Andrew Furst's Blog, page 68

Houston Brook Falls – A Two Minute Meditation

December 26th

a small gift to myself

A warm winter morning

near the banks

of the Kennebeck

These majestic falls

appear from nowhere

words

offer

little

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Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation.  Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute.

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These videos are produced for those of us who spend an inordinately large amount of time in the cyber-world.  They are not a substitute for unplugging from your devices and taking a stroll near trees, water, or a patch of unkempt grass.  Getting out into the world - touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing nature is the best way to reconnect with our prime purpose.  

What is our prime purpose? We are feeling and sensing machines.  We are the universe looking back on itself. We are witness to the wonders and dangers of living in this corner of the cosmos.  We are the seekers looking for connection a little further beyond yesterday's borders and boundaries.

But sitting and staring at the screen robs us of the sustenance that we rely upon for wonder and sanity.  These videos are an opportunity to bring the sensations of nature to you, while you're in the cyber-world. Its an opportunity to relax your gaze, resettle your posture,  and regain some depth in your breath.  Listen and watch the video and allow your self to open up and recharge.

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Post Card Art Project – Shooting Stars and Comets

Here’s the next installment of the Post Card Art Project. Shooting Stars and Comets.

The artist (and let me know if there are mistakes) are shown below in the same position as their card:

The Post Card Art Series

This is the one of several posts I will be offering titled the Post Card Art Series. Its a collaborative art project done on post cards. 

Using an image divided into four sections, I created four post cards.  I printed 200, pre-stamped them, and mailed them out to patreon supporters, friends, and blog readers who expressed an interest. They applied the art, mailed the cards back.  Now I'm assembling them.

The results are fun and unique.

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Clouds Tell Us – Book Formatting Is Done (Almost)

Garrett at GBCreative, my cover artist and book formatter, is close to wrapping up the book layout for the electronic version of the”Clouds Tell Us”.  I just need to add text to the copywrite page, and we’re ready to roll.

So we’re getting close. Those of you who contributed to the Indiegogo Campaign, again thank you, the books should be to you this spring.

I don’t have preordering set up yet, but there is one other way you can guarantee you’ll get a copy.  If you become a Patreon supporter with a $5 monthly pledge you get all copies of my books as they are released (there are at least 2 more in the works).

Here’s everything the $5 pledge gets you:

Access to my Patron Only Stream
Advanced notice on upcoming books and other products
You’ll be invited to participate in pre-release feedback and review
I’ll hand make you a Mala (Buddhist prayer beads)
I’ll send you copies of my books and other products as they are released
Random Goodies (last month I sent out some photo decals.

This Website is Brought To You Free 
by Andrew Furst

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Is Life Inherently Unsatisfying? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 6 minute(s)

Question:   Is life inherently unsatisfying?

Response: I suggest two little meditations on your question. I want you to reflect on a few memories and notice your response to them.

Meditation OneA favorite food – bring to mind your favorite comfort food. Imagine its smell, its texture, and its how it looks. Try to call up these memories as vividly as possible. imagine the tastes as it meets your tongue, the sensation as it moves from your lips to the throat. If the tastes are complex, imagine each one individually.

Continue the meditation by imagining a few more bites. Then pause for a few moments and notice how you feel physically and mentally? Think of a few words to describe how you feel.
Meditation TwoYour least favorite person – now imagine that you’ve been asked to spend some one on one time with your least favorite person. You’ll notice your physical and mental state changed quickly. Perhaps a sinking feeling of dread arose, or anger, or something like that.

What was the difference between those two meditations?  In the first you experienced, or at least imagined, satisfaction.  In the second, that feeling went away pretty quickly.

So how do these little meditations relate to the question.  They help to direct your attention to the causes of dissatisfaction. If you believed that “life” is the cause of dissatisfaction, I’d like to remind you that in these meditations, you were only experiencing mind.  You weren’t tasting food “in real life” and you weren’t actually spending time with your least favorite person. The shift from satisfaction to dissatisfaction came independent of the real world.  It came from you. Beauty (or ugliness) is in the eye of the beholder.  Attraction and aversion are personal preferences, not objective qualities of the world.

Life is not inherently anything.  In fact Buddhism characterizes life as being empty of any inherent qualities. This is Sunyata.

Projecting the qualities of good or bad to the objects of our senses is the ultimate blame game and the cause of suffering.

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio

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Now That We Are Poor, We Are Free – Sitting Bull

Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.

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Evangelists – Say What?

 

Say What?  is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip. 

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Post Card Art Project – Pink You Stink

Here’s the next installment of the Post Card Art Project. Pink You Stink (thank’s Lola)

The artist (and let me know if there are mistakes) are shown below in the same position as their card:

 

 

The Post Card Art Series

This is the one of several posts I will be offering titled the Post Card Art Series. Its a collaborative art project done on post cards. 

Using an image divided into four sections, I created four post cards.  I printed 200, pre-stamped them, and mailed them out to patreon supporters, friends, and blog readers who expressed an interest. They applied the art, mailed the cards back.  Now I'm assembling them.

