|
|
Post by robert on Oct 31, 2009 11:58:32 GMT -5
you know i have come to believe that we spend way too much time worrying about the comfort of others specifically during conversation. seriously what difference does it make what a person that will not remember you at all the next day thinks about a brief conversation during a football game. we are always looking for a way to find silence and peace in our lives, and a few years ago i started looking for it not just during the perfectly arranged meditation times but also during any space, any gap that i could find. trying to find a distraction for others discomfort can end up being a part-time job. just an idea from some one who spent years trying to make sure that no one was uncomfortable.
|
|
|
|
Post by loverofall on Oct 31, 2009 14:33:27 GMT -5
The football game for me was a very cool experience not one of worry for me. I probably didn't explain it very well.
I got to watch other people from a different perspective and see how they believe their thoughts. To be detached from it all and just to be present in a place like that was moving to me. 40,000 people yelling and screaming at what they project was at some level comical. This experience might not mean anything to anyone here but to me it was really different in a good way.
I agree, find the gaps all day long. In the car, at the game, walking to the bathroom or after typing an email. I am having great results with short moments through out the day.
|
|
|
|
Post by souley on Oct 31, 2009 15:42:24 GMT -5
The football game for me was a very cool experience not one of worry for me. I probably didn't explain it very well. I got to watch other people from a different perspective and see how they believe their thoughts. To be detached from it all and just to be present in a place like that was moving to me. 40,000 people yelling and screaming at what they project was at some level comical. This experience might not mean anything to anyone here but to me it was really different in a good way. I agree, find the gaps all day long. In the car, at the game, walking to the bathroom or after typing an email. I am having great results with short moments through out the day. Just to poke the experience a bit: In what way are you different from these people? |
|
|
|
Post by loverofall on Oct 31, 2009 21:13:07 GMT -5
Its no different than when I am around other people that are caught up in drama. Not better or different, just more aware and less attached to my emotions than probably most. An event like this has so much emotion generated and ego identification that it was an overload in some ways.
I am aware of the ego trap of this path being used by the ego to feel superior. I am sure my ego felt some of that.
|
|
|
|
Post by dramos on Nov 1, 2009 13:00:31 GMT -5
Some poetry, just wanted to share,
The Choice
The choice you make
Neither wrong nor right
But determines
Your ultimate plight
You have within
One of two
Which one you think
Will become of you
O' the beauty
That exist all around
High above
Upon the ground
Tis a choice be made
For each of us here
Be still in the moment
The choice will be clear
The spark will ignite
Within those that know
Now quiet thy senses
And forward you go
The desire of sense
Has held you at bay
With clutch on the mind
This is the delay
Release that which you thunk
And needed to know
Cast this aside
And you will glow
Free you will be
Peace will abide
Thus you will remember
It's ALL in the MIND
|
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Nov 1, 2009 15:59:43 GMT -5
Loverofall: At one time or another most of us have probably had the kind of experience you had at the football game; we become more detached than usual, and sometimes it creates a sense of poignance as we reflect upon the human drama from a distance. At other times we choose to get attached and become engrossed in the action. Going to a movie or a play is a lot like going to a football game. We choose to get into the story (or the game) and identify with the characters (or teams) even though we know that it is all a fantasy. Suffering only occurs when we forget that the stories are make-believe and we stay attached to them--especially stories involving "me."
You said that the experience was both "moving" as well as "comical." The Japanese have a word for what you described as "moving"--"yugen." We have no equivalent word in English, but what it means is the feeling we have when we sense the infinite lurking behind the forms of the finite. An example of yugen is when we walk through an empty banquet hall after a big celebration. Everyone is gone, the chairs are empty, the music has ceased, and the tables lie littered with plates and half-eaten food. The boisterous activity has ended and only silence pervades the space. Another example of yugen is hearing a lone unseen bird cry at dusk while looking out over a misty lake. It is possible to experience yugen while hiking in the mountains. We may crest a ridge and look into a vast rocky cirque filled with snow and ice and hear some rocks fall and echo in the distance, or walk into a valley of flowers with no one there to see them but us--thousands of life forms blooming in emptiness. Yugen can be quite powerful. In the above examples, there is no one there but a lone observer, but the same thing can happen in the midst of tumultuous activity such as a football game. One watches the action as if from a great distance and has the same feeling that Shakespeare was writing about in his famous lines--"they (the actors) strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
The ego can arise and take ownership of this kind of experience, which is what Souley was questioning, ("These people are attached to this story, but I'm not"), but it doesn't have to. The whole thing can occur in emptiness as oneness simply perceives the emptiness of itself. When the experience produces poignance, it is like oneness sensing its alone-ness. When it produces amusement, it is like oneness laughing at itself and saying, "Yes, this is also what I do. I go to games and identify with 300 pound strangers wearing certain color uniforms."
Poignance--yugen
Amusement
Attachment
Identity
Ego
Illusion
Oneness
What a story! The truth, unfathomable.
|
|
|
|
Post by loverofall on Nov 1, 2009 20:46:40 GMT -5
Your reply was dead on. I think I have had everyone of those experiences. The banquet example was one I had but never would of remembered. One other experience that comes to mind is walking into a church before anyone has arrived yet.
