All the time

I spent a lot of time meditating this weekend, a lot more than I have in recent weeks. It was really great to get back into it. I had forgotten how inexplicably wonderful it is.

I was riding back from work today and noticed how quiet and clean my mind felt. (It's so hard to describe the feeling, but so wonderful in every way). I felt more energized than I've felt in months. I thought to myself "how wonderful it would be if I could always spend this much time meditating"

But what I noticed was that I was still wishing for something that "wasn't". I wanted to be meditating, but wasn't currently. When I reflected further, I realized that I had gotten to this wonderful place for the exact opposite reason -- by sitting and seeking nothing. By simply observing. Through direct mindfulness of body and mind for the larger part of 2 days.

And that's when one of those "duh" moments struck me (where the words of all the wise people come back all at once) -- it is indeed very much about the present, and not about any other time. You can be mindful and meditative no matter what the situation. It just requires a very small amount of effort and awareness applied in the right way.

So little to get so much.

So I applied it on the bike ride. And was no longer missing anything. Just riding my bike, pushing hard, and all the while aware of everything as it came up.

(Also, I'm just very happy that I seem to be letting go of gains in the world of meditation. I just don't care if I "get somewhere" anymore. And it just feels so much more natural when I'm ok with simply sitting there and being mindful, and just observing whatever comes up. It's good enough!)

One last thing -- I'm so grateful that there are people out there who've been there and want to help us get there. What kindness!

Misunderstood Monks...

From Matthieu Ricard's blog:

The vocation of the hermit is often misunderstood. The hermit does not withdraw from the world because he feels rejected, because he can find nothing better to do than wander in the mountains, or because he is unable to assume his responsibilities. He decides to leave, a decision which may seem extreme, because he realizes that he cannot control his mind and solve the problem of happiness and suffering amidst the endless futile and distracting activities of ordinary life.

http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/237_lhermite/

(Similar justification for going on a meditation retreat)

mundane

Even the most mundane circumstances and situations can be wonderful if we are free. Who would think that "half an hour laying on the couch not thinking much" could be experienced as rich, full of sweetness and fulfilling?

When the mind lets go, every moment is ripe with limitless potential. Freedom can be found anywhere, it seems.

Beautiful Parking Lot?

After meditating for a few hours on Wednesday, my mind was in a very quiet and peaceful state. Beyond the usual feelings that accompany meditation, the "silence" of my mind was particularly notable. As I walked back to the car, almost no thoughts, reactions, subcurrents or urges passed through my mind. The world felt wonderfully silent and clear.

At that moment, everything was extraordinarily simple. I was just walking with my eyes focused on the ground in front of me.

I realized that when the mind quiets down, and the constant stream of thoughts/desires/anxieties fades, nothing remains except a profound sense of peace and beauty. As I walked with  eyes fixed on the ground in front of me, I directly experienced beauty everywhere. The feeling had been revealed; it was no longer covered up with my feelings toward the objects in my view, or with thoughts of something else ruminating in the back of my mind. It's something that's always there underneath the noise, but only becomes apparent when the mind is quiet and clear.

It was a beautiful parking lot indeed.

Making a habit

A nice post by a well-known blogger. How to meditate every day. (Hint, start small)

http://zenhabits.net/meditate/

Non-meditation

Over the past few years, I've been pretty good about meditating every day. At one point, I had gone almost 3 years with only about 5 total missed days.

Lately though, things have been tough. Work is a nonstop challenge, and sometimes I can only carve out 5 minutes for meditation before I fall asleep from exhaustion. Sometimes this happens for a couple days in a row. It adds to my stress when I'm not meditating regularly, but it has also been quite a revealing experience.

During these periods of non-meditation, I notice quite a few changes to my mind and mindset:

• I have a lot of thoughts of self-doubt and self-loathing. I sometimes catch my mind telling me that I'm worthless/useless/stupid/etc. "What am I doing with my life?!"
• I have a lot of regrets. Even if they're trivial, these regrets play over and over in my mind for hours or days 
• I react sharply to things/people that annoy me. Sometimes this hurts my relationships
• I snack impulsively
• I have a general haze of sadness or dissatisfaction that lingers over all my experiences. My sense of purpose and drive are diminished. I'm less happy.
• I'm attracted to things and people I know I shouldn't be paying attention to. (Particularly destructive/annoying is being drawn to women/girls other than Julia)
• I waste a lot of time on facebook, and get jealous of various things that are happening in other people's lives
• I agonize over decisions, and tend to be indecisive
• I worry more
• (and many more like the above)

While all these things are indeed unpleasant, periods of non-meditation are incredibly useful for reminding me of the value of keeping up the habit. It's amazing to realize that all of these problems are a complete non-issue when I meditate. Spending 30 minutes a day to wipe out everything on this list? Definitely worth it.

While I'm probably preaching to the choir (knowing the audience of this blog), hopefully this is motivation for you to meditate as well. It's hard for me to believe that 1) this is what life is like all the time for people who don't meditate, and 2) that they put up with it even though there's such a simple and easy fix. Just sit there and focus on your breath!

