Meditation 1: No Day But Today

I’m trying to get back into meditation practice. I’ve meditated before, and I used to do it semi-regularly. However, my commitment has waned significantly over the past few years. I think, perhaps, because I became very discouraged with a lot of things, and gave up on a lot of the healthier routines I’d been cultivating. Lately, I’ve had conversations and experiences which are leading me to see my spirituality in a whole new way, and it’s inspired me to re-acquaint myself with positive habits. As part of my zen journey, I intend to experiment with different meditation methods to find what works best for me; and I want to document my thoughts on these experiments, in hopes that perhaps my findings will be helpful to someone else on a similar spiritual journey. (Any tips or thoughts from the readers are welcomed and encouraged.)

I’ll just start from the beginning. I had a minor exchange of words with my boyfriend yesterday. The details aren’t important, and it was nothing major; just enough to ruffle my feathers a little. I decided that was as good a time as any to start meditating again, so I went back to the bedroom without saying what I was going to do. I sat on the floor, propped myself up against the bed for back support, and turned on my new Simply Noise app (which I downloaded at the recommendation of an online friend). It’s quite good for helping to tune out distracting sounds when you’re trying to focus. “Pink noise” on high oscillation – I find that to be the most soothing of the sound options available.

A few minutes later, I heard the door open as my boyfriend came through the bedroom and headed towards the bathroom. I began to wonder if he would ask me what I was doing. For some reason, I was expecting him to interrupt me and ask on his way back through. So, I immediately started rehearsing answers:

“Trying to calm down.” It wasn’t long before I realized how passive aggressive this response would have been. “Trying” to calm down implies that I’m still upset, that something is wrong, and that I’m TRYING to fix it, if you would get out of my way!
“Meditating.” A more honest answer; that was what I was trying to do. But still a bit short, and with a kind of snobby attitude, I thought.
“Hypnotizing myself.” That was to be my more light-hearted, sarcastic answer; an attempt at being mildly funny. But then I began to think… hypnotizing… more like I’m DE-hypnotizing myself, isn’t it? I was meditating to try to shed the illusions of emotion that got me riled up in the first place. Yes, “de-hypnotizing” is a more fitting description (and I’m thinking that concept might become a blog post of its own one day), but that answer would have required more explanation, digging into my meditation time… Moments later, I heard the door open and close again as he went back into the living room without a word. He hadn’t interrupted me at all. How funny that I had wrongfully assumed he would and immediately began planning a retort. A self-defense mechanism of the ego, I suppose. Since he hasn’t asked anything, I just let it go and tried to steady my mind again.

I was already a few minutes into the process, trying to stay focused on my breathing. Surely I’m not the only one out there who has struggled with the issue of distraction. I know regular practice is the key to filtering out the excess stimuli. I knew it had worked before; I was just rusty. I proceeded with my meditation, trying not to judge my wandering mind; trying to be gentle and observant rather than mentally scolding myself (an unfortunately common method I have of dealing with certain thoughts).

As I began to relax, I noticed my right eye kept drifting open, just ever so slightly as to let in a tiny speck of light and distract my attention. I tried to keep it shut without moving, but a few times I resorted to holding them closed with my fingers. When I pressed on my eyelids, the pressure caused a multitude of colors and shapes to dance around in my dark-vision. I remembered playing this way as a child, squeezing and fluttering my closed eyelids until I could see an ever-changing kaleidoscope of images. I was becoming distracted and a little restless. When I noticed my left leg was uncomfortable and falling asleep, I rearranged my legs from cross-legged to a wide-legged position. After a few minutes, I even threw in a couple stretches to keep the blood pumping. “…Jeez, is all this moving allowed in meditation?!”

The only thing that seemed to be moving more than my body was my mind. My thoughts were all over the place. I did my best to let them come and go without letting any sticky emotions attach to any particular idea. One such thought was, “Meditation is like time out for adults.” Not having made up my mind whether that was fully accurate, I moved on to the next thought – the issue of disciplining children: time-out vs spanking. I pondered the issues a bit and ultimately decided not to make a decision for or against either. I had no reason to defend a position on the topic, nor anyone to debate it with; it was all just a bunch of mental flashes streaking though my consciousness. I realized that the thoughts themselves aren’t so important, as long as I understand their true significance (or lack thereof) in reality. So, I had quite a think during this process. I thought about how I would be writing this piece and what I would say. I noticed a faint a clicking in the right side of my headphones that rose and fell with the oscillation of the pink noise. I anticipated the abrupt cutting off of the noise that would happen at the end of my 20 minute timer. I even became a little bored. And my breathing! “Am I breathing? Ok good, yes, I’m breathing.”

