Posts Tagged ‘meditation’

Integration

Saturday, September 8th, 2007

It’s common for people to spend a lot of effort planning a trip away. Even the shortest excursion can be smoother and safer given good foresight. But few give much thought, if any, to the difficulties they might encounter upon their return.

I recently came back from 2½ months away on a meditation retreat. There were little breaks here and there but I was mostly shrouded within a very focused and protective environment, letting the rest of the world whirl and change without me. These retreats are not new to me, but I usually go for only 10 days. While I knew coming home would include an adjustment period, there’s never really any way to know what you’ll get until you arrive.

(more…)

Ethical conditioning

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

I tend to believe that ethics is a sort of sense, a faculty that is developed by making sound and unsound choices and gaining experience from living through the results.

Those aspects of an action (mental, vocal, or physical) that lead to benefit of any sort for any being push the action toward the ethical end of a scale, while harm of any sort to any being push it towards the unethical. In this sense most choices have some mix of the two and it is often the case that we find ourselves having to compromise, though generally through lack of awareness of the true nature of the situation.

(more…)

The benefit of discipline

Sunday, October 8th, 2006

I’ve had various struggles with discipline throughout my life. I wrote before about keeping focus, putting things off, and getting enough sleep.

Discipline requires dedication and decision making. Dedication is necessary for maintaining effort during adversity, and decision making is needed to ensure there is no stalling because of uncertainty. Both dedication and decision making demand a certain degree of belief in why the goal is worth striving for in the first place.

And so we come to meditation.

(more…)