Wasting Time...

[dharmasponge]

Huh?

Anyway, maybe it's Dogen I can't get my head around and not Zazen...? Maybe it's Dogens interpretation of the Buddhas teachings that I find unecessarily nebulous :/

[Ugrok]

But, at the same time, is there anything in the world that cannot be considered nebulous when you think about it ? As Jundo said to me in another thread, even getting up to shop is an incredibly complex task if you try to think about it and understand it ; even breathing is a completely dazzling thing to observe ! I think this is part of what Dogen tries to convey. Like poetry, it is an illustration of the fact that thoughts and language cannot process everything. Yet, at the same time, they are part of human life, they are part of the "everything" they cannot process, and so they are not to be rejected and are as beautiful as everything else. When reading Dogen, i feel that a lot of the philosophy he teaches is in fact in the poetry of the word themselves. He combines descriptive language (language as a tool to define things, and to define the world) AND language which is pure action (as in poetry, for example). This is why it's nebulous. It's nebulous because it has to show what is nebulous. Well, this is how i read it nowadays anyway, i might be wrong...

Gassho,

Ugrok

[Nindo]

Hello dharmasponge ! You happen to exactly describe how i was. The walk full of thoughts that Alan described was me as well. I'm not like that anymore, thanks to therapy and sitting. Sometimes, i get all anxious again and overthink stuff, but this, also, passes.
You need stupid, dumb and stubborn trust. Just sit everyday, whatever happens. Just do it. Practice evolves. It's also about patience. You cannot control your mind but you can sit with it in every single aspects of it. And it really helps with the anxiety to know experientially that you can stay with it and its no problem. Changes perspective.

Also, what i found the most cool attitude in dealing with anxiety, on the cushion or off it (harder to do off the cushion) is to really allow it to be there. Not adding thoughts, not removing thoughts, just feeling what is felt, letting it go its course (let it go worse if it has to go worse).

To offer you a bit of hopeless hope, when i started practicing, i was at the worst anxiety wise. Full of thoughts, full of grief, full of anxiety. It took at least one year of daily practice to just be able to see when i was fooling myself and when i was not, to just be able to see what was thought, what was not, what was linked to what, and to feel it, not to "think" it. Now i begin to be able to see it and drop it - still fooling myself of course, but i feel things are getting a bit clearer ; theres more trust in what i feel. I'm doing far better anxiety wise and have no strong hindrances anymore (i can go wherever i want and enjoy whatever i want - which was far from being the case before). I still fall in old traps from time to time but i can see it more easily. And when i'm in bad shape, i just can be in bad shape. It doesn't destroy me like it did before. I'm with it. I'm it. It's not fun but it's not the end of the world. So really, even if you feel this practice is a waste of time, just do it, for the sake of it.
Don't be in a hurry to fix everything would be my small deluded advice, and don't hate yourself for overthinking or for anything really.

Maybe, and i don't know if it really fits in proper "goalless" practice but it's an idea, it would be good to approach practice as not something that is made to "fix problems" (it does not) but as something that may teach you to enjoy things, as they are, even when painful.

Good sitting !

Pierre/ugrok

Pierre, merci beaucoup!
Now I can explain this to somebody who is struggling with anxiety.

Gassho,
Nindo

[Rich]

Thanks, Pierre. That really explained things well.

Kind regards. /\

[dharmasponge]

Thanks Pierre, nice description

[Ugrok]

You're welcome ! I've been struggling with anxiety most of my life, and at the same time it has been the thing that pushed me researching and trying to find ways out of it (which is how i came to practice zazen a few years ago). So i read and practiced a lot around this theme, which makes me a bit of an expert on this subject. Which is a bit pathetic, ahahahah, but oh well. I found out that i could not get "out of it", at least not in the sense that i had at the beginning (i wanted to get rid of it at all cost - which is really counterproductive) as it is a part of being human, but i also found how to live my life. Am still exploring, though. Jundo is spot on when he says that therapy and zazen go well together, this is what i did and i found it really interesting because practice unveiled things that i could talk about, and talking also allowed me to practice more freely. Everyone has to find its own way, though. But that's another topic...

Gassho

Pierre / Ugrok

[Ongen]

Dear Tony,

Anyway, maybe it's Dogen I can't get my head around and not Zazen...? Maybe it's Dogens interpretation of the Buddhas teachings that I find unecessarily nebulous :/

For what it's worth: I think I can safely say that all of us here know what you're going through to a certain level. Just don't try get your head around it... I know that everyone says this over and over again and it can be quite irritating, but it's true -> Just sit with patience and trust. The mist will clear eventually.

when you go for a walk do you think: "geez, am I walking right? Am I truly enjoying nature? Am I really this nature? Or am I separate from nature? Is nature me? What is that squirrel over there and is that tree a spiritual thing and do I really understand that tree? Do I really get that tree? Do I really understand this walk? What am I doing here, I better stop walking and before I finish this walk, I better figure it out.

Yes! Haha! *Dances* Just walk

Gassho
Vincent

[Koshin]

Thank you all. This is awesome

Gassho

[Meikyo]

Thank you all!

Gassho