2020-08-24 - On Meditation by Morrie Schwartz ============================================= Painting of meditator by sunlit waterfall Find what is divine, holy, or sacred for you. Attend to it, worship it, in your own way. About ten years ago I became dissatisfied with agnosticism. I wanted spirituality in my life, and I decided meditation sounded like a spiritual practice that suited my principles. I've gotten a lot out of meditation, even though I'm not great at it and I don't do it every day. I meditate by sitting and watching my breath and watching from moment to moment what goes on. It's a form of meditation that has been a wonderful reinforcement for my psychological and sociological approaches to dealing with being physically ill. My predisposition to the principles of meditation goes back many years to Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher I met in 1949 or the early 1950s. My analyst was interested in him, and when he came to Washington, D.C., I went to hear him and was very impressed. He was probably in his fifties. He looked very thin, quite dignified, with gray hair and stern visage. His view was that you have to question all your presuppositions about life and living--about the nature of your relationships, your society, yourself, and what you expect and accept. The world is not a given. What we think and do are not the same as what people thought and did a hundred years ago. Even our sense of what reality is changes over time. For example, the car as an essential private property is a concept we developed. There's no law of nature that says we have to get around in cars, or that individuals should have their own cars. If everyone agrees that cars are no longer wanted, soon no one will have, make, or use a car. The automobile will be gone. Look at how quickly and completely our concept of the world became altered when we dropped the atom bomb. Suddenly, we realized that all humanity can be wiped out in an instant if a few hundred people decide that's what they want to do with the bombs they have available. We created a different sense of the solidness of the world. When you put it that way, you can understand what Krishnamurti was driving at. He was asking us to look at the wicked ways we deal with each other, though he did not use those words. Look how cruel we are. Look how murderous you are. Look at how inhumane we are to each other. Why do we behave this way? And he was saying that each individual has to come to this realization for herself or himself--that's what the path of enlightenment is all about. There is no one way that works for everyone. Keep looking around until you find the path that's right for you. ... When you meditate, you note the feelings, thoughts, and sensations that go through your mind, then let them go and notice the next ones. ... That's what meditation does--it gets your mind into another space or an alternative reality. I want to make it clear that I don't suggest that you try to avoid experiencing whatever you're experiencing. ... whatever it is, let yourself feel it--but also know that you can detach from it. If you don't let yourself really experience what's going on, it won't be clear what you're detaching from. From: Morrie: In His Own Words tags: book,inspiration,spirit Tags ==== book inspiration spirit