Then, the original thing that bothered me came to mind… the ruffling of my feathers. It wasn’t much of a quarrel at all; heavier in vocal tone than in number of words. By this time, I was able to examine the situation a little more closely and with more neutrality; my emotions weren’t clouding my view. I saw where my frustration came from, deduced where I thought his frustration came from, and I made a mental note to keep on file for the next similar situation. Looking at it rationally allowed me to dissect it, and ultimately keep picking it apart until it became nothing! It helped me to spot a pattern, and that’s what I’m looking for in my emotional control – spotting and recognizing patterns that lead me to negative emotion-driven decisions and destructive actions.

Before long, the pink noise suddenly stopped. My 20 minute meditation was up, and it was time for lunch. …And that was it! No great epiphanies or awakenings for now, but a few small steps in a good direction. I’d consider that progress, wouldn’t you? It’s a type of training, a discipline I need to learn. And doing it right then, before becoming angry, before letting it escalate, before a mountain rose from a molehill, THAT was the best possible time. And you know, it felt quite good to be in the moment.

If you feel out of balance, it’s important to go ahead and address it, rather than wait in stagnation. This is bad habit of mine. I have this strange desire to schedule my spirituality, or to align my life changes with major calendar events, putting them off until such-and-such date. … “I’ll start exercising again next week.” … “I’ll start eating right after the new year.” … “I’ll start that art project on the next new moon.” … But this procrastination is toxic and suffocating. I suppose I could associate yesterday’s meditation with the fact that my hometown here in Florida had some unusually wintry weather and ice, unlike anything I’ve seen in two decades! But I wasn’t meditating because of the cold. I was meditating because the time was right. I need to train myself to allow myself to do things when the time is right. I don’t know why I put a delay on my potential progress. Perhaps it’s a fear of failure. Or maybe it’s sheer, ingrained laziness. But I’m realizing now that this type of behavior does not flow with the Tao. I’m living in a future world where I WILL do things; not in a world where I AM doing them. I once heard in a beautiful song from the musical Rent that there is “No other path, no other way, no day but today.” Quite zen, yes?

Below, for your enjoyment, is a link to the finale song of Rent which includes those lyrics. Namaste, and happy meditating! ^_^ _/\_

Rent – Finale

The Vinegar Tasters: An Explanation of the Theme

Three men gathered around a vat of vinegar.
Each dipped a digit in then touched it to his tongue.
To K’ung Fu-tzu, the taste was sour; to Gautama Buddha, the taste was bitter; to Laozi, the taste was sweet.
All three different; all three one.

~*~

I’ve named this blog after the traditional Chinese allegorical image “The Vinegar Tasters”. There are many artistic portrayals of the scene; it depicts three men standing around and sampling from a vat of vinegar, each reacting to the flavor. The men represent the founders of China’s three major religious/philosophical ideologies: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism; and their reactions to the vinegar are said to reflect the viewpoints of each tradition.

To K’ung Fu-Tzu (Confucius, founder of Confucianism), the vinegar tastes sour. Admittedly, I do not know very much about Confucianism but will explain to the best of my ability. From what I understand, Confucius saw the state of the world around him as tainted. The people were out of harmony with the respectable ways of the past; therefore, the “vinegar” had soured by the contamination of corruption in the government and the people. His remedy was to put forth a set of virtues and etiquette that would bring focus back to ethics and righteousness. (I hope to post more on Confucianism in the future, after I have learned a bit more.) It seemed the sour vinegar was polluted, and that the goal was to create a fresh batch.

