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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
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