Happiness book by Matthieu Ricard

How do know if you are truly altruistic and not doing for credit or to assuage guilty feelings?
You will feel happy and not disappointed if someone else does the good deed you were about to do. This is the official test for altruism.
Apparently 15% of the ( western, they havent tested other countries)  population is truly altruistic .

 -  Happiness book by Matthieu Ricard

 which I am not liking much :D because some stupid saint let himself be burnt in place of a thief in the book. Grr Do we have to be stupid to be alturistic? Dude Saint! because of you, now my house is robbed?  etc kind of thoughts coming :D  Also he has gone little overboard selling how good it is to be optimistic and how bad to be pessimistic. I being completely sold on Hinayana Buddhism, want to look at good feelings and bad feelings with equanimity, but Tibetan buddhism is little bit like bhakti yoga focusing on helping others, somehow implying we shud cultivate good. I agree I need to cultivate loving kindness and metta ( I am on it peeps)  and that it makes people happy. but ultimately happy is just as false as fear or anger? Or not? anyway I want that wisdom which tells me the answer to that.

equanimity and awareness are the two wheels of the cart of Vipassana. - Goenka

Dont judge others

Why am I annoyed with other peoples thinking?
I am not talking about what other think about me, but in general what other people think.
Like their opinions on say - Refugees or Muslims or Women or Love or Marriage what ever, Why do I care?

Is it right to care or wrong? Do I have a social responsibility to care?
Is that the same attitude Christian missionaries have, who think they know how to think better than others? ( i.e Bad)
Or Is it the same attitude as Eshwar Chardra Vidya sagar who abolished Sati and supported widow remarriage? ( i.e Good)?

When people say don't judge anyone, are they being a cop-put? Are they really not judging or are they taking easy way out of controversial issues and avoiding offending others ( which again may be good or bad) Then why do I care what other people mean when they day dont judge :D :P

What if Eswar Chadra had not judged women who were committing Sati? Many of them were not forced explicitly but they were doing it voluntarily, the forces which forced them to do it, was the subtle programming since birth by society- which made a virtue out of it, also the circumstances they would find themselves in, if they didn't do it. kind of like emotional blackmail. I see the parallels with hijab and husband worship etc which my friends indulge in.
But  how can I judge them, when I know that they are not responsible for it but the programming is? Did Eshwar Chandra Judge them? Did he take action without judging?
The opposite of judging is understanding, It looks like I am understanding, but then why doesnot judging go away? :-)

who has changed? have you changed or have they changed. How would you know? 

“Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”

― Ben Okri
So beautifull said, so True and so Chilling.

Thanks M for sharing this with me. 

Detachment vs Love

Avatar the last air bender. Its an amazing animation series. Spiritual, incorporating Eastern Buddhist culture-remix perfectly. They got one thing wrong. that is the thing that almost everyone in the west, for that matter almost everyone ( Except me >:-) ) gets wrong.
This is the basic fear about spirituality for almost everyone  ( except may be a few  peeps like - me ;-D )
"Letting go and being spiritual means not loving a person, detachment means not loving anyone and becoming a zombie." The series got everything right but they are showing personal love as greater than enlightenment. and I dont like that.

If this is wrong then how does it really work? Is it really wrong?
Not exactly, we in our small minds love individuals, our children, our parents, one person we choose as partner etc, this is celebrated as the greatest virtue, It may - in the context of non expanded small minds.
but to enlighten the mind and go beyond right and wrong, then this love probably goes, then our child is as lovely as the neighbours child, they probably genuine feel as sad when they read about 15 dead in car accident as when they hear their parents demise. Or probbaly not feel bad at all in both cases.
When they let go of the personal love, they are filled with universal love, unconditional love for one and all, for all beings not just humans but even for small pox virus and ugly slimy slug which eats their strawberries.

This state is not a zombie state at all, this is a very high level, very superior, very beyond the confines of the small mind kind of love, this is the avatar kind of love.  you and I dont have to fear this because fearing this is like starting couch to 5k for running and fearing that you will break Ussain bolts record and make him feel bad :-D :-D :-D  This is out of our league. ( Unless some enlightened person is reading this, then Sorry :-P )

Love for one person is never greater than love for all, may be be mothers love for her baby, may be be savitri s love for her husband bringing him back from the dead, all these have the self and selfishness at their heart. it is "your" love. It is never ever greater than compassion and love for all beings like the bodhisatvas have. never.

