Feeling Broken

"I do think that all of us think in poems. I think of a poem as being deeper than headline news. You know how they talk about breaking news all the time, that — if too much breaking news, trying to absorb all the breaking news, you start feeling really broken. And you need something that takes you to a place that’s a little more timeless, that kind of gives you a place to stand to look out at all these things. Otherwise, you just feel assaulted by all of the tragedy in the world."

~ Naomi Shihab Nye, from "Telling a Story Helped Us Figure Out Who We Were," PBS NewsHour: Art Beat, Nov. 18, 2003

Austin Kleon, Blackout Poems

Open Road by Austin Kleon

Folk Wisdom

Kenneth Folk wisdom, that is. 

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See also: Kenneth Folk's Quick Start Guide for Awakening 

Really Accepting

What is Mindfulness?

Very Different from a Wandering Mind

Excerpt from David Vago's Buddhist Geeks conversation (Episode 262) with Vince Horn, "The Emerging Science of Mindfulness Meditation":

My contribution to David Vago's research study on rest. Boston, March 17, 2012Another project we’re working on [is] with Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young. You know, I have to admit I’m really attracted to his model of teaching because it really articulates a very specific way of mental noting and labeling. And because he’s sort of integrated a little bit of Zen, a little bit of Theravada, and a little bit of Shingon into his model, his way of teaching mindfulness. He’s created a very specific framework that is easily testable in science.

And so that makes it easier for me, for someone who’s trying to dismantle these processes into component parts to really understand, well what is it – how is it that when we’re resting and for example, he has a mental noting or labeling technique that allows us to know and label the arising, the experience of, the passing or the absence of multiple modalities of inner or outer experience.

For example he uses inner hearing or auditory modality, a visual modality, and a visceral-somatic [modality].

So the idea is you can hear your mental talk of here’s something from the outside; you can see something externally or you can focus on internal visual imagery. There can be somatic, visceral somatic states from inside or you can feel physical touch.

All those are going to be very different in the brain. And what you’re doing when you’re thinking about each one of those while resting, for example, or just noting and labeling the absence of those is going to look very different from a wandering mind that’s more discursive. And so now we’re really trying to understand using his methods what’s going on in a resting, resting mind that is focused towards a very specific modality that he uses in his system. And that’s going to just I think completely blow away our conception of what we think the mind is doing when it’s resting.

Listen to the entire interview...

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See also:

• Want to discover what Dave and Shinzen found out from their research study? Curious Habout how Shinzen’s meditation techniques affect the brain? They’ll be presenting their research findings for the very first time at this year’s Buddhist Geeks Conference on Sunday, August 18 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. 
• ContemplativeNeurosciences.com
• Mind and Life Institute
• The Dark Night Project
• Mapping the Mindful Brain
• Contemplative Mind in Life

Be Openness

Excerpt from Instant Enlightenment: Fast, Deep, and Sexy by David Deida:

Go inside yourself as deep as you can. Feel inward, deeper and deeper. Is there an end to how deeply you can feel? If not, keep feeling inwardly until you are certain inward never ends.

All there is inside is a deeper and deeper openness.

Now, feel outwardly as far as you can. Listen to the most distant sounds you can hear, and then listen further, into the openness beyond the furthest sound. Notice the most distant light, and then gaze beyond it, into the endless openness...

Now, simultaneously, feel the openness that goes on and on, both inwardly and outwardly. Really do this, and you will discover that feeling never ends in any direction. The most basic sense of being, of existence, is the openness of feeling in all directions. Being is feeling wide open.

As soon as your feeling stops short of on-and-on, feel whatever you are feeling (a tree or a thought), and feel beyond it. You don't have to stop feeling anything (you can still feel the tree or the thought), but also feel the openness that goes beyond anything. Feel further than you've ever felt before, zillions of miles inwardly, and zillions of miles outwardly, on and on, wide open. 

This is who you are, this wide openness, feeling with no boundaries.

Be openness, feeling on and on, while having sex or during a conversation, and your lover and friends will begin to feel an unbound openness, too. 

Do you have a better way to live your life? The choice is yours.