Why
did
you give
up alcohol?
If somebody asks me this question, I have two ready made answers and a few more thought provoking onces.
It
effects my memory and my sleep.
I had
a fantastic memory as a kid (which many of my friendly fellow beings
did not have) and I did not have to take notes.
Equally,
I only took short notes in strips of paper not A 4 size but that
fitted
in my shirt pocket.
That
is also things or the idea I
heard for the first time (did not believe in
them first hand).
Eg;
Evolution
I
loved my sleep and my mother should not wake me up.
She
was an early riser.
The
reasons outside those two are many.
Recent
tax imposition which was a draconian law for the liberals.
The
effect of alcohol on liver, especially on feel good factors
(hormones) of chocolates is an important discovery.
Fact
that alcohol hijacks the important biochemical pathways and depletes
micro-elements is another reason.
Alcohol
turns non carcinogens to carcinogen and the vise versa.
It is
a double edge sword.
Happiness (Ecstasy) one one side and cancer on the other.
Cirrhosis and depletion of glycogen are few others.
Sugar
metabolism and early morning hypoglycemia can be mortal in your
sleep.
It effects driving skills and common cause of accidents.
It effects driving skills and common cause of accidents.
It is a universal cell poison, including brain cells.
Two points I missed and not mentioned in the description of alcohol side effects in web pages and sites are;
Compulsive gambling and legal problems related to money matters.
Like politicians (new breed and old) they can become compulsive liars (to buy the next drink to buy basic needs including food for survival).
This is where domestic problems arise, including violence.
The debts increase and responsibility decreases.
There are many more to fill a book of decent size.
Benefits
of Meditation and Lapses in My Memory
I have reproduced a piece I have written 4 years ago,
reason being that I forgot all my bank cards PIN numbers for a brief period recently.
I used A's Pin Number to B's Pin number and after three attempts bank inactivated all my cards.
Mind you, I luckily had an account in a different Bank and survived until my new card arrived.
All this due to enjoying my retirement and paucity of use of the daily routines.
So I immediately, joined my account with a family member.
The other thing that one forgets is the passwords for email accounts.
I have addressed that scenario in length elsewhere.
Just like forgetting PIN numbers and passwords if one abruptly stops practicing Meditation, what ever the benefits accrued will dissipate in no time.
That is why I recommend (and practice MM) Moment and Frequent Meditation (mental) exercises.
Having said that I have not found a solution for lapses in my memory.
I still do not carry a Memory Note with me.
Now my NEW method is counting the the lapses of my memory on daily routines.
How many lapses a day?
That seems to keep my memory fine tuned.
I sometime forget to fill the bowl with water for my dog.
He is totally blind and when this happens he seems to go in circles round the house to bring attention to its needs.
He reminds me of the routine and the lapse in my memory.
My dog has a fantastic memory (in our age he is nearing 100 years) and still behaves like a 7 year old kid and won't do anything to annoy me.
I have reproduced a piece I have written 4 years ago,
reason being that I forgot all my bank cards PIN numbers for a brief period recently.
I used A's Pin Number to B's Pin number and after three attempts bank inactivated all my cards.
Mind you, I luckily had an account in a different Bank and survived until my new card arrived.
All this due to enjoying my retirement and paucity of use of the daily routines.
So I immediately, joined my account with a family member.
The other thing that one forgets is the passwords for email accounts.
I have addressed that scenario in length elsewhere.
Just like forgetting PIN numbers and passwords if one abruptly stops practicing Meditation, what ever the benefits accrued will dissipate in no time.
That is why I recommend (and practice MM) Moment and Frequent Meditation (mental) exercises.
Having said that I have not found a solution for lapses in my memory.
I still do not carry a Memory Note with me.
Now my NEW method is counting the the lapses of my memory on daily routines.
How many lapses a day?
That seems to keep my memory fine tuned.
I sometime forget to fill the bowl with water for my dog.
He is totally blind and when this happens he seems to go in circles round the house to bring attention to its needs.
He reminds me of the routine and the lapse in my memory.
