#thankfully scratch makes it pretty simplified for you but i still had a hard time. since it's my first project! you understand | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aalapdavjekar · 3 years

Text

8 Lessons from Vipassana

2010 was a peculiar year. It was the year in which I found the great fortune of stumbling upon a book about the bizarre incidents and experiences of an Australian girl voyaging through the Indian subcontinent. The book — a 21st century rewrite of the lore of the hippie trail, offered little towards cerebral surprises, but made for a curious viewing of the life of someone who was brave (or foolish) enough to have gone through all the trouble that she did for the experiences she sought.

The author chronicled days spent discovering religion and spiritual heaven while avoiding hell — nosy neighbours, opportunistic rickshaw-wallas, and the odd would-be rapist. She portrays an all too familiar India — the world’s spiritual shopping mall serving food-poisoning on Tuesdays, vehicular accidents every Friday, and frightening latrines as a daily course. Not all of her pages carried so much drama, but they laid out a rough sketch of the trials and tribulations of the average foreigner in attempting to make sense of the country.

The smallest chapter in the book spoke to me the most. There was a tiny passage that depicted the joy and punishing solitude of the type rarely considered as thrill — monastic rituals, austere and rigorous routines, distress and hardship — it seemed a bit too much for anyone, let alone a solo adventurer. And yet, it seemed like just about the only thing she really enjoyed during her trip.

That was my introduction to Vipassana. That first memory is still fresh: the desire to confront this awkward specimen of a situation for myself, only because, at the time, it seemed so bizarre. To my ignorant mind, I could not have comprehended the result of ten long days (and nights), sitting around without the utterance of a single syllable. If nothing else, it would just be yet another substance: to taste, chew on, spit out, and rave about having conquered yet another mountain of sensory input; spin it all into a tall tale of profundity and wisdom.

Thankfully, the taste was sweet. To me, this became pretty important. It felt like a gigantic discovery and I often found myself proselytizing like a broken record for days after the first course. I eventually stopped for being seen as a bit of a nuisance, however, my fascination with the practice only grew with time. In those ten short days, I had experienced a deep, resounding change from within. As difficult as the journey had been, I only knew I had to keep going.

That was all ten years ago. 2010 was peculiar, but a dozen Vipassana courses later, life only became weirder.

It’s the stark contrast that gets you; the juxtaposition of life inside a course, and then witnessing the world outside. It is hard to illustrate and is not really the point of this post, but I mention it only because I’d like to warn you that many of the lessons I’ve learnt are all experiential truths. Simply engaging the intellect is not enough. You can’t describe the taste of salt to someone who has never experienced it before, and you can’t learn to swim simply by reading about it.

With that said, understand that even though I have been practicing for a while, it does not mean I have achieved any form of mastery over my practice. I still consider this as the just the first step in a very long path. I share these insights, all of which have broadened and enriched my understanding of not only myself, but of all-encompassing experience existence in itself. My only hope is to encourage you to sit down and focus on your breath.

1. Relaxing meditation is more like aggressive deconditioning…

The mind is a big ball of accumulated, tightly-knotted habits. Habits are not merely mundane proclivities like picking your nose, or a preference for K-pop. Habits are the set of all unconscious tendencies, picked up over the course of one’s life and through generations past, resulting in present thought, action, or both. Natural instincts such as the struggle to survive and the urge for sexual gratification are among the densest of elements residing within the mental landscape.

Mental forces are easiest to imagine when you think of them as analogous to Newton’s Third Law: each action has an equal and opposite reaction. As the mind sees, the mind does. Cause and effect. Through millions of years of evolution, the mind has been shaped to recognize and react to patterns. Certain emotions may result in specific thoughts. Certain thoughts may result in specific behaviours.

When you sit down to practice Vipassana, you essentially train yourself to observe the mind without reacting. The process may not seem like much but, with time, the simple act of observation decreases the rigidity and impulsiveness of the mind. Gradually, the simple act of watching it unravel before you, unveiling its knots until they loosen and eventually fade away, brings about a significant change. This does not mean that after ten days of meditation you will deprogram your mind and achieve liberation. It is a very gradual process. Believe me. Even after all these years, I’ve only scratched the surface and, so far, I’ve managed to adopt a slightly better diet. But I have better focus, more clarity of thought, less anxiety, and things that used to drive me crazy don’t annoy me as much anymore.

Meditation will change your brain. Thoughts included.

2. You are your mind’s weak, pathetic slave.

At any given time, you have very little conscious ability to overrule your genetic programming, emotional state, and natural surroundings (many have even argued that there is no such thing as conscious control and free will is an illusion, but that is a discussion for another time). The goal of meditation is to break free from the mind’s thrall: it’s patterns of thought. That’s the liberation that meditators keep referring to time and again.

If you find it hard to believe how little control you have over your mind, