Posts Tagged ‘buddha’

It happens to all of us doesn’t it?

You finally get the time to sit down to read a good book, write a new blog post or meditate when Mr Jones next door decides it’s time to mow the lawn, then go around the edges with his edge-trimmer, then use the leaf-blower to blow the clippings into the gutter – even though he did it all just last week.

Great.

Ju-u-ust perfect.

In this scenario you have two options.

No wait, three, but physical violence is against the law so we’ll focus on the other two:

1) Get Mad and Burn Up Inside.

2) Get Mad, Then Find A Way To Quickly Diffuse That Anger

We’ll get into these in a moment but first…

What Are The Lawnmowers In Your Life?

Lawnmowers are just my pet hate – but the things that get you all riled up inside might be different. Maybe the way your partner talks to you when they’re in a bad mood, or the way your boss treats you or just the irritating habits of the guy who sits across the desk from you at work.

So passing the “Lawnmower Test” means effectively dealing with the anger or irritation you feel when your ‘lawnmower’ pushes your buttons.

Whatever your pet hates are, the question is – how comfortable are you with the way you respond when your buttons are pushed? Are you OK with getting pissed off and silently raging away when the lawnmowers start up? Or is this something you want to transcend?

I am not writing this article as an ‘expert’, but as a seeker. I’d love to be able to transcend my grumpiness. I have become waaaay more “zen” than I used to be, and a lot of things don’t irritate me anywhere near as much as they used to, but gee, it would be nice to be able to go all smiling-Buddha every time my crazy neighbour decides to give his gigantic field another crew cut.

Let’s have another look at our options…

Option 1- Get Mad and Burn Up Inside

This is the easiest response and it’s probably our default option. I know it is for me.

(By the way as I type this some numbskull is trimming the weeds in the large field behind me. Two doors away some other monkey is using a drill or something. The noise is insane.)

I am sure it isn’t good for us, but I find it very difficult not to get, well – not mad as such – but grumpy and irritated.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that but I would love it if I could somehow “not-care” when the lawnmowers start.

Option 2 – Get Mad, Then Find A Way To Quickly Diffuse That Anger

This is more challenging, but better for our long term health and happiness.

By the way, I think it is unrealistic to try and not get irritated by your Pet Hate at all – let’s stay real here – but how do you quickly diffuse the rage? Here are some options:

Deep breathing

I find this really helps.

I will be explaining a fantastic technique for effective deep breathing in our upcoming e-book, so be sure to sign up for free email or RSS updates in the box at the bottom of this article, that way we can tell you when the e-book is ready.

Move Away from the Problem

Easy solution – but what happens when you can’t? When you have work to do? Or when you have responsibilities to face up to?

For example I could just pack up shop right now and put a couple of miles between me and Edge Trimmer Man, but I have so much work to do and I love my work and I have a family to feed, so it’s not going to happen.

The same applies when you find yourself wanting to strangle your husband or wife – in the nicest possible way of course! You can’t just up and leave like that – there are kids to take care of, finances to get in order and friends coming over for dinner or whatever.

So while moving away from your Lawnmower makes sense if you can, it’s not always an option.

Dwell In the Angst

This has really helped me from time to time. What I do is sit down and just totally focus on how massively pissed off I am. I let the issue totally consume me, and my anger too (but I am not allowed to get off my chair).

Eventually, somehow, it seems to work that the issue just doesn’t get to me after a while. Maybe there’s only so far you can go with this kind of response to external irritants before the anger just naturally runs its course.

Let it Flow then Let it Go

If nobody is around I yell and swear for all I’m worth. Then I drop it.

I read about this in “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior” years ago and I remember it made me laugh because growing up in a big Irish family this “technique” is just the norm. Except people didn’t care who was around; that wasn’t a limiting factor.

It sounds like I am joking but seriously, we’d yell and rant and rave and storm off to our rooms and slam the door behind us.

Then ten minutes later we’d walk out as if nothing had happened. Everyone was cool again and never a grudge was held in all these years.

Talk About It

I used to hate namby-pamby advice like this, but I have recently come to realise that I had a typical (and unhelpful) male habit of keeping my worries to myself until I boiled over. I have come to realise that while we may feel a bit awkward at first, if we blokes just bite the bullet and discuss issues like adult Human Beings it really helps to alleviate internal rage.

Just don’t confuse a monologue for communication.

And while you’re at it, don’t confuse “talking about it” for complaning and moaning.

As an older boy told me once during a wet and miserable school camp: “Nobody likes a whinger mate”.