Thanks for that insight and understanding.
|
|
|
|
Post by souley on Nov 2, 2009 14:21:58 GMT -5
Its no different than when I am around other people that are caught up in drama. Not better or different, just more aware and less attached to my emotions than probably most. An event like this has so much emotion generated and ego identification that it was an overload in some ways. I am aware of the ego trap of this path being used by the ego to feel superior. I am sure my ego felt some of that. It is a pretty weird situation to be in. You know yourself to be more clear then others, but still not "clear enough" to understand why or how. I can definitely identify with the situation, the other side for me is always this sense of "if they are idiots, what the hell am I?", at least when the mind starts analysing, as it has a tendency to always do:) |
|
|
|
Post by question on Nov 2, 2009 14:23:34 GMT -5
I went to a football game and really felt like I was watching deluded people but instead of the usual disturbing feelings, It was a feeling of wonder and amazement at watching everyone get so worked up over their thoughts about a game of strangers. I had a great time talking with a drunk about his illusions and why it is suffering to root for one team against another like he did and how this is probably the most emotions these many of these people show all week. Of course he eventually switched seat to get way from the crazy man. Loverofall, I'm curious, who was playing? What is your team? I can relate to the football experience. I'm a football fanatic myself. When I was a kid I used to cry over a loss of my team. Shortly into actively seeking awakening and paying attention and dissecting every experience and the behaviour patterns of other people I too was amazed at how strange the situation is in a football stadium. Now I'm just one of the crazy fools in the crowd, but it's great fun, the whole drama, oh what a joy and what a relief to know that it's just a game. Hopefully one day this relief will catch on to the daily life. And here's the other thing. Imagine a stadium filled with 40000 spiritual seekers. How they go through a very similar drama, also watching a game (the enlightenment game) and believe to be 100% involved and interpret it to be a monumental struggle. It appears to me like they too are deluded, maybe even more so than the common football fanatics. |
|
|
|
Post by souley on Nov 2, 2009 14:54:30 GMT -5
I am sure my ego felt some of that. By the way, this kind of phrasing is pretty common, and I myself have used it before. But it is kind of devious. In that sentence, the I and the ego is the same. As long as there is an ego, any idea of "I" whatsoever, is exactly the same as the ego. When the ego goes, that is the whole "I" as we know it. "I feel that my ego is this and that" is exactly the same as "I, the ego, feels that my ego is this and that" Which is pretty silly! When this is all history, we can use I in another sense. Until then we can't really do nothing about it, but at least we can quit fooling ourself in this way:) I hope the more clear people can correct me if I'm out of line here  |
|
|
|
Post by loverofall on Nov 2, 2009 15:32:02 GMT -5
Question: It was a college game. I guess its no different like you say to compare that to daily life. I guess the 40,000 spiritual seekers are just as insane. Interesting comparison.
Souley: I will be aware of that. Your right, I felt some of that. The ego is just a name for conditioned mind patterns. Its doesn't even exist.
|
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Nov 2, 2009 16:05:01 GMT -5
I'm not sure that we should use the word "deluded" to refer to most football fans. A better description of the situation would be "temporary attachment by choice." Most football fans, like most movie-goers, realize that what they are watching is a game (or a story), and enjoy the drama as a drama. They are deluded only if they can't distinguish (or refuse to distinguish) between reality and the artificiality of the drama. If their team's loss produces real suffering, then they have gotten too attached to the drama and lost sight of the bigger picture. Unlike a football game, of course, very few people come out of a movie and suffer afterwards over the fate of the actors in the story. They know that the story was a story and it had a conclusion.
Anybody can go to a football game and enjoy it (enlightened or not), and there will be no suffering if no one gets overly attached to the outcome. The problem in life is that most of us get very attached to our ideas about how the world should be, how other people should act, etc. The spiritual path, as I see it, is the path of seeing through our thought-created illusions and becoming free of our conditioning. It is the path of releasing the intelligence of the body to operate without having to suffer under the burden of a mind-created meta-reality. If the body is in control, the intellect becomes a servant. If the intellect is in control, the body has to deal with some serious do do.
Anybody at the football game (whether enlightened or not) can detach from the action and view it from a more cosmic perspective, but this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with clarity. I think clarity has more to do with seeing and accepting what is (the game is over and a particular team won), and being able to distinguish between reality and thoughts ("my team should have won," or "if the quarterback had done something different, we would have won"). Let's consider several situations in this regard:
1. A husband thinks, "My wife shouldn't have backed into that telephone pole. She should have looked where she was going. I am so angry that this is going to cost us money to get the car fixed. She never pays attention to what she's doing."
The husband's first statement is false. His wife SHOULD have backed into the pole because that is what she did. His second statement is also false. He wife SHOULD NOT have looked where she was going because she didn't. His last statement is also false. Sometimes she pays attention and sometimes she doesn't (just as he does). His ideas about how things ought to be (a fantasy) make him angry because he is attached to his ideas and that causes him to suffer. His failure to see and accept reality as it is, demonstrates a lack of clarity.
2. A woman thinks that if she marries a rich man who will give her money, security, and lots of possessions, then she will be happy. She doesn't understand where real happiness comes from and is therefore living under an illusion. She has no clarity, insight, or understanding.
3. A man is seeking enlightenment. He doesn't realize that who he thinks he is is a mind-created illusion. He lacks clarity, insight, and understanding.
4. A woman is very attached to her political beliefs. She is convinced that she is right and that anyone who disagrees with her is wrong. The woman has no clarity, insight, or understanding.
We could list another twenty examples, but these few probably illustrate the point well enough. I wouldn't want to push the football story too far because several different things are going on there, most of which are harmless, and only a few of which are potentially serious. JMHO
|
|
|
|
Post by jimmytantric on Nov 6, 2009 3:05:59 GMT -5
God is the Dancer, We are the Dance.
|
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Nov 6, 2009 5:00:45 GMT -5
jimmytantric: "God is the dancer, we are the dance", and writing about the spiritual path is part of the same dance.
Joyously pirouetting in emptiness......ZD
|
|