(OK, time to get out of this funk and spend a few hours on my favorite hobby)

After a run

(It seems it's quite easy to have interesting experiences immediately after a run, if I take a moment to "cool down" at the end before heading back to work)

As I slowly circled the parking lot, I daydreamed about some shady looking guys in a car coming out and shooting me for some reason. I thought, "faced with certain and impending death, what would I say [to them]?"

"I wish for nothing but freedom and happiness for all humankind. [Carry this wish forward for me]"

Remembering my true purpose in life (triggered by imagining my own certain death) suddenly brought forth immense calm and joy. I am not just someone working at a startup with many responsibilities. I am not just some guy named Jeff with a past history of so-and-so, and a house here and a car there. I am not defined at all by these things. I am nothing but what can be seen and felt right here.

There is nothing at all I need. My only wish is that all beings be freed from suffering. That is what matters in this life to me. There is nothing in this world worth clinging to.

Please find your happiness and peace.

Running

Here's a short observation about running (that I had a couple of days ago).

Running is nice for many reasons (it's good exercise, you get to see interesting things, you can get back in touch with reality, etc), but I particularly enjoy the way it helps my mind jump out of whatever mindset it was locked into earlier. When I go running, it's like I hit "reset" on my mind (especially when my mind has been very busy or tied up thinking about work). By the end, it seems to naturally emerge into this meditative happiness. It's quite nice.

I think the best analogy is that it "shakes off" all of the thoughts that were weighing me down all day, and allows the peace that's lying underneath that dusty web of thoughts to emerge.

Failure

I tend to talk a lot lately about all the great things that are happening as I meditate and take actions to improve myself as a person. But every once in a while, I break down and have a failure. Today was one such failure.

I meditated for a couple hours in the morning, but noticed I was more agitated than usual. That's fine, since there's no such thing as a perfect day. Besides, expectations that meditation will "fix everything" will lead quickly to giving up on it. It's never an immediate cause-effect relationship.

After the meditation though, I had to go to the Apple store to get Julia's computer fixed. The screen stopped working out of the blue, with no apparent cause (she hadn't dropped it, etc). I was agitated as I was trying to find a parking spot, because they make you sign up for appointments, and it took 15 minutes to find a spot, making me late. Without turning this into a gripe session (by going over the details), I got pretty worked up when I was talking to the service employees, because they wanted to charge me money for something I felt should have been covered by their warranty. I was angry and I was definitely showing it.

As you might recall, I promised a while back to quit getting angry. This was a clear case of breaking that promise. However, I had time to reflect as the customer service employee took down the computer's info to get the repair started. At first, I thought "Ugh, I failed again. I'm a total failure. All this meditation and self-improvement stuff is crap. I'm just a big phony, talking about all this high-minded love and stuff." That's a pretty typical response for me when I fail. I get pretty down on myself. It usually makes me more agitated, and I "give up" in my mind. The agitation from failing contributes to even more anger, and I see no reason to continue trying to rein it in. The downward cycle continues.

But at some point, I reflected: "I'm angry. That's not what I want to be, but that's ok." I mentally checked it off as a red "x", and then made the commitment to try to move on a bit. It was hard. But then I thought "well, maybe this interaction can still be salvaged. This guy is trying to help. He actually looks a bit scared." I was still angry (with righteous indignation regarding some of Apple's policies) -- there was no doubt about that. But I had a little space to work with.

Towards the end, I decided, there's no point in me sticking to a position just out of principle, or to protect my self-image. I told myself I'm going to at least apologize to this guy for being a jerk. At the end, to finish up the repair process, he stuck his hand out to shake my hand. He was clearly dreading my response, since I had been pretty curt. I shook his hand, and sort of muttered "Sorry I was so grumpy." It was kind of half-hearted, as there was still anger lingering in my mind. He then said he was sorry he had to charge all that money, it's just the policy. I tried to say something else, but it still came out a bit awkward. "Yeah, but I apologize for being so rude. I've just been running around pretty stressed out and stuff." He accepted, but still seemed a bit nervous.

I walked out not feeling so great, and was self-conscious about the things I did (get angry, then apologize). I felt their gaze on my back as I walked out of the store. But once I was outside, I just let it go. "Whatever. Nobody's perfect. Time to move on." From that point onward, I tried to make up for it by giving right of way to others, by asking how other people were feeling, etc. The agitation was (and still probably is) lingering, but I smiled a bit internally when I saw that I at least succeeded in being kinder to others afterwards, without giving in to the lingering anger in my mind.

There are reasons to be optimistic, even about failure.

At peace

A thought occurred to me the other day (when I was feeling particularly at peace)

"At peace" -- when there is nothing that needs to be any particular way.

Conceptual thought

I had an interesting realization today: "Conceptual thought is both humanity's greatest gift, as well as its greatest source of dissatisfaction"

This is a rather broad and abstract claim. But I'll try to justify it here.

Conceptual thought helps us do a lot. We can generalize, qualify, and project, allowing us to anticipate the future with great accuracy. This enables us to take actions that will reliably lead to increased resources (for survival), while simplifying the assessment of a situation so that a minimum of time/energy is required to arrive at a decision.