To Siddhartha Gautama (Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism), the vinegar tastes bitter. A major point in Buddhism is the idea of suffering (dukkha). Buddha did not see the world as corrupt but, perhaps, in denial. Suffering (or more accurately, “unsatisfactoriness”) is an inevitable part of life, and one of the three “marks of existence” (which I actually have tattooed on my leg, on Bodhi leaves, as a reminder). The idea is that we become trapped in the illusions of this world, and we become attached to things (objects, feelings, people, etc.) because we do not realize that they are impermanent (another of the three marks, annica). Clinging to that which cannot last creates suffering when the attachment is finally gone, or when we realize that it will be gone. So, to Buddha, the people were not corrupt but were plagued by their attachments. His solution stems from the third mark, non-self (anatta). It’s a bit hard to define, but the idea is that nothing/no one is “I” or “mine”, and that these concepts are just another illusion in the mind. When we accept that nothing lasts, that suffering is inevitable, and that even our own state of being is transitory and ever-changing, we can begin to search inside ourselves for freedom from desire and peace of mind. If not, we repeat the cycle, the wheel of death and rebirth, until we are ready to awaken. Siddhartha grew up as a prosperous young man, a Kshatriya of the Shakya clan. It was his discovery of suffering and the bitterness of life that opened his eyes and set him on his quest for enlightenment. He followed many popular spiritual practices of the time, but none gave him the answers he sought. He came from the extremes of extravagance in the lap of luxury and went on to the extremes of discipline in asceticism; but ultimately he found that the only answer was within, and the only way out of the cycle was to take the “middle way”. The bitter vinegar is unpleasant to taste. Pretending it is not is to deny its very nature, but letting the bitterness overwhelm and refusing to confront the flavor is avoidant denial.

To Laozi (often spelled Lao-Tsu or Lao-Tse, founder of Taoism), the vinegar tastes sweet. It is said that Laozi was a scholar, contemporary of Confucius, and an official keeper of the imperial archives. He grew weary of the city life, perhaps because of corruption or the tedious nature of his day job, and decided to leave. When he reached the city gate, a guard named Yinxi recognized him and requested that he write down his teachings, which had not yet been recorded. The result was the Tao Te Ching, a book on the “way” and “virtue” of life. In Taoism, simply put, it is what it is; the flavor of the vinegar is exactly as it should be. There is no reason to be appalled or to correct it; it tastes as it is supposed to taste. The true “flavor” comes from your reaction. Laozi saw the world as inherently right as it flows with the natural order of things, and that the perception of sourness or bitterness in life comes from over-interference on the part of man. Laozi’s idea was not to judge or critique the way of the world, but to accept it. If something is true to its nature, it is in accordance with Tao (“the way” or “the path”, a complex concept that I’m really looking forward to explaining and exploring further in this blog) and does not need changing. To interfere with the flow results in disturbance. The best remedy is no remedy, non-action (wu wei); and the practical way is to live compassionately, simply, and humbly (the three treasures).

From what I’ve read of The Vinegar Tasters, these deductions about the vinegar’s flavor are based on the men’s facial expressions. The scene has been painted many times in different ways; I am not sure when the allegory originated , what the image portrait might have looked like, or what the artist’s goal was in depicting these facial expressions. From what I’ve read of others’ interpretations, it would seem many see the allegory as favoring Laozi’s outlook. Some I have read express that Buddha’s reaction is actually emotionless, neutral, in a similar sense of accepting the taste for what it is. Or perhaps, Confucius is on to something; our word for “vinegar” comes from the French “vin aigre” meaning “sour wine”. Like all things, these expressions and their meanings can be interpreted differently. Personally, I gravitate towards more of a Taoist outlook on life. Of the three, it seems to be the tradition I am drawn to naturally. That is not to say that the other views have no merit, of course. In fact, my studies of Taoism led me to connect more with Buddhism than I ever thought I would, particularly Zen Buddhism. (I’m still not quite sure how Confucianism fits into my life; but I’m sure that, as I discover more, it too may find a place in my heart.)

The important thing to remember about The Vinegar Tasters is that it represents three ideologies that go hand-in-hand. The three men have different reactions to life, but all three have inspired similar ways of living life in order to achieve happiness and harmony. “All three different; all three one” – that is my interpretation, and I believe that is the underlying message here. We all see life through our own set of filters. We all find different ways of coping with life’s struggles, or accepting them, or correcting them. None are “wrong” or “better” than the others; they are simply different. Notice the men in the image are not arguing about the vinegar or what to do with it, simply reacting.

