Hey what’s up whoever is reading this…Its been a while, in tumblr time- but also to a lesser extent in human time…

It’s sunday. I just got back from the gym. I forgot my protein shake here at my apartment so I had to skip my post-workout cooldown/stretching routine so I could fully utilize the “anabolic window” in which protein consumption is most efficiently absorbed by your body (about 30-45 min. after your workout). Not that micronutrient planning is anywhere near important as end-of-the-day macronutrient totals…but I digress.

Not really sure what I’m writing about though. I’m kind of just typing out what comes to mind, but I also thought I’d give this another try to see how my state of mind has changed over the past ~year.

…so yeah, I actually think the core topic is going to be about my spiritual/psychological development and my adventures in learning about buddhism/zen/meditation/krishnamurti.

I think the main hurdle I’ve overcome on my road to enlightenment concerns how I was viewing my thoughts and how I was attempting to control what was going on in my head. I somewhat recently bought a book called “Zen for Americans” that I picked up one day at that bookshop in Wicker park that’s pretty popular with hipsters and shit (me, yes). Its a pretty cool place actually, and the book was really cheap, and despite feeling like I didn’t really need any tailoring of Zen teachings because I was an “American”, it seemed to have the most in-depth and worth-while teachings from this Zen Master from the 50s or 60s or something- at least compared to the other books they had. Anyways, I began to read it, and for whatever reason I don’t think I fully understood what Buddhism was completely about until I read a number of this guy’s essays/transcribed talks on it (goes to show that maybe me being an American was possibly important). So over time I learned about buddhism’s view on god, and immortality, and faith, and ethics, and the Middle Way, and the 4 Noble truths, etc. But it was the chapter on spiritual enlightenment that gave me that “whoa” moment. As a side note, now that I’m reading krishnamurti I’m having more and more of those “whoa” moments, but that’s for later…anyways, there might be a lot I forgot, but what it said was that spiritual enlightenment “enlightens all our motives, desires, whims, determinations, impulses, thoughts, etc. It does not stand separate from other states of consciousness, sending its commands from a certain vantage point. In an enlightened mind a feeling or thought as it occurs is purified and free from the taints of ignorance and egotism.”

This was big for me because for a long time I was wrapped up in this battle with my mind. Whenever I would meditate, a thought would trigger a negative reaction in my head and I would try to squash it as effectively as I could. Using Mindfulness in my daily life was hard because there was this negativity pointed directly at my mind and its products. I find it somewhat disappointing that I didn’t see this earlier, even having read many manuals on meditation and what to do during it, but I guess I had to figure it out myself, which is one of the key points krishnamurti makes in the current book I’m reading. I had to stop this reaction to thinking and focus on simply observing thoughts as they arose. This is the technique that Vipassana meditation (taught in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, although it probably appears in Mahayana forms as well) teaches- a simple observance of thought, watching them grow and fade away with awareness. So I tried it and was amazed to see how easily thoughts were extinguished when I put my awareness onto them as they appeared. “Observing” a thought is something a bit hard to do the correct way I suppose, because by itself it almost creates this duality between the observer and the thinker, which isn’t how humans are used to thinking. Either way I knew this made more sense and something I had kind of previously heard from somewhere (possibly krishnamurti) seemed to make even more sense now. It was that there should never be a negativity or repression to how we, as humans, act and think. The end goal is an ultimate harmony with everything in our life. The problem is an ignorance about how our minds work, and an awareness- that’s it  -just an awareness of how we actually work and an awareness of ourselves is one of the key things that’s needed to reach that goal.

I read somewhere online that the before he died, the Buddha considered telling his disciples to throw away all his different teachings and keep only one: Know thyself.  

