Waves of breath upon the shore

If, in meditation, you have imagined your breath as waves upon a shore, become the ocean. The swash, the wave breaking on the shore, is now your out breath, the backwash and undertow your in breath. The oscillation is continuous, smooth.

Metta Meditation Reflection - Mar 27 14

Link to meditation, guided by Bhante Sujato.

Came to the meditation mentally fairly relaxed, with some concerns of day to day life waiting to be resolved and provoking some anxiety at a low level, physically there is a fair amount of pain today likely from a muscle strain, so pain but no worry, a distraction, but one that is able to be put aside during meditation, as happened during the first few moments of relaxing the body and centering the mind.

I found myself able to focus on the mantra a little more clearly today; less thoughts takings from it, though they still did come and my concentration on each mantra diminished over time, until it was re-introduced by the guidance and directed to another area.

My uncertainty with metta was deepened nearer the end as I remembered an obstructive path of thinking whereby I feel the happiness of some beings is predicated on the suffering of others, such as wasps that lay eggs in other live animals, such as carnivores, and killers for other reasons.

I realize of course that this is an incomplete train of thought and budhist texts and teachings would have an answer, an acceptance for these lives and what their happiness entails that I do not, yet.

The meditation definitely allows my mind to feel less fatigued and at the end of the meditation I feel a fuller ability to concentrate and focus. I put the contradictions I uncover aside and turn my mind to the positives of the meditation and moving into the day more ready and more peaceful than without a meditation.

Metta Meditation Reflection - Mar 26 14

Link to meditation, guided by Bhante Sujato.

Came to the meditation quite relaxed, small obstructions in the recesses of my mind as I have carried for so long: fears and worries, greed and disillusion.

The metta conflicting with letting go stays with me as before. I was able to relax the body and did not fidget or feel uncomfortable. My mind followed the mantras for a time then drifted to unconnected thoughts, those that are common to me, but at low levels of emotional response, i.e. the thoughts come but there is no escalation of feeling if they are troubling, I feel more able to let them just be thoughts and not to be inhabited unrealities, than during my life without meditation.

When asked to connect to and send loving kindness from within to without, I find no loving kindness within, no warmth or joy that doesn't feel manufactured just to perform a facsimile of what is possible.

I do know the love and kindness are there, yet I have not found a connection through metta, mostly I find my connection is with sharing time with those who I carry love for; a direct physical connection.

I don't include myself in that but do have a very strong connection to feeling I have good within me. I don't quite equate good with love, since my goodness is corrupted by wanting, whilst I want to overcome certain societal pressures to do with finances and recognition. The center of me is simply good, the layers and layers of barriers to that, partly osmotic, are protections imposed to 'fit' the world I was brought up in.

'Lotus' Meditation Reflection - Mar 23 14

Link to meditation, guided by Ajahn Brahm

On coming to the meditation in a fairly calm, neutral manner, physically comfortable, the meditation progressed as far as relaxing the body and beginning to relax the mind in the present moment. Thoughts swam around, in my low-grade mindfulness they seem unbidden though I appreciate a stronger mindfulness reveals more.

Calm thoughts that come, moving the imagination and producing some creative language and exploration in thought are not the initially expected results of meditation, yet at my level are the most common shallow result. There is a deeper result which is most beneficial, which is a slow, not deep, but felt, inuring from common daily stresses. I have a little more peace, and more resilience in the sense of a quicker recovery to equilibrium from a stress event or series of thoughts, and even less tendency to fall into patterns of repetitive negative thought.

I go no deeper into the lotus, but I have a fuller appreciation of the outer petals. I sense that the deeper into the lotus we go, taken by kindness and mindfulness, the more secure we become as human beings.

"The only sane response to existence is apathy," was a thought that popped into my mind when I had drifted to remembering the new television version of Cosmos, when it attempted to show the scale of the universe, both external to our physical scale regarding the planet, solar system, universe and ever greater and the internal scale of cells, molecules, atoms and... I always wondered what all the space between the smallest level of particles is (not in the sense of it a scientific name - whatever the language used calls it at any moment). It is there that consciousness and what some human beings call God exists, I expect.

There is tension in fear. However it has come about that life provides you anxiety instead of peace the solution is still peace. Internal peace. A way to internal peace is stillness. A way to stillness is to let go of the past and the future, a practice to assist this is meditation.

30 Minute Meditation Reflection - Feb 12 14

Link to meditation, guided by Ajahn Brahm.

Felt I had come to a good 'now', leaving the past and future and going inside the moment, which is infinite, as all moments are now, when they occur. I had imagery in my head at the start of meditation, echoes of previous thoughts and these gradually left, so too the pain in my side which I did not notice, perhaps letting my body go more than before. This meditation was mostly silent and empty, peaceful though not released from consciousness in the sense that I was aware of the experience, and valuing it, whereas I may look to simply experience it without judgement for true peace.

I walk unsteadily, but I walk

I still have wanting, but I do not need as much; I do not want the same things – the shallow things are still there, but they are more balanced by spiritual things. I wander, unsteadily, down the middle way, knowing that I am unskilled and tethered to selfishness, but I wander on. The tether can be unmade, the skill can develop, peace can come and be shared.