Meditation Blog

 THERE... is nothing there? There IS nothing there. There is NOTHING there. There is nothing THERE. THERE is nothing, THERE. There, there. There is no time: like the present. HERE - is nothing here? Here IS nothing here. Here is NOTHING here. Here is nothing; HERE. HERE, HERE!

      I just got a step counter on my phone. It says I’ve done around 4,000 steps today. I’m slightly appalled by that. All those steps I wasn’t really paying attention to. THOUSANDS of them. Counting your steps is meant to be a way to become more active, but I don’t want all these useless steps. I want steps that count, not just a big count of steps. I do want to lose weight and become more fit though, so I will put up with all those steps. And hopefully it will encourage me to do that, just by counting. I’ll see how it goes... (Hm… If you “walk lightly upon the earth,” do you do less steps?) Less is more, more or less… Is meditation doing more, or doing less? How can I do more in meditation: would that be doing more less, or less more? … I mean by ‘more less’ = doing a lot more of doing less, or somehow making the less bigger? and ‘less more’ = doing less of silly things getting in the way, such as the usual “thinking of what to have for dinner” and other s

  When you look at suffering, there’s no end to it. But every bit you deal with is another step on the path. But when I look at my desk piled high with stuff that needs sorting through, I know that I can’t just do a bit at a time. I have to wait until I’m in the right frame of mind, with enough time, and then start to do it and keep on as far as I can. If I start to do one little bit, I can’t really do it that way. It would take too many times of 'one little bit' to get anywhere. And if I start at the wrong time then either I'll get confused or disheartened and not want to start again, or else I will have to stop when there are piles of half sorted things everywhere that I will lose track of, that will then all need tidying again, and that would waste time. I have to be efficient about it. What’s going to be the best in the long run? Whatever gets it done. I know it will get done. Or maybe it won’t. It certainly looks bad. But there is enough room for me to put a cup of cof

  What am I looking for in meditation?  Some kind of wisdom, or truth? Is it like finding a needle in a Haystack? Or does one just need to find the Haystack? The last straw will do it; the very last one, the one that shatters the ridgepole. If I keep on at it, I might get there in the end. Everything is accumulative, learning does not take place without repetition, reinforcement, echolocation. Practice will get you everywhere. By gently placing the attention, over and over, the mind gets used to whatever you are doing with it, and starts repeating the pattern by itself. Anything you do every day will have a result. Just have a look during the day at what you are paying attention to, what you are doing with your mind, what you are thinking of over and over, and try to see what it is creating... or what has already been created by it. See how difficult it is to change! Replace what is not helpful with instead something that is helpful. I am fairly sure that is the only way to progress? 

    This morning, when I should have been meditating, I was thinking about how to explain this concept, and it's like my mind when I first sit down to meditate is a complete mess, everything all jumbled up. This is I think a universal experience for anyone starting to meditate: as soon as you start to realise what's going on in your mind, it seems like an impossible task, the clutt er  in there is unbearable, you realise you're never going to be able to sort it all out. But that's an illusion. It's only because you've just begun to look at it, you've just noticed it, that it seems that way. If you hadn't bothered to look, it would have carried on being cluttered but you probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. When you go into the shed to find a screw or a nut, and you see something like the picture above (it's a picture I just took, of the very useful box of random screws and nuts and miscellaneous bits and pieces in our cupboard,) you don