My goal with this blog is to sample the vinegar of life and take note of its flavor – my interpretation of life and my reaction living. I do not know if this will wind up being strictly an Eastern philosophy blog, but undoubtedly much of my inspiration will come from that area of thought. Originally, it was going to be all Eastern; all poetry. Now, in the spirit of Tao, I do not wish to force my entries in a particular direction. Instead, let’s just see where it goes, shall we? I find it difficult and fruitless to label things before they have barely even begun. I don’t like to label completed things either, if I’m being honest. (Ironic, considering I work for a label company.) So I won’t attempt to define what this blog “is” other than my own personal “vinegar sampling”. And there are so many varieties of vinegar, after all! Apple cider, balsamic, rice, distilled… so many to try! 😉

I encourage you all to take part in the sampling, and I welcome thoughts and responses. Perhaps some of my ramblings here may inspire, educate, amuse, or at the very least kill time for an audience. Perhaps not. It’s still too early to tell exactly what will happen here; but at the very least, I’ll consider it a public display of personal growth. Thank you very much for stopping in and reading my official second entry (after a nearly two-year delay).

For more information on The Vinegar Tasters, I’ve provided a link to the Wikipedia article; and of course a Google search can find just about anything these days. There is also a link to an excerpt from The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff, which explains his understanding of the allegory. And, just for funsies, a link I found for a site called Three Tastes, a cooking blog inspired by the allegory with some interesting looking recipes!

Enjoy! _/\_

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters

http://www.taoism.net/sanctuary/books/vintaste.htm

http://www.threetastes.com/vinegar/vinegar.html

Gudo and the Drunk

Teacher to the Emperor,
Of wealth he was not fond,
And so became a wanderer,
A roaming vagabond.
His name was Gudo;
He was on his way to Edo,
Tired and mud-splattered,
Looking ragged and tattered.

His sandals began to fray,
Clothing soaked enough to drown,
Until he came along the way
To Takenaka, a small town,
Where he found a farmhouse shop.
It was then he decided to stop
And peer in at a display of shoes.
He wished to buy, but which to choose?

In the storm he stood
Admiring the sandals,
When the shopkeep in a hood
Came out with lit candles,
A woman with a kind face.
“Sir, come into my place,
You can’t possibly stay outside,”
She smiled, but inwardly cried.

She gave him the shoes free,
A meal and room for the evening;
He thanked the fine family,
But saw they seemed to be grieving.
They looked worried and weary;
Of their woes he did query.
Blocking her tears with blinks,
“My husband gambles and drinks.

He borrows when he’s losing
Then he loses some more…”
Her visible bruising
Was visibly sore.
“…drinks when he’s winning,
‘Til his eyes start spinning.
Brawls and brags of his feats–
Not just his rivals he beats.”

Gudo gave the woman what little money he had,
“Bring fresh fish, the sweetest wine;
Then sleep neither sullen nor sad,”
And he sat before the family shrine.
Hours later, in the husband burst.
He spat and he stank and he stumbled and cursed,
Called commanding for something to eat;
Then spoke the man sitting at his feet.

Gudo offered him the drink and food,
“I have something for your appetite.
To express my gratitude
For your family’s courtesy tonight.”
The husband ate and drank himself to sleep.
Gudo sat beside him and breathed deep;
Calm with chaos, in contemplation,
Mind melting into meditation.

The next morning, the husband awoke,
Startled by his silent visitor,
“Who are you?!” the rough voice spoke
From the lips of the dizzy inquisitor.
“I am Gudo, of Kyoto;
I am travelling to Edo.”
Apologetic with shame,
The drunk would never be the same.

Gudo grinned, proceeding to say,
“All is impermanent; life is too short
To waste away every day
With activities of this sort.”
Opening his eyes, like seeing after blindness,
“How to thank a man for such kindness,
For the light and wisdom he brings…
Please, allow me to carry your things.”

The husband offered to assist;
For five miles the wise man obliged.
“You may return,” Gudo would insist;
“Ten more miles,” the man replied.
Ten later, “You’ve fulfilled your debt,”
Said Gudo, “Live not with regret.
With your aid I am sated; return to your wife.”
“I,” the man stated, “will follow you all my life.”

They say Zen teachers of today can trace a lineage track
To Gudo’s student Mu-nan, the man who never turned back.

~*~

inspired by:

http://zenquotes.net/gudo-and-the-drunkard#more-29