Anyways, I had heard about this guy krishnamurti a little while ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I decided to buy one of his books and check him out more extensively. It turns out he was groomed to be the next Buddha by some British group that wanted to unite all religions or something like that.  He ended up denouncing the organization that had paid for his education in Britain and proclaimed that no one should follow another person’s advice for their own spiritual enlightenment, but should figure it out for themselves- somewhat akin to what the Buddha originally wanted. Krishnamurti says he doesn’t advocate any religion, but all his teachings reflect a high level of Buddhist thought. He kind of takes these deeper, more fundamental ideas of Buddhism and interprets them with a more practical insight into the way we live, which is why I think I’ve found the book I have so interesting and helpful.

I just stopped to make dinner a bit ago so my ideas about where I was headed have kind of died, but I’ll try to pick back up….

Back to this awareness…So when you’re aware of all your thoughts, watching them closely, you’ll develop more a sense of who “you” really are…eventually…But I have to warn that there is a significant difference between an intellectual knowledge of what our “true nature” is, and an actual, experiential knowledge of it. The same goes for many concepts of Buddhism and zen. This is one of zen’s fundamental characteristics that attracted me to it. I could have this wrong, but Zen tries to wash away the taint humans have put on “the ultimate truth” and how to get there and what Buddha said about it. The real truth is something that cannot be described in words. No abstraction of the mind can begin to describe what this truth is like, or how to attain it. Ancient teachings can only point in the general direction and say “go that way”. The rest is up to you (a saying general to all types of Buddhism). Zen therefore tries to cut away at the root of the weed that is our current state of mind. It teaches the sole way to get to nirvana is to sit in meditation and try to have no thoughts at all. To make it clear, meditation is the key avenue to enlightenment in nearly all forms of Buddhism, at least the major ones I know of, but the concepts that Zen focuses on, and how to get there are slightly different. It was how I initially perceived Zen’s attitude towards thoughts that made it hard for me at first. I don’t think I have an accurate understanding of Zen because of that though.

Anyways, when you observe yourself, you’ll notice that there is nothing that clearly defines who “we” are. We’re actually a collection of fragmented memories and experiences that our minds try to make something permanent out of. This is what the ego is. My main goal now is trying to understand my own ego- to “know myself” by observing every thought that comes into my head. Intellectually, I know that who I think I am is not who I am at all. It’s what I’ve just described- a collection of fragmented thoughts and memories. There’s a whole lot that goes into how the ego works and its hard for me to write about it, so I’ll just make some more quick points that I’ve picked up from the book I’m reading now.

Harmony. Harmony with everything. Harmony with everything in the Universe. Our minds are constantly comparing things, pointing out differences, and making judgements about those differences. One of the reasons we compare is because we always desire something better. One of the 4 noble truths says the origin of suffering is attachment. This is desire. We desire pleasure and money and power. Who desires all that? You do…but who are you again? Both mentally and physically things are constantly changing. You cannot escape change. Change is the only constant in this world. Our minds try to get around this fact by creating this continuity of existence which we call “ourselves”. We try to connect our experiences into one concept that defines who we are, and we also look for a constant source of pleasure from the outside world.  The mind can’t deal with having something it wants, and then realizing it can’t actually have it forever. The mind is constantly trying to hold onto pleasure and joy- to have it be present at all moments of our life. This effort takes up a whole lot of our day-to-day thoughts- just watch yourself think for a moment…what is the thinking actually good for in the present moment?…This whole paragraph might be a bit all over the place, but my point is that who we think we are is not actually what we are. We’re a part of something bigger, yet unexplainable through human interpretation. Desire is the root of this process of differentiation of existences in our minds (again, I think I only understand this intellectually right now…), and being fully occupied with the present moment is key to overcoming this habit, because a thought is always about something that has happened or has yet to happen. But do not think that the mind (which produces thoughts) is something to be repressed.

The present moment is everything. But then again the ego is everything. Then again there is no real “path” to enlightenment because a path is a series of human abstractions pointing towards a transcendent truth. Then again don’t take my word for it, because you’re not me, and reading this is only filling your head with the things that are specific to me.

 Know yourself. If you need help, you can read a book about it, but in the end, it’s all up to you.