(Do people use the term ‘whinger’ in the United States? If not, it means a person who whines and moans all the time.)

I would love to hear your strategies for diffusing anger and irritation in the comments section – for example, what about diet? Can changes made in that area improve our ability to become “unflappable?”

By Séamus Anthony

Ever wondered how some people manage to get up before the sun to meditate and exercise? Well, let me categorically confirm that I’m no expert, but recent* experiments have shown that three elements are integral: persistence, patience and good humour. Without these you might as well stick with the sleep in!

The Frozen Buddha

With strains of classical music the clock radio burst to life. What was my first thought? – “I must be insane”.

I have this year resolved not to wimp out during the frosty months but to rise despite the cold – which frankly, I despise – and do my meditation, chi gung, and exercise routine at dawn.

First thing.

In the face of my every screaming instinct.

Shivering, I stumbled out of the bedroom at 5:11am (to avoid beginning my day with an earful of bad news, I never set the alarm to go off on the hour). I then proceeded to have rather a funny time of it. Apparently, this was my day to have my persistence, patience and good humour well and truly tested.

I sat on my chair in the study and began my chi gung sitting meditation, but the little blanket I had over my lap just wasn’t cutting it. I was in serious danger of turning into some kind of Buddha shaped ice-sculpture. I collected my chi, stayed calm, and moved to sit in the living room where there is an old gas wall-heater. I turned the heater on and it cranked up with its usual cacophony of pops, clicks, and groans, all magnificently loud in the stillness.

My pets decided this was their cue to come and hang out.

The cat, Mimi, I can handle; besides, getting rid of her is only possible by putting her outside, which would mean getting up again. However, the dog, Dude, was too large for the space between my knees and the heater – and anyway, he smells. Thankfully, we have an established rapport. One grunt and he was back on his bed. The thing is, he’s gigantic and his bed is a very noisy beanbag.

As Dude turned around about 20 times, I practised my patience and ‘letting go’ until he finally lay down and went back to sleep. Part of his ‘going back to sleep ritual’ is making slurping noises with his mouth – God knows why – so I had the pleasure of listening to that for a few minutes. Meanwhile, far from contemplating the divine, I began to make plans for that meditation and hard-to-catch-DVD-dialogue-disturbing beanbag … plans involving a large truck, one with robot arms on the side.

Just as I am thinking this – the very same garbage truck pulls up outside my house and starts its robot-arm-whirring, wheelie-bin crashing racket.

Oh, the synchronicity if it all.

“I am patience, persistence, and good humour. I am patience, persistence, and good humour”, I silently repeat, not very good-humouredly.

Meanwhile I have warmed up nicely. The cat, surprisingly, decides to leave me alone for once.

Then, I start falling asleep.

Not actually asleep, just drowsy due to the heater, which means my thoughts are heading off into la-la-land. I turn the heater down, which sets it off popping and creaking again. I start counting my breaths to keep my focus up, but keep wandering off into noddy-land again and again. An old hand at this, I relax and patiently bring myself back to my breath awareness, often having to guess which number breath I was at.

Eventually – hallelujah! I reach that sweet point of meditation where my mind opens wide and the connection with Tao has been made (Tao is God, universal consciousness, spirit – there are countless names). Bliss and clarity are achieved; total contentment. Internal chattering calms and a direct sensation of transcendent love flood my senses. It feels fantastic. This energy relaxes and heals on three levels: physical, mental, and spiritual.

Sound good? The cool thing is that this experience is available to anyone who seeks it out, and it’s free.

After enjoying this for ten minutes I get up to do my standing chi gung. I have been aware for a while that Mimi has been padding around the house in a hurry. I am just beginning my stretches when she comes and starts doing the leg-rubbing thing. I don’t mind this. I am in fact very used to it. I have a theory that purring cats emit good chi. So I usually just let her do her thing until she gets bored and wanders away.

This morning, however, she keeps trotting around the house, then coming back, running off, and then returning until I realise what’s happening. The house is closed up on account of the cold and she wants to pee! I hear her scratching the carpet in the spare room, and I know that if I don’t open a door and let her out then she is very soon going to do it inside.

I breathe in, collect my chi, see the humour of it and let her out. That makes two mornings she has disturbed my stretching routine. Yesterday was more dramatic. I was outside (it wasn’t as cold) and was getting the usual leg rubbing from her as I bent and stretched. No problem. Then all of a sudden I felt four sets of claws digging into my back – she’d had gotten some kind of a fright or tried to swipe at an insect or something and had decided to use my back as a climbing wall!

