emotions

Ok, so I think I must have a bit of bloggers remorse. After such a long absence I suddenly feel compelled to regularly update my blog, plus someone (other than my best friend) actually read it and responded so although I don’t really have time to write a proper blog right now I thought I would at least post a copy of an e-mail I wrote to a friend lately.

My girlfriend wrote to me with a problem. She said she had been suffering a lot recently because she had these terrible negative emotions come up all of a sudden and didn’t know what to do with them. Usually she is not an angry person. Basically she had a bit of a crush on a guy and confessed to a close friend. Despite this knowledge her ‘close friend’ was soon after caught doing some drunken making out at a party they both attended. This ‘drunken making out has since developed into a bit of a proper relationship leaving my friend with a nasty chip on her shoulder.

From what she wrote to me I could see that the problem wasn’t the guy, a crush is no big deal she was over it. It was more the feeling of betrayal. And although she had ok’d everything with her friend the sight/ sound or even thought of them together stimulated a huge amount of anger in her that she knew was irrational. So she asked me if I had any suggestions about how to deal with this disturbing emotion before she lost them both.

This is all ripped directly with the mouths of the great lo-jong-sperts like Ani Pema Chodron, I claim no responsibility for this stuff but I know that it works and my friend also wrote back later and said she felt much better.

This stuff is for everybody no matter what your beliefs so I hope it can one day help someone……..

About your question well, you have to look at what’s

the real problem and not think about the story. 'She

did this he did that' 'I think this'. You have to look

at what’s going on in you because the rest you have no

control over.

So firstly next time you feel all cut up over it and

you get that ‘burning feeling’ you have to completely

drop the story line that starts running through your

head and just feel the pain and work out what it is.

Anger? Jealousy? Hurt? Don't think about the situation

just focus on the feeling. How does it feel like? The

physical feeling what is it. Where is the pain, chest?

Stomach? Face? (DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE STORYLINE THAT

IS CAUSING THE PAIN AT THIS POINT)

All our emotions are caused by our own mind and our

perceptions. You can't change the situation ever, even

by being cunning or deceptive you can only change your

mind so find out what's happening with your mind.

Privately you can do loving kindness meditation which

really helps soooooo much.

So you sit down and clear your mind for maybe 5 or 10

mins. Just follow your breath and don't think about

anything else. Then you imagine someone you really

love. Usually they say your mother. And really see her 

and feel love for her. I usually imagine my mum hugging 

me. Then think of someone who you like, maybe me (ha ha)

any friend or your dad or something and kind of feel the

love. 

Then you think of this friend you’re angry with. And try

to keep experiencing this great love you have for your

mother but have this girl you’re angry with in your

mind. Maybe imagine hugging her. Then you embrace all

sentient beings, every person who suffers every one

everywhere who has problems like yours but doesn’t know 

what to do.

That’s loving kindness meditation, you usually end up

feeling very blissed out and then next time you see

the person you want to run up and hug them. I was

doing lo jong a few days ago where you imagine taking

all the pain from others onto your self and I couldn't

find a satisfying image of a person suffering (starving

African ect) and then I thought of this girl here who

is a bit odd but very unhappy and used her image, it

worked ok.

But then the next morning when I saw her I nearly

cried and wanted to run up and hug her and stuff! It

was really funny. Of course although I didn't say

anything she could kind of sense this intense feelings

I had for her and every since then she's been my best

friend and before we never really spoke.

Funny hey!

So yeah I mean your best friend one day can be your

worst enemy the next day, it all really revolves around

your mind so if you can change that then all your

problems will disappear.

So I think no. one, when you get angry drop the story

and get acquainted with the feeling and not the reason

behind it. Your mind is producing this feeling, not

the story. Then when you have the time either in the

morning or in the evenings do the meditation for like

15 or 20 mins everyday for a week and you'll be fine!

If you have trouble dropping the story when that

feeling crops up maybe you can say a mantra like om

mani padme hum or even just breath in and out and say

it in your head, I'm breathing in... I'm breathing

out... breathing in.. ect this is also a good way to

quieten your mind when you start meditation.

Ummm, if this works for you go and get a book by Pema

Chodren. She is a hero of Lo Jong (mind training)

she's great. I read 'Start where you are' by Pema

Chodron and it was really great.

tired but still here

Its has been so long since my last blog that I seriously thought about just leaving it. I don’t think I get too many hits and at the moment I am so busy anyway that it doesn’t seem worth it. But I’ve found time today and I do want to keep it going. My original intention is still there, to try and benefit others through writing about my own experiences and yet ironically my biggest problem at the moment is pure laziness!