Sometime back I wrote this.
"I  find myself dismissing meditations on objects,dieties,mantras and mandalas as lower level to vipassana which in my opinion is the ultimate. I found myself looking at a Mahayana buddist book and thinking, this chantings and focusing on objects is creating more patterns in our brain, this is not what buddha taught."

http://mystic-babe.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/am-i-getting-intolerant.html

Sure ways of self realisation - this amazing book explains how all types of meditations work.
In one way it is true that the other ways of meditation create more mental patterns, but the other techniques will help us get to the state where we are able to do vipassana properly faster.
He says Vipassana is like walking towards enlightenment, where as tibetan buddhism(i.e tantra yoga) is going by rocket. (but then who id in a hurry? for some like me we need to understand how everything works, more than be enlightened :-)) also what u choose is based on your personality, for some vipassana is itself rocket fuel like for my cousin and Yuval Noah Harrari )
So my intolerance was short lived (atleast towards other meditation styles, not towards monothiest religions )
The first step in any meditation is controlling the monkey mind, Vipassana uses noticing the breath to achieve this, however this can be achieved by focusing on any object - a word - chanting, an image - mandala,  ishta devata, etc. Mandalas and mantras are like easter eggs which work on our subconscious mind.
Rishis of ancient India knew how to programme our mind with sounds and symbols. These tools will be there with us for a while on the journey, Ultimately like vipassana says we have to break thru these patterns as well to reach enlightenment.

yoga with music

I dont like Yoga classes with music, I find it annoying. I want to concentrate on the poses not music! Duh! and all.
I was not able to do yoga on my own, I found it really hard to continue.  I have done yoga for more than 10 years now, on and off, so I know all the poses, and after the TTC I should have been able to do by myself. but no. not possible.

But put 2 things I dont like together and - Magic :D It turns out, If I play music, I can do yoga on my own and enjoy it ! I figured this out when doing yoga on my own in a hotel gym with music and alone and It went so surprisingly well. but It took me couple of months to realise I could do that at home.
Slow! I know! but I am thankful for this lucky click.

Good luck to me  and May I be blessed with Years/Decade/Centuries ( reincarnation n'all ;-) of self practice. 

When westerners look at poor Indian kids without shoes,  they feel very sad, they want to give them shoes. I feel as if not having shoes is the worst thing in life? When I look at western kids (and rich Indian too)  with too many things, I feel sad, so materialistic, how will they value anything in life? :-)

who is right?

Matthew Ricard is talking about this Tibetan refugee in Bhutan who doesnot have hands or legs, He was carried by someone from Tibet to Bhutan. Hardly ever goes out of his hut. Dirt poor.  Not miserable depressive. Everyone in the village visits him with food or water. They say it makes them feel good to meet him. Ricard says thats because he has inner peace and happiness, which all visitors can feel. Reminded me of my uncle, bed ridden for 38 years, taken care of by others, but his mental state was super strong. Everyone came to visit him just like the other guy, regularly every week.
Actually this reminds me of helplessness, the world thinks of these as helpless, but their minds so stable from inside, inspite of tragedy. They are not denying their emotions, they feel bad sad but that diesnot takever their lives. Inner peace.
That is what I want. Solid rock of stability inside, and melting heart of gold loving kindness :-D

 Sadhana        
                                              Samskaara        
                                                    
                                 Samsaara 
               
           Loving Kindness      
                                                   Monkey mind             
Dukha
                                       Om
          Tapas          
                                              Sankalpa 
                              Metta 

Helplessness

Left brain mode today, so it will be analytical and preachy. :-P

Helpless is of 2 types
Helplessness about the outside circumstances
Helplessness,  the feeling we get within.

Helplessness in circumstances is beyond our control, just like everything else. Astroid is going to hit earth, Something that happened in the past, Child is dying, incurable disease etc. We are very small player in this big world, so there are lots of circumstances not under our control.

