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# 2020-08-24 - On Meditation by Morrie Schwartz | |
Painting of meditator by sunlit waterfall | |
Find what is divine, holy, or sacred for you. Attend to it, worship | |
it, in your own way. | |
About ten years ago I became dissatisfied with agnosticism. I wanted | |
spirituality in my life, and I decided meditation sounded like a | |
spiritual practice that suited my principles. | |
I've gotten a lot out of meditation, even though I'm not great at it | |
and I don't do it every day. I meditate by sitting and watching my | |
breath and watching from moment to moment what goes on. It's a form | |
of meditation that has been a wonderful reinforcement for my | |
psychological and sociological approaches to dealing with being | |
physically ill. | |
My predisposition to the principles of meditation goes back many | |
years to Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher I met in 1949 or the | |
early 1950s. My analyst was interested in him, and when he came to | |
Washington, D.C., I went to hear him and was very impressed. | |
He was probably in his fifties. He looked very thin, quite | |
dignified, with gray hair and stern visage. | |
His view was that you have to question all your presuppositions about | |
life and living--about the nature of your relationships, your | |
society, yourself, and what you expect and accept. The world is not | |
a given. What we think and do are not the same as what people | |
thought and did a hundred years ago. | |
Even our sense of what reality is changes over time. For example, | |
the car as an essential private property is a concept we developed. | |
There's no law of nature that says we have to get around in cars, or | |
that individuals should have their own cars. If everyone agrees that | |
cars are no longer wanted, soon no one will have, make, or use a car. | |
The automobile will be gone. | |
Look at how quickly and completely our concept of the world became | |
altered when we dropped the atom bomb. Suddenly, we realized that | |
all humanity can be wiped out in an instant if a few hundred people | |
decide that's what they want to do with the bombs they have | |
available. We created a different sense of the solidness of the | |
world. When you put it that way, you can understand what | |
Krishnamurti was driving at. He was asking us to look at the wicked | |
ways we deal with each other, though he did not use those words. | |
Look how cruel we are. Look how murderous you are. Look at how | |
inhumane we are to each other. Why do we behave this way? And he | |
was saying that each individual has to come to this realization for | |
herself or himself--that's what the path of enlightenment is all | |
about. | |
There is no one way that works for everyone. Keep looking around | |
until you find the path that's right for you. | |
... | |
When you meditate, you note the feelings, thoughts, and sensations | |
that go through your mind, then let them go and notice the next ones. | |
... That's what meditation does--it gets your mind into another | |
space or an alternative reality. I want to make it clear that I | |
don't suggest that you try to avoid experiencing whatever you're | |
experiencing. ... whatever it is, let yourself feel it--but also | |
know that you can detach from it. If you don't let yourself really | |
experience what's going on, it won't be clear what you're detaching | |
from. | |
From: Morrie: In His Own Words | |
tags: book,inspiration,spirit | |
# Tags | |
book | |
inspiration | |
spirit |