My dog has a fantastic memory (in our age he is nearing 100 years) and still behaves like a 7 year old kid and won't do anything to annoy me.
That
is the difference of a pet and a human soul.
Humans
when old becomes very grumpy for no reason.
There is lot to learn from a dog.
There is lot to learn from a dog.
This
is part of the introduction to my Book on Meditation.
Benefits
of Meditation
There
are many claims of benefit of meditation often poorly substantiated.
Some of these benefit can be obtained without resort to meditation
but simple change in life style.
Suppose
a meditator changes his food habits drastically say to a vegetarian
diet and practice meditation as a routine and finds that his blood
cholesterol is lowered significantly, and then if he or she
attributes it to the practice of meditation, there is a big flow in
that argument.
One
is not sure whether the change in diet did effect the blood
cholesterol level or the practice of meditation or both did have
independent or summation effect on the level of blood cholesterol.
Unless one take a random sample and assess the partial correlation,
then only one can attribute combination or independent effects on a
particular quantity tested.
Qualitative
changes cannot be tested since one cannot quantify the results. In
actual fact the effect of meditation is often qualitative and very
individualistic and one cannot feel the same effect a different
mediator would have felt at the time of his or her meditative stance
or instance/s.
This
is very true as far as the Jhana States are concerned.
With
that reservation in mind one can describe the many unmeasurable
benefits attributed to meditation in Buddhist literature.
Metta Meditation
In Buddhist literature it is claimed that one who practises Metta Meditation falls to sleep easily and get up in the morning peacefully.
It
is wished in the last three lines of the Sutta.
By
reciting Karaniya Metta Sutta one should feel physically and
psychologically better, one is made free of illness and one attains
the highest goal or victory.
That
is of course the Nibbana.
They
may be just wishful thinking or one may actually feels better
physically and psychologically.
It
is also claimed that the natural immunity to cancer and infections
are increased by practicing Metta
Meditation.
This
is something Venerable Ajhan Brahma Wanso preaches in most
of his teaching.
Present Moment Meditation
This
is something that is worth discussing here.
It
has direct relationship to day to day activities.
I
believe it has significant contribution to the efficiency of one’s
trained skill, simply due to the intense concentration one may apply
in his or her work skill at hand (without any distraction).
It
is simply the focused attention to the task at hand.
If
one is focused on any work, the efficiency goes up by leaps and
bounds.
This
is very well shown in management training.
When
focused attention is combined with attitude to work and other
measurable increase in environmental components the work output and
the efficiency levels improve.
This
is something shop or floor manager can use in day to day basis.
It
is called a Quality Drill.
It
does not matter how one qualifies the content or the output but the
efficiency of the skill concerned improve by both repeated practice
and focused attention to the moment of the activity.
Samatha Meditation
There
is no specific measurable benefits of Samatha Bhavana or meditation
except the attainment of the four goals or paths of entry to Nibbana,
Buddhist
spiritual goal is stream entry through development of Jhanas four in
this life and 8 in celestial life.
Smatha
probably is better for those who are
less intelligent (One who is not able to master the finer
scientific points in Dhamma).
Vipassana Meditation
This
the highest goal of Buddhist meditative practice.
It
is claimed that all states of Jhana can be attained by Vipassana
Bhavana or Meditation. I may be wrong in this assertion but that is
what is spread among the lay persons without full knowledge or the
understanding of mediation.
But
when I looked at the terminology, it is said that Vipassana Bhavana
would not contribute to absorption states.
This
(Vipassana) is called the gaining in insight by direct contemplation
and vision.
Only
in Samatha Bhavana one attains the Jhana absorption levels up to
four.
Only
when an aspirant has gained the higher Jhana level that one
could develop the five kinds of supernatural powers (Abhiñña)
the divine eye, divine ear, recall of past births, thought-reading
and various psychic powers i.e. walk on water.
The
attainment of the supernatural powers is not the real goal of
Buddhism.
The
attainment of these powers may actually be a distraction or hindrance
to a true aspirant or a pathfinder of Buddhist path of glory.
The
ability to absorb into Jhana states should not be the goal of
Buddhist meditation.