Helplessness inside is the reaction inside us to outside circumstances, we can do something about this. My first reaction to this is, If we are feeling like this, there is scope for improvement in our thinking.

We feel helpless when
- we judge a circumstance as bad
- Then we think that we are responsible and we should be doing something about this situation
- Then we judge that we failed cause we cant do anything about it.

The solution to helplessness is acceptance. First accept - circumstances are neither good nor bad, its just our judgment. even being burnt in Hilters camp.
Second, most of the things in this world are not under our control, we should develop wisdom to differentiate those that are under our control and those that are not. we should stop worrying about those beyond our control and accept them - cause - seriously there is no other choice. and for those things under our contorl - we are no longer helpless.
The third thing - failure. Well this is the worst of all, We can do our best and leave the results to circumstance to the universe to Krishna. That is all we can do, the work is under our control, the result is not. So judging as failure is a Big waste :D :P

Samsara like samskara is also something craved by the house holder and shunned by the monk. 

kindness

Kindness

Ok I wanted to write nice things about kindness, Kind, feel good things, but I think I will write about why I dont like kindness sometimes, what are my mental blocks about it. Whether what I dont like is actually kindness or not? Or I am again being too "mental" about it all? :-P

There is resistance to doing kindness, or being kind in me. I sometimes link it to self harm, by being kind I may be harming myself? Am I a sucker?

Kindness may be considered weakness - I judge many people who seem kind on the outside as weak. They are doing to avoid conflict? Am I judging them too harshly.

more than as weak many times I see kindness as stupid , people giving money to obviously fake beggars, which increases the number of these horrid people on the streets. forwarding "please share this in 2 secs her father will stop smoking" kind of things.

I also think there may be hidden motives - what if they are trying to curry favour, trying to please someone? trying to make someone like them.

ha ha! yes I am a B :D I think like this only, I cant help it, I am high IQ low EQ person ok :P

Other people being kind makes me look bad. Is that why I find it too hard to give the label of kind to other people?

There are so many instances where I feel like calling out, that is not kindness. My friends are vegetarian, and they claim it is because of their kindness, but I think its because of their samskara the way they are brought up and wrapping it as kindness.

My MIL and such women, doing things for their men, Its how they have been conditioned, but they think of themselves as kind.

I know such a judgemental piece right? May be shobha is right, we need to think of instances where people do something for others total strangers and not for family. 

I give way to others while driving 3 types of mentality - 

1) give way to assholes :D because they are blocking the road and things will move faster if I give way. 

2) give way with a sense of duty, because things will move smoothly if I drive like this. 

3) Sometimes rarely, when I dont expect someone flashes lights and gives way.  I feel happy, I do the same for someone, makes me feel good. that may be kindness? Is the difference only in attitude and not action?

Can I ever judge others action as Sucker/people pleaser? only they know how that made them feel. may be they are kind.

We shud not be obligated to be kind, so trying to be kind - is out. it will probably only build resentment. and trying will always be with a sense of duty. may be try to cultivate a sense of love for all and then kind actions will happen automatically?

I gave 100£ to starving people in somalia, was that kind? or sense of guilt for being prevailed?

did it make me feel relieved or happy? did I do it with love or shame or pity? 

I did it with a sense of fairness.  I have started feeling its wrong that some of us, earn this much lead such a comfortable life, just because we are lucky. Its not fair. but did I feel love for them ? I dont know.  May be my way will be like this, because I am a thinker after all..

contentment

What does it mean to me - contentment
words that come to me is, It is opposite of  "I want" = "Enough"
contentment is Buddha.  In my mind - contentment is always simple, down to earth, straightforward. minimalist, zen, white, light blue, pastel colour anyway . old man resting under a coconut tree in the afternoon.

