John’s pocket treatise on meditation for you busy yuppies:
You are so wrong! Meditation isn’t resting. It’s in fact the opposite. It’s an active training of your mind. You don’t just sit there and be comfortable and think whatever you want. You are supposed to focus on something, an image, a thought, or breath, which is what most people do cuz that’s the easiest. Try it and see how long that lasts before your mind starts to wander. When your mind starts to wonder, you are supposed to bring it back to the focus. It is said, if you can do 20 breaths without your mind wandering, you’ve achieved the first stage. I will bet you money you can’t do 20 breaths. It’s like weigh lifting for your mind, oh wait, I don’t like that analogy, there’s no finess in weight lifting, it’s more like yoga for your mind, and in fact the 2 often go hand in hand, if you do it past the new age hippie I’m doing yoga! stage. And of course, the whole mind/body discipline thing later went to china and got incorporated into martial arts. Coincidentally, my kung fu teacher told us yesterday, it’s all about your mind, you train your mind, your body will follow (my paraphrase).
And if resting was all it took, white trash of the world would be the happiest people in the world. All they do is sit around eating and watching tv. how much more rest can you get? And of course the monks have a lot to worry about. They have to worry about the fascist chinese taking over their land, torturing them, destroying their culture, everything. If they had some fascist religion like one of those judeo-christian-islam, they’d probably be blowing up the chinese (which I wish they would). And they still have to make a living somehow. Do you think life is a bowl of roses? Not to mention the whole weight of contemplating human suffering and eternity. It’s like the image of Atlas with the globe on his shoulder, err wait, I don’t like that image either, it’s too obvious, lacking subtlety. I prefer the image of a monk sitting in meditation, calmly bearing it all. I’m all eastern today, I feel eastern philosophy is much more subtle and sophisticated compared to the crass barbaric western HELLO! IT’S RIGHT HERE IN BLACK AND WHITE! I think I will go to china town for lunch (yeah! high five,
Sheecheng!)
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