As an example, by thinking about an orange as an abstract object with parts that are desirable (the inner fruit) and undesirable (the skin and seeds), I can efficiently derive nutrition from it by quickly deciding to eat the fruit and leave the peel and seeds. If I looked at it and only saw colors, or perceived all of the molecules that comprise it, I'd miss it completely, or be lost in thought for days examining it. Either way, I'd starve (or be eaten by a predator adept at conceptualizing me as a potential meal!).

As humans, we've obviously taken conceptualization far beyond simple survival, and understanding what can and can't be eaten -- we've used conceptualization to create powerful systems that support the lives of billions of human beings (farming practices, manufacturing, etc). The development of these systems would be completely impossible without conceptual thought. It is indeed our greatest strength.

Yet I also make the claim that it is our greatest source of dissatisfaction. And how is that?

So long as we live within the world of conceptual thought, our capacity for happiness is severely limited. This is because in the world of conceptual thought, we spend most of our time and effort trying to achieve short periods of happiness. (When viewed from the perspective that time is a resource, we are spending >90% of it to feel good for <10% of the time. That's pretty inefficient.)

For example, I might spend 5 minutes picking over a basket of oranges to find the "good" ones. I conceptualize all the oranges, and based on various perceived attributes, I make my decisions. This time is either spent in a "neutral" or "goal-seeking" state of mind. Not enjoyable in itself. However, the time spent in pleasure while eating that orange is very short -- on the order of seconds. Once the orange is gone, the sweet taste has left, and only a memory remains. Moreover, that sensation (the sweetness of the fruit) could hardly be called profound happiness. At best, it's "tasty" or "sweet".

Suppose instead that I were adept at stopping (or slowing down) conceptual thought, so that only sensations and my mind's direct responses to them remained. Then, rather than focusing on whether a particular orange was good or bad (a rather boring task), I could spend the 5 minutes in complete peace, without worry for which oranges were the best (or any other concerns for that matter). The happiness experienced for those 5 minutes is continuous (lasting for the entire period), and orders of magnitude greater in intensity and depth than that experienced eating a sweet fruit.

Now, extend that analogy to any type of activity, where most of the time is spent dissatisfied and striving, with a small treat at the end of the road. From one perspective, you could say that we are robbed of great peace (which could be potentially experienced for 100% of all moments) by the endless web of conceptual thought.

Seen another way, intense conceptual thought clouds over the mind, and prevents the flowering of deep peace that lies underneath. When we are free of regrets, worries, and obsessive thoughts, the happiness within us rises to the surface.

Why struggle so hard to gain so little, when the greatest treasure is so close at hand?

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EDIT: Just wanted to make it clear that I'm not advocating the ending of all conceptual thought! I just wanted to point out that while conceptual thought has in some ways been our greatest strength, it is still the source of great unhappiness. We should veer away from either extreme -- conceptualizing all the time, but also not conceptualizing at all. This post was meant as a reminder that conceptual thought alone will not lead to consistent happiness.

The Nuns

On my usual bike route for exercise, I head into the hills (up Elena rd, then to Natoma). At that intersection, I always pass by a very interesting space. It has the sign "Poor Clares Monastery" and has a lot of open green space and some buildings.

Intrigued, I eventually looked them up (http://poorclares.wordpress.com/). I know very little about Christianity, but apparently it's a monastery of nuns. Something on the website really caught my eye: "They live within the cloister observing strict papal enclosure. They are totally dependent on God’s Providence through benefactors He sends them." Basically, everything they get must be donated by others.

That reminded me of the practice of Buddhist monks, who rely entirely on the generosity of others for their food, clothing, etc (depending on the type of Buddhism they follow). I decided I'd go pay them a visit, after seeing that there's a place you can drop stuff off to donate.

I'd been putting it off for a while, but finally decided to go when our intern wanted to go on a bike ride. I loaded my bike shirt with tangerines and oranges, and we headed up the hill.

There's a little room where you go (see the website) to drop stuff off. We followed the instructions and buzzed the buzzer, and went in. To my surprise, the person who appeared behind the screen was a Chinese-American lady who was very smiley. We had a good chat, and she laughed and smiled a lot. She thought we had been there before, but she probably confused us with others. Her happiness and joy were effusive and genuine. It was very nice to chat with her. Then we left the oranges in the transfer box (since the nuns are cloistered) and went back to our bikes.

It was a very interesting feeling. I have no association with Christianity, but it was touching to see someone so happy and so genuinely devoted to a spiritual pursuit. It also felt nice to give something that was so sincerely appreciated.

Disbelief

As I stood in the parking lot, experiencing one of the happiest moments of my life, I couldn't help but chuckle in disbelief.

"Who would have thought such happiness was even possible? All I'm doing is standing in a parking lot just looking at cars! This happiness isn't even from anything I got or I achieved. Simply from being consistently mindful of my thoughts and feelings"

At this moment, my only wish is that all people (and all beings) experience this happiness.

Meditate, and devote yourself to self-improvement. It will lead to your happiness for a long time :)