How do u get it?
If you want to be content, you are not :-) Looking for contentment itself is not being content :-)
Can we be content with being not content :-)

related words
Acceptance - only content implies joy, acceptance implies neutral
So content is "Enough" with a smile .
Gratitude - is a way to contentment.
Awareness - is also a way into contentment. "I want" focuses on what all we dont have, where as we usually already have what we need ( otherwise we would be dead :D ) Can we have gratitude with our awareness of what all we have?
Gratitude is Awareness + emotion

Gratitude is exploring the current situation and seeing it in its entirity and knowing what all is responsible for my current situation- with a positive light offcourse, This will surely bring contentment, because if we are alive, we must have more things to be grateful about than not :-D

Am I content?  At moments may be. trying to be :D (Psst! That means I am not content with being discontent! Sheeesh!!! )
On the way to contentment - Trying to make "wants" small and have more "enoughs".  Simplify.

same old problem with Bahubali

Bahubali movie is great and amazing and all that. but then again I have the same old problem with it, the greatness of blood lines, glorification of royal blood yadda yadda yadda
Same rant about Game of Thrones Jon Snow
http://mystic-babe.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/inheritance-game-of-thrones-spoiler.html

Have u seen how super human Bahubali is, not just him, his uncle, grand uncle are also super duper strong. Why? because he is kings son.
Were these kind of stories told in old days to fool people into believing that royalty was some kind of super human superior being. much bigger than normal people? Was it a propaganda an advertising campaign to keep normal people in their places? Even today lot of people believe good things happen if kind saw them, touched them etc. everyone is crazy about blood lines.

climbing up a rock, climbing down into a clear stream, dipping face in ice cold water, walking bare foot on cold cold grass and on spikey stones. placid clear lake, huge green mountains, fog, mist and rain.
temple in the middle of the stream, pine wood tree god, growing in between rocks in really strong current. The spirit of the stream :-)
wood bridges, black slugs, ferns.
in mother natures lap, feeling whole and connected. <3 br="" nbsp="">

feel like a woman

some people feel like that, I ... I feel like this.

At the core of my being I think  I am a 12 year old boy :-) with a runny nose and close cropped round head and black nails and streaked face short and skinny for my age :D with big khakhi chaddi and shirt with a lost button and a missing tooth. Looks like I am a poor village boy from 1970s or 80s :-)
I love insects and bugs and puss and wounds :D and jumping and climbing and experiments. I love to catch crabs or explore the bhoot bangla or the jungle behind the school. I like mud. I like frogs. I do my homework with my tongue sticking out under dim yellow bulb sitting on the floor with my desk :-)

At the core of being am I  a 10 year old girl. a tomboy with 2 pigtails with faded red ribbon, a longish handed down pinnafore skirt and a shirt with button missing, at the core of my being am I always a poor kid :-DI dont have runny nose or missing teeth but I think I have lies in my hair, I keep scratching my head. I love to catch the lies and squish them between my nails :D I like lotus and small grass flowers, I spend hours on the way back from school looking at grass and ants and insects and spider webs. I look at tree hollow and imagine houses of pigeons and squirrels. I look at the lake and imagine a underwater world, my friends are the girls who stay in huge shells at the bottom of the lake who turn into fish or into girls. Unlike the boy who is bubbly and outgoing, I am quite and contemplative and sensitive, I smell tiny flowers, I make friends with mice and rats and spiders and grass hoppers and butterflies. I let catterpillers crawl on my hands and kiss them and dont expect them to turn into princes .  I talk to plants and they talk back. I climb to the top of the trees untill I am out of the canopy and I can see very very far, I imagine a vast wonderful kingdom of the lion king.  and I imagine I am the king of the monkeys( - see  I can be both king or queen prince or princess it doesnot matter.  )  monkeys of this tree, I hear a monkey screech and I am scared, I run home real fast - I am scared of the monkey teeth. Amma at home gives me hot dosa to eat with ghee, I sit on the floor and eat that dosa on a steel plate, amma is making that dosa on a fire - I think we are poor and in 1970s :-)

At the core of my being I may be a 80 year old lady,  always a 80 lady and never a 80 year old man :D or may be 100 year old witch with potions and spells and healing and stories, not poor any more, not even in the 80s, somewhere in the west or in the Himalayas, with western clothes and in a western stone villa :-)  This old lady definitely lives inside Studio Ghilbli animations :-)

Actually at the core of my being I could be a 80 year old man, bald head and robes, skinny to the bone, with wise twinkly eyes may be white beard may be clean shaven, may be a sitting cross legged on a magic carpet and flying overs desserts and mountains over China and Russia and Afghanistan :-)
 

loving kindness

Is there something like worlds happiest man? Is it even possible?
Meet Mathieu Ricard
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2225634/Is-worlds-happiest-man-Brain-scans-reveal-French-monk-abnormally-large-capacity-joy-meditation.html

Scientists who study meditation did brain scans on Mathieu and found that his readings were off the charts! They couldn't believe that a human could have this kind of readings for feelings of well-being. Off course he is like Usain Bolt of meditation may be, He may be wired for happiness, but he says its all due to Meditation, specifically Loving kindness meditation.

