100 Day Meditation Challenge: Week 3 Retrospective

This was a strange week full of large realizations and great moments for me.

A Tedx talk on the brain evolving to take any input - aural, oral, visual, etc - led me to ponder the nature of our perceptual existence. We all take input from the same structures, but there is no way to verify that there is a difference due to confirmation bias. It makes me wonder what other people experience.

Then a genuine flash of insight: we are but a moment. We are not part of the time before this moment, we are not part of the time after this moment, we simply are. I've spent much time in my life concerning myself with futures and pasts to no avail. These things cannot change nor can they be foretold. If I am right in my actions now, all worlds are satisfied.

I tried to force my mind to free itself from being bound to myself, but the response was a harder push back with odd symbolism. In my own words, "[it] led to a strange image of my back peeling away like the tines of a feather." I feel like something within this thought could be a genuine personal contribution to the community, once I've determined the wisdom behind it.

Enacting different techniques gleaned from "Mindfulness in Plain English" by Henepola Gunaratana (Available FREE from http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html though I have a copy on my Kindle) helped immensely this week. I go into more detail on today's post here, but we should reach out for help in this time of interconnected loneliness.

If you read the previous post (Day 22) feel free to ignore this, but I would like to take a moment to reiterate my favorite koan that I refer to as "Tekisui".

"
A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath.
The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on to the ground the little that was left over.
"You dunce!" the master scolded him. "Why didn't you give the rest of the water to the plants? What right have you to waste even a drop of water in this temple?"
The young student attained Zen in that instant. He changed his name to Tekisui, which means a drop of water.
"

It is a simple koan and deserves some praise. We have a young monk who, in this short narrative, represents wastefulness. He uses some water for a task then deigns to need nothing more of it and throws it upon the ground. If not for his scolding he may never have realized the error in his practice - he was wasting himself like the water.

If only it were that easy to attain nirvana!