The
Jhana states have no hindrance and the Jhana/s could be
the way forward of stream entry.
The
practice of meditation may bring many benefits and they are difficult
to quantify or qualify except perhaps the benefit of present moment
of meditation or focus which should be practiced without a label of a
particular religion.
It
is when one has labels and targets or goals of attainment, the
practice of meditation becomes a commercial enterprise of undesirable
consequences, ignoring the correct but simple way of development of
the mental culture.
I
am one who believes that mediation has value in all wakeful hours of
the day.
The
only exception is when one is asleep and when one dreams.
I
am one who talks about dreams and write about dreams and their
physiological value is unparalleled only by the practice of
meditation in the wakeful state.
The
meditation practice is the awareness of the wondering mind and its
taming.
That
is the Buddhist way.
The
goal is not achieving of miracle powers, even though they may or may
not come as a byproduct.
Sleeping
(and dreaming) is the practice of letting the mind go into an
unobtrusive and unhindered state in which the mind is unaware of the
physiological inputs that operate in random manner with aberrations
of awareness (of the totality) but with interludes of dreaming
cycles.
On
the other hand meditation is to “let go the attachments” one has
with all the mental faculties both sensual and mind centered.
Goals of Buddhist Meditation
The
goal is the spiritual attainment (Jhana states can be a
byproduct) and stream entry by progressive cultivation of meditation
basically by four common methods (there are many more).
1.
Metta Meditation.
2.
Samatha Meditation with Kasina or various Kamatahans.
3.
Vipassana Meditation.
4.
Moment Meditation (my simple creative method of short
durations of multiple attempts).
This
is adequately dealt by Venerable Ajhan Brahma Wanso, in the book
"Happiness Through Meditation". It is also published as
“Meditation, Bliss and Beyond”.
It
is the best book currently available on Meditation in general and my
intention here is to make it more of global nature and take the
religious tag at the moment of its use.
Memory and Meditation
I
want to share a drill I practice on day to day basis.
This
is especially because, I am beginning to lose my memory and there are
short lapses infrequent though, but enough to raise alarm bells on my
part lately.
Once
I forgot all my password for bank cards briefly.
This
was during our long industrial action when I had a laid back approach
to life in general and sleep in particular.
I
was not having an adequate sleep (totally engrossed in Linux
downloads and testing the isos) at night.
This
coincided with forgetting of passwords for half a dozen emails and
Linux forum passwords.
This
shook my inner senses and I now have a ready made retrieval method
based on memory drill.
The
combination of Metta Meditation and Moment Meditation have worked
wonders for me since then.
I
now even have a simple protocol to remember 16 number Visa Card.
The
memory loss was partly due to gray matter losing its material and the
neural networks not recharging to peak levels, probably due to old
age (this handicap is seriously encroaching my body parts, if not the
brain).
Metta
meditation makes one sleeps well not in one go but in two short
spells (Night is the shortest spell when I do most of my work to
avoid mosquito menace. The mosquitoes make me aware of my lack of
Metta Meditation).
Our
dog is the target animal for Metta.
Mosquitoes
was the antidote to Metta.
Then
in the morning I have a brief 5 minutes of Moment Meditation practice
at the end of it, I have a mental list of 10 things or map out the
tasks to do for the day.
If
the list go up to 20, I do it in two spells like my sleep.
A
morning list and an evening list.
That
has worked well for the last one year and I still do not carry a
piece of paper with all the tasks.
If
I have to carry a piece of paper to to remind me the day to day work,
I think I should say Good Bye and take first steps for the next round
of birth.
That
is on top of my wish list.
Since,
I have not yet achieved stream entry, in spite of my mediation
efforts, that will eventually happen (the demise not the stream
entry) and is the only viable option left for me.
There
is a simple addition to that wish list.
No
electronic aids or tinkle to alert me of the wish list or missing
tasks.
I
do not use a cell phone by default.
I
do not want a gadget to master my brain.
I
rather "Master My Brain" instead without a phone alert or a
piece of paper.
I
wonder, how long I can practice it?
