part of the society that revolves around it, to exist in it.
Over the past thousand years, money has pushed out religion as the spine of our society, before religion it may be that the spine consisted of only water, food, warmth: the basic requirements of existence. Alongside money, religion and subsistence is power, to be in possession of as much of what allows life to be lived provides the holder with safety, or it is presumed to.
Maintaining life is built into our evolution and expressed as society. If you stand outside of competition, you are dependent on your existing resources or the kindness of others.
We are not a particularly kind creature, mostly having a limited circle of love, stretching to one or a few other beings if at all, but then there are those of us that believe we can be kind and can share in existence rather than compete for it. Those are my kind, yet within me is the other kind too.
We all are somewhere on that spread between monopolizing power to secure existence and sharing power to secure existence, where are you?
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