Well, that threw me. Chi flying off in all directions, I lost my cool, turned and barked at her in a very dog-like manner. She fled, stopped a few feet away and promptly resumed looking totally unruffled, casually stretching and giving her paw a bit of a lick. I had to smile. Cats are the indisputable Zen masters of suburbia. I collected my chi and resumed my practice.

As for the rest of this morning, I went for a jog despite the Antarctic weather, did my other exercises, and never quite lost my rag with it all. Now I sit here smug in the knowledge that I have – on this day at least – proved to myself that I can be the person I want to be: persistent, patient and good humoured.

As for tomorrow? Ask me that at 5:11am!

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*I have to admit that this article is actually a couple of years old and originally appeared in Australia’s LivingNow magazine – I gave up on all that early morning shit ages ago. It’s for the birds…

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By Seamus Anthony

You will never, ever achieve enlightenment.

I will never, ever achieve enlightenment.

The Buddha did not achieve it.

Nor did Jesus.

Nor did Mohamed.

Nor did Lao Tzu.

Nor did Osho.

Nor did Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa, The Maharashi, Rudolf Steiner, Douglas Harding, Mother Theresa, Brad Warner, Deepack Chopra or Eckhart Tolle.

In fact nobody in the history of the world has ever achieved enlightenment.

And nobody ever will.

How can I say this?

Because enlightenment is not something you achieve, it’s something that you realise.

That might just be a little nit-picky matter of one word, but I believe it makes a lot of difference. Why? Because it changes your whole focus. My advice (not that you asked for it) is stop trying to achieve enlightenment (whatever that means to you anyway) and just let that shit go.

Enlightenment isn’t “out there”. You don’t have to become a ’seeker’ and go on a ’spiritual journey’
to find it. Nor do you need to go on some kind of Jules Verne type mission to centre of your being to find it either.

Enlightenment is right here in front of your nose. It is something innate. It is everything everywhere.

You realise your inherent enlightenment by accepting what is here now.

Click here to get the first Rebel Zen e-book – free. It contains a powerful trick to realising your inherent enlightenment – and what’s more it’ll help you kick butt in more pragmatic areas of life too (like career etc.). Go on – click already (it’s free).

By Steve Mills

Remember a few years ago when that song came out, I’m sure you know the one. It had a super catchy chorus, more hooks than a fishing shop and embedded itself so deep in your skull that you found yourself humming it while “on the job”. Sure it was annoying as hell, but everyone was going nuts over it. For weeks it was all you could hear on the radio. It was so popular that it sparked new novelty dance crazes, giving wedding DJ’s an excuse to throw out their tired old copies of the “Grease Megamix” and the “Bus Stop”, and play something new for drunk old people to dance to.

Then one day, something happened. A new song came along, and it had a really catchy chorus, hooks aplenty and was heard pumping out of radio’s from New York to Upper Cumbucta West. Two weeks later no one wants to hear the Macarena, and everyone wants to hear Beyonce. Time moves on, things change.

Just like popular songs, movies and books, everything that we can see in our world is in a transitory, impermanent state. People and places, empires and cities all come from nothing, grow and flourish for a time, and then inevitably at some stage return to nothing. It’s the nature of reality. The Buddha said that “Decay is inherent in all component things,” and his followers accepted that existing in the world meant being in a state of flux, a continuous becoming.

Just like these one hit wonders, most of the stuff that happens in our day to day lives is transitory and impermanent. Events so strange, unpredictable BUT also over so quickly that if you weren’t living through them you would laugh. Events, like being stuck in a traffic jam on the way to an important meeting, or missing out on concert tickets arise into the NOW, flourish for a short time and then vanish, never to be seen again. Detachment to thoughts and negative emotions of past events becomes easier when we gain a perspective of just how small a role in the events of the Universe we take.

But just like the top 40, where the current hit songs are change positions dramatically from week to week, it is this constant flux, this interplay between Ying and Yang, manifestation and destruction that makes life interesting. Change is what makes life worth living. It can be exciting, frightening, exhausting, or bring relief. It can deliver sadness or happiness, resistance or attachment.

If everyday of your life did not have this underlying impermanence, the world would be a very boring place. To me there is no more motivating or perspective changing idea then “No moment ever again, or ever before in the history of the Universe will ever be this moment.” The nature of your impermanence means that the fact that your are alive and conscious in the here and now, thinking these thoughts, breathing this air, seeing these exact things is remarkable. Of all of infinite time and infinite space you are here right now.

And once this microsecond has passed, The Universe as it exists right now will never exist again.