Category Archives: mind

PROMPT: Negative Feelings

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Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
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Feel them, but don’t feed them. By that I mean take time to be aware of the feelings, but do not let the mind go into its default mode of fixation upon the object informing these sensations and worst-case scenario building. Give the feelings your attention but recognize that you influence your experience of the world and don’t give the mind free reign to build an illusory scenario that it accepts as its reality. (i.e. Remember what Mark Twain said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”)

The biggest problem with negative feelings is that the go-to modern strategy is attempted distraction (by vice, by entertainment, by activity, etc.) this leads the body to turn up the heat. If you give the sensations your attention without adding value judgements, it becomes impossible to obsess. For yoga practitioners who’ve done Yoga Nidra (Yogic sleep) the experience will be familiar. One often begins by being attentive to sounds, by giving the sounds attention without judgement, your mind starts to lose interest and it becomes harder for those sounds to distract you throughout the practice. This approach to negative feelings is much the same.

Also, breathwork that extends the exhalation component of breath will shift the balance toward rest and digest activity.

Ultimately, realize that these feelings are just sensations your body and brain use to turn your attention in certain directions. They have no more power than that, other than what one grants them. They are not identical to — or inextricably linked with — the events of the world that triggered them, and — therefore — you get to be the master of, and not the slave to, your feelings.

The next time you find yourself getting bogged down by a negative feeling, give the feeling a minute or two of pure undivided attention, and then think, “This is a wonderful opportunity to learn how my body and mind work.” See what happens.

PROMPT: Superstitious

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Daily writing prompt
Are you superstitious?
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No. I’ve trained myself to recognize factors, such as selection bias, that contribute to superstitions. And I try to hold all beliefs only so tightly as they can be shaken away by better understanding, particularly beliefs that aren’t strongly supported by experience and reason.

PROMPT: For a Day

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Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
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A Buddha / Bodhisattva (if there’s one about these days.) Why? To feel how his (or her) subjective experience compares to my own.

Mind Fog [Free Verse]

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The fog envelopes me.
   I draw vivid pictures 
      on its white surface.

I don't know how I do it,
    But I know why.

It's a craving:
   To fill emptiness,
   To disallow silence.

The fog's texture is
   Subtle, but existent. 

Should I not sketch my story
   On that white surface,
   But rather give it my attention
      then I might see that texture,
      and then see it clearly,
      and - eventually - feel it
          as I glide my hand 
          though space...
   Blind and at ease.

Flower Mind [Free Verse]

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Morning Glories
   don’t feel slighted
 because they bloomed 
   in the shadow of
   Mexican Sunflowers…

Though the humans 
   who otherwise might
 stop to admire them
   can now not be 
 bothered to notice them.

Bifurcated [Haiku]

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body in the temple yard;
 mind on distant mountains.

Be Water [Free Verse]

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The floating feather
   that eludes my grasp
      isn't haughty or gleeful.

It just rolls, slips, glides,
   and is gone.

BOOKS: “Practical Taoism” ed. / trans. by Thomas Cleary

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Practical TaoismPractical Taoism by Thomas Cleary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Shambhala

Like a number of Eastern systems, Taoism is thought of in many different ways by many different people, and a few of those ways are fairly “out there.” To some, it is a philosophy. To others, it is a religion. To still others, it is a style of magic. By “practical Taoism” Cleary is suggesting that the many varied sources from which he drew snippets, assembling them together to make a coherent whole, reflect some of the more down-to-earth philosophy of “inner alchemy.” [Not to be confused with the “alchemy” in which lead is turned to gold, but sharing the central idea that methods exist to convert a low-quality entity into a high-quality one, but in the case of inner alchemy these methods are breathwork, meditation, and movement techniques that improve one’s vitality as a human being.]

The good news is that Cleary does collect a group of ideas that seem less arcane and cryptic than the average Taoist inner alchemy manual content (or, at least, they are translated so as to seem so.) The bad news is that the average Taoist inner alchemy manual was apparently pretty darn arcane and cryptic, such that even this selection isn’t exactly clear as a limpid stream. Some parts of it are straightforward, but one still has some work to do to make sense of what the original authors were trying to get across. [Some readers will enjoy that more than others.]

Presumably owing to the attempt to simplify through selection and translation, the book isn’t annotated, nor does it feature much ancillary material besides a relatively lengthy introduction to setup the reader with a contextual backdrop. So, there is not a lot of help to clarify ideas that are murky. (I do recognize the translator’s challenge in that there is only so much he can do to try to clarify ideas without imposing upon the authors’ intensions.)

I enjoyed, and learned from, this book — even if I didn’t always feel I was reading a “practical” guide to self-betterment.

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BOOKS: “Original Tao” by Harold D. Roth

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Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (Translations from the Asian Classics)Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism by Harold D. Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher site – Columbia University Press

This book is built around a translation of an old Taoist manual called “Inward Training” (i.e. 内业,) and the book serves not only to elaborate the meaning of the twenty-six poems that make up the manual, but also to put this work in a context with respect to its place in early Taoist mysticism — which raises further questions as to what constitutes early Taoism and early Taoist mysticism. (Just as the earliest followers of Jesus didn’t think of themselves as “Christians” – at least not as we understand that term – it’s an open question as to when people started to think of themselves as Taoists and how that start relates to when people began holding a set of proto-beliefs that formed the basis of the school(s) of philosophy.)

“Inward Training” presents breathwork and meditational exercises that Roth calls “inner cultivation” — or what some have called “inner alchemy.” The book does contain the entire manual both in Traditional Chinese and an English translation, as well as a much more extensive elaboration of the teachings of the manual. The latter is necessary because, like many old manuals, sparse description, archaic language, and assumptions about common knowledge du jour make it difficult for the layman to get any depth of understanding from the manual, itself.

This is a scholarly work, which means that its readability isn’t the highest and it does dive into matters that will be arcana for non-expert readers. That said, particularly as works of academic philosophy go, its readability isn’t bad. The book is heavily annotated and offers and extensive bibliography.

If you are interested in Taoist practices of breath, meditation, and alignment, this book is well worth investigating.

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“Difference” by Stephen Vincent Benét [w/ Audio]

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My mind's a map. A mad sea-captain drew
   it
 Under a flowing moon until he knew it;
 Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked
   as jugs,
 And states bright-patterned like Arabian 
   rugs.
 "Here there be tygers." "Here we buried
   Jim."
 Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim
 About their buried idol, drowned so cold
 He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.
 A country like the dark side of the moon,
 A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,
 A country savage as a chestnut-rind,
 A land of hungry sorcerers. 
                                           Your mind?

--Your mind is water through an April
   night,
 A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its
   white,
 A lavender as fragrant as your words,
 A room where Peace and Honor talk like
   birds,
 Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth
 Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,
 Flutters and beats about those lovely
   things.
 You are the soul, enchanted with its 
   wings,
 The single voice that raises up the dead
 To shake the pride of angels.
                                              I have said.