The results are fun and unique.

The post Post Card Art Project – Pink You Stink appeared on Andrew Furst.

Meditations on Gratitude – Our Partners

If you’ve been together with your partner for a while, I guarantee that you’d quickly articulate what it is about them that irks you.  You probably remember the last thing they did that angered or annoyed you. The word resentment will trigger emotions that you’ve probably been holding onto for some time.  There are a lot of colloquialisms that capture the nature of long term relationships

familiarity breeds contempt
absence makes the heart grow fonder
we don’t know what we have until it’s gone

I’m no stranger to these emotions.  The most important teacher I have in life is the relationship I have with my wife.  We’re both very idiosyncratic and stubborn. We both fall into ruts of behavior and there are plenty of stressors in our life that set us up for conflict.

So what can you do to keep from being at each other’s throats? I certainly don’t have all the answers here. And what works for me doesn’t work for everyone.  That’s especially true with my wife and I.  We take very different approaches to life, stress, and all that.

But I’ll share something that I do frequently to remind me how very important my wife is to me.

In the Buddhist tradition there are many practices tied to contemplating death. There are the charnel ground meditators who spend days in cemeteries where corpses lie rotting and are torn apart by vultures. There are the visualizations of the various body fluids that make up who you are, sure to stir up disgust and relinquish your attachment to the body.

First, you must understand that the meditation is not meant to cause depression or breed attachment, so one must be careful with it. The practice is to focus on the impermanence of your partner by imagining their death. It’s done to remind us of how important our they are.  It’s meant to instill a deep sense of appreciation, not attachment or despair.

Meditation

Imagine for a few moments the death of your partner.  Imagine the chaos that would ensue in your life. The person who has filled the gaps in your life is gone.  They’ve shared responsibility for child rearing, feeding you, earning money, driving you when you aren’t able to, make sure that you’re taking your pills, watching your health, helping you figure out problems where you don’t have experience?  All that support is gone.

Once these superficial consequences have sunk in, explore a little deeper. Imagine what it will be like to never feel the touch of your partner’s hand on your body again. Never again will you hug them or laugh with them. You’ll never hear them say “I love you” or make love again. All of your stories as a couple will have been lived out.  There will be no more, “yesterday my partner did such and such” tales to offer your friends.

Gratitude

Without fail, these meditations bring me to tears. I well up with a deeper appreciation of my partner.  I am energized to set aside the contempt of familiarity and the resentment that I hold onto. I am able to recognize that the barriers in our relationship are choices that I make and not her faults. I can even sometimes muster the patience and openness to see things from her side.

Relationships are hard work, and they keep getting harder.  The worst enemy is replacing your loved ones with the preconceptions you develop about them.  We have to let go of these internal narratives, open our eyes, and see the beautiful person who you chose to spend your life with.

To my dear wife, who I take for granted, and ignore far too much, do know that I love you, that you are precious to me, and I am so grateful to have you in my life.

May all partners have causes for love and affection

May all partners be free from the mental formations that cause them to become alienated from one another

May they find ways to rejuvenate their relationships and themselves

May all couples find a path to fulfillment

Meditations on Gratitude - A weekly series of people and situations I’m thankful for and a short meditation.

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The Oxherd Series – Taming the Ox – Modern Koans

The Oxherd Series is a collection of 10 images and commentary on the quest for enlightenment.  Its source is the Zen tradition. What you're reading here is a satirical, but not all together purposeless, treatment of these so called stages. Using excerpts from one of my favorite cartoons, Bob's Burgers, I hope to bring this old story into the present.

We are guided here to do the work, and to do it ruthlessly. The poem accompanying the drawing tells us whip and rope are necessary. Who is training this ox? Is it really training ourselves? What do we train towards? If it’s not samsaric work, then what do we do?

The work is a undoing our samsaric patterns of being.  Patterns of habit and not looking.

Near the end of the Bob’s Burgers episode, the steer dies in an apparent heart attack after nearly being hit by a van. Bob faints and falls into a dream where he discusses the situation with Moolissa (yes that’s the cross dressing steer’s name).He comes to some epiphanies about his life, eating meat, and the world as it is. Bob has the wherewithal to note that this is of course his subconscious telling him what he wants to hear, but there is an undressing of the world here that is both good story and relevant to our quest for enlightenment.

First, mind is a double edge sword. Mind is the cause of our divorce from the world, but it also is the tool we use to recognize the split. Caught up in mind we loose touch with our senses.  Recognizing the break, we can choose to return to our senses. This work is different than samsaric work; subtler, and less about doing than being. A well trained ox is attentive to the signals of his master, and effortlessly responds. We would do well to be attentive to our world, letting go of the obfuscations that can hinder our relationship with it.

The whip and rope are necessary,

Else he might stray off down some dusty road.

Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle.

Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.

Next: Riding the Ox Home

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton

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Chasing a Madman – African Parable

Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.

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