Frankly Happiness is great to have, but its not my goal, I think curiosity and deciphering the mysteries of the world come before this for me ( believe it or not :P ) Also being a fan of Buddha and loving his teachings I tend to think that happiness is as transient as sadness. May be there is another reason , less lofty and more human - it is embarrassing for me to be pursuing happiness- I see it as sappy, corny pursuit, another very human reason why I would not go behind happiness is I fear disappointment. Then why am I impressed by the worlds happiest man? :-).

There are different kinds of meditation, 1000s of kinds,  like there are 1000s of kinds of workouts, there are 1000s of kinds of workout for the mind. Which of these is the best? Just like we cannot say which workout is the best, we cannot say which meditation is the best.
Listening to this man I was convinced that one thing I need to add to my meditation practice is loving kindness meditation. May be I won't be the worlds happiest person, but may be we will be happier than todays Deepa? :-)
Googles own buddhist teacher, in his interview said a very nice thing. 2 things -
How to meditate? What is the shortest time for meditation? He said One Breath. Breath in - Breath out. Thats it. Thats the shortest meditation.
Then what is the shortest Loving kindness meditation, He said - just think of any person and wish them well - May be this person be Happy/ May this person be well. Thats it. Try it he says. Try it. It does feel good.
Loving kindness meditation is very simple - We first wish ourselves well, then we wish a very loved person well, then a stranger who is neutral, then we wish a person who we don't get along with well. Then we wish all the beings and the whole world well. This is like bench pressing our compassion muscles.
 I am a very logical person, thinker, This needs to be balanced by some softness. Loving kindness also helps intellectual people to get out of their heads and thoughts and develop some empathy and some understanding.  May be it will also give emotional backing to the good thoughts and turn intellectual knowledge into wisdom? :-)

automatic body movements

I have been looking for the answer to this - "Automatic body movements during meditation" since a long long time and as usual Yoga is awesome, it is beyond mind blowing the amount of knowledge they have/had. ( as usual, this amazement in somewhat accompanied by anger towards all who dont acknowledge)

Lot of people said it was Kundalini awakening,and I was sceptical about that because u know Kundalini awakening is a very advanced stage and I was not anywhere near it.
It is called Pranothana, increase of energy in the body, which acts somewhat like Kundalini but no where near as intense. Pranothana clears the body of some blockages and prepares it for Kundalini apparently. :-)

More details here
http://www.yogamag.net/archives/1979/cmar79/prano.shtml

The best way to deal with this is just let them happen, treat them like thoughts, they come and they probably stay and then they go, we just notice that movement started, movement is happening, movement stopped. Let it happen.

It is a sign of changing times that in 2005 when I looked for answers to such things, very very obscure links turned up and now google, quora and every thing is full of answers to these things? Is this the sign that earth is moving towards more spirituality?

fermentation

Fermentation really interests me, I mean it makes stuff taste awesome. No no I didnt just down alcohol :P I just ate sour dough bread! Yummy!
After easily making idly but struggling to make Yogurt, I am wondering what would happen if I add yeast to milk :-D Well I vaguely knew that yogurt fermentation is bacterial and not yeast.. but then I also had a thought that fermentation is fermentation.  so .. this link. It provides all possible answers to all possible types of fermentation.

http://phickle.com/all-fermentation-is-not-lactofermentation/

basically, Bread Idli etc are yeast fermentation, so u can use the bread  yeast to ferment Idli, but Yogurt is bacterial, lacto bascillus ( Oh comeon! I knew this, Science blindness infected me for a short while ) All the sour veggies like Kimchi are bacterial.