Tried out Common Ground Meditation Center last night. They have a Sunday night sitting group, which is a group meditation and a lecture. I got a lot out of it. I might have the difference between Christian meditation and Buddhist meditation:
During the meditation, I was kind of bothered that I might disturb the room if I sneezed. If I was going to be "successful" at this, I wouldn't give a crap. In the Buddhist approach, I would just sneeze and watch the guy in front of me wipe my snots off of the back of his neck, observing my embarrassment from a distance, detaching myself from it, keeping happy, saying, "This is how it is right now and I am happy about it. The focus is on staying "happy" always. The Christian approach to the sneeze problem would be similar in that I would watch my desire not to sneeze and watch my embarrassment about sneezing, but different in that I would accept the embarrassment while observing it, perhaps even going so far as to cover my mouth when I sneezed. The Buddhist goal is to live now and remain happy about it. The Christian goal is to live now and accept the emotion that comes out of the situation. Obviously, Buddhists get angry, but they would probably view experiencing anger as falling off the wagon in some way. Both philosophies warn not to waste your time and energy wishing things were different, but with Buddhism you are supposed to always be happy.
8:11:05 AM 
|
|