There are three main components to fulfill as a Buddhist, it’s the A, B, C’s of Buddhism, I’m talking about ethics, meditation and wisdom. They follow each other like milk, yogurt and cheese. The first step is to develop ethics so that you can then develop meditation which will lead to wisdom. As far as I can see ethics, as well as the more obvious don’t lie, steal ect also means keeping up ones practice and not indulging in extremes. By extremes they mean eating too much or not enough and sleeping too much or not enough ect.

Its not that I’m a bad person or anything or that I’m doing something ‘wrong’ but I am being soooo lazy. I make a decision that I want to get up and meditate for at least 10mins in the morning before morning puja, and yet when the alarm goes I hit the snooze and before I know it I’m contemplating skipping puja altogether.

This may not exactly sound like crime of the century but it is an indicator of a more insidious problem. Obviously I do not have the correct motivation. Because I’m in such a beginners phase I’m trying to concentrate on generating proper renunciation. To do this your meant to think often about impermanence, the reality of death and of course our precious human life. I can’t really write blogs about these things right now because I obviously haven’t really understood them. If I had then I wouldn’t be so quick to decided to listen to the radio over the internet even though I know that it makes me get distracted and then spend two evenings in a row conducting a secret movie marathon and not getting up in time for puja’s the next morning.

So really it comes down to this, even though I seem to have made this decision that this is what I’ve chosen for my life, in reality its only what I’ve ‘chosen for my life’ when I feel up to it.

The rest of the time I spend in daydream land. I wrote a whole bog on these running fantasies and although there has been a marked improvement I still can’t help myself sometimes. Its seems like living a real life is way too taxing when you can just lie down and invent one in your mind that you have total control over. If things in real life aren’t going the way I’d hope I can just retire to my imagination. However (oh ho here comes the Buddhism) the truth of the matter is that our real life is nothing really other than a fantasy anyway. All of it, even the bits we think we have no control over. We think that this is reality and the movies are fake but actually when you look at it, all of it is a dream.

How is this so? Well I wont even start harping on about emptiness but if you compare a fantasy with real life what’s the big difference. You can experience the emotions in your fantasy just as strongly as if they were real, and although in real life they appear more real, after a few years all your left with is a few tainted memories that could well be fantasies anyway. Our memories are so biased and incomplete. Our view of things changes with age, experience and circumstance.

Its so easy to be lazy and not do the things we’d planned. When I was still in Australia I joined a karate school and used to go after work. In this particular centre you had to go a minimum of twice a week so on top of everything else it didn’t take long for me to lose enthusiasm. Its just like that 3 month gym membership we never use. Except this time, even though I was tired I would go. Even if it meant that I left for work at 7am and didn’t get back till 9pm. It was a miracle and even though I felt so tired I kept it up. When I think back to that sadly I think it was because there was a young boy, maybe 14 who started at the same time as me and it was so important that I didn’t slip behind him so when I was thinking to myself in that last half hour before work finished, “I’m so tired I have to go home I have so much to do,” I would start thinking about this little kid and that if I missed the lesson he would get his next belt before me and it was enough to motivate me to get there.

Anyone who knows me knows this was a minor miracle.
Maybe if someone is reading this they can think of a better way to get motivated? I think really it all comes down to (surprisingly) motivation. If you really want it that badly you’ll go though haven and hell to get it. So do you really want it? Obviously not as much as you thought.

Sadly and probably not unexpectedly there are no 14 year old boys in my nunnery so then I have to ask myself if I’m not smart enough to become motivated for my own good, what can I use to get motivated. The answer…. A teacher.

Ah crap, the big G word. Guru. I hate that word! Its like being a 13year old girl without a period when all your friend already have it. All you want is to have it so you can consider yourself a real teenager but there is no way to fake it.

Yesterday I was thinking that I feel like someone who has just bought a brand new shinny SLR camera. I’ve sold everything I owned in order to get this camera and I’m sitting here and I don’t know that to take beautiful pictures, I need to take lessons but I can’t find a good photography course. So the camera is this precious human life and obviously the course is the guru and until I can make a connection with a teacher I’m going to continue to turn out these crappy off focus photos. And it really gives me the shits because I’ve invested so much in this bloody camera.