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Ginseng1 said:
True.. Zazen (Zen sitting meditation) is to be performed with eyes open.

I usually enjoy the pure silence of meditating eyes closed with no visual impressions to reach me during formal sitting, but I often alternate in a sitting between eyes open and eyes closed.  So I might do something like starting off:

- 15 mins eyes closed,
- 15 min eyes open
- 15 min eyes closed
For a total of 45 min.


I find this helps keep the alertness sharp and guessing, as opposed to doing solely eyes open or closed, and I'm able to settle into deeper meditative states with my eyes open being sandwiched between eyes closed.  I've always had resistance to doing formal sitting with eyes open because of the visual disturbance, but this is always a reminder for us to really check in to ourselves, bring the gremlins into the light and burn the little motherfuckers to ashes.

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two other approaches you could try are eyes half open looking down, or eyes fully open while blurring your vision (slightly cross-eyed). i usually do the latter and find it works really well... you get the benefits of eyes open (clarity, alertness, etc) but without the distractions of seeing visual objects clearly. might be worth a try

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White Beard said:
I felt inspired to start this thread because I went on a 9 day trip for a geology class, and I was living close quarters with a whole bunch of guys all yelling and shouting and drinking beer and general monkey business.

The one thought that kept pulsing through my head was "Why the hell am I on this planet?"

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A particularly vivid example of the tantric attitude can be found in the story of a tantric lama who escaped Tibet when the Chinese invaded and who made his way to northern India, where he dressed as a layman and worked on a road construction crew for several years.  One day a former student happened by and recognized him.  Surprised to find an important lama performing lowly manual labor, the student asked why he had remained an anonymous road worker when he could have told his fellow Tibetans who he was and been returned to his monastery.  Had he done this, he could have lived in ease, surrounded by devoted students.  The lama replied that for him there was no difference between working on roads and living in a monastery.  He explained that when he shoveled dirt he visualized it as pure offerings to buddhas.  Moving heavy boulders symbolized his struggle to eliminate recalcitrant mental afflictions.  And his fellow workers were fully awakened beings whose actions were performed for his benefit.  Through his visualization practice, the world he inhabited had become a pure land, uncontaminated by the negativities that most people see as a result of their mental afflictions.

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Kickle said:
My father has recommended a series on Netflix called "Life" to me a couple times now. Apparently there is a scene that really works on the idea that no matter where you go, you cannot escape life.

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SweetLeafSamadhi said:

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White Beard said:
I felt inspired to start this thread because I went on a 9 day trip for a geology class, and I was living close quarters with a whole bunch of guys all yelling and shouting and drinking beer and general monkey business.

The one thought that kept pulsing through my head was "Why the hell am I on this planet?"

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A particularly vivid example of the tantric attitude can be found in the story of a tantric lama who escaped Tibet when the Chinese invaded and who made his way to northern India, where he dressed as a layman and worked on a road construction crew for several years.  One day a former student happened by and recognized him.  Surprised to find an important lama performing lowly manual labor, the student asked why he had remained an anonymous road worker when he could have told his fellow Tibetans who he was and been returned to his monastery.  Had he done this, he could have lived in ease, surrounded by devoted students.  The lama replied that for him there was no difference between working on roads and living in a monastery.  He explained that when he shoveled dirt he visualized it as pure offerings to buddhas.  Moving heavy boulders symbolized his struggle to eliminate recalcitrant mental afflictions.  And his fellow workers were fully awakened beings whose actions were performed for his benefit.  Through his visualization practice, the world he inhabited had become a pure land, uncontaminated by the negativities that most people see as a result of their mental afflictions.

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Excerpted from John Powers Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. (Chapter 9, page 262 in my copy).

Kind of a lofty example, but your post brought it to mind.

Could make a comment along the lines of "it's all a matter of how you choose to perceive things."
Questioning feels more pertinent, though:
Would your aspiration of traveling to a monastery or hermitage be to attain a similar state of mind, feeling less perturbed by the day-to-day world?  Or would you prefer the escape from social life?

Have met a small handful of monks and ex-monastics who paint monastic life as surprisingly drama-filled, in some instances.

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Kickle said:
Silence is an incredibly powerful social tool. Do you ever just let someone's words hang in the air? Since I was little I've tended to let people run away with their thoughts when talking. I don't interrupt or interject my own thoughts, I let them have the stage. My own person version of psychoanalysis I guess except I don't sit behind someone. But every now and then a question comes up or there's a social cue that means "your turn". Sometimes I'll speak my piece, but sometimes I'll also just let that hang in the air. As long as I'm alert, attentive, and giving the signs of engagement people do not seem to wonder if I've heard or not. It's an interesting little experiment to see how it plays out.

Social dynamics are really strange and the ruts we form around them can get really deep. Every now and again it's nice to just hop out of them all together and watch what happens.

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SweetLeafSamadhi said:

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A particularly vivid example of the tantric attitude can be found in the story of a tantric lama who escaped Tibet when the Chinese invaded and who made his way to northern India, where he dressed as a layman and worked on a road construction crew for several years.  One day a former student happened by and recognized him.  Surprised to find an important lama performing lowly manual labor, the student asked why he had remained an anonymous road worker when he could have told his fellow Tibetans who he was and been returned to his monastery.  Had he done this, he could have lived in ease, surrounded by devoted students.  The lama replied that for him there was no difference between working on roads and living in a monastery.  He explained that when he shoveled dirt he visualized it as pure offerings to buddhas.  Moving heavy boulders symbolized his struggle to eliminate recalcitrant mental afflictions.  And his fellow workers were fully awakened beings whose actions were performed for his benefit.  Through his visualization practice, the world he inhabited had become a pure land, uncontaminated by the negativities that most people see as a result of their mental afflictions.

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c0sm0nautt said:
I bet the extraverts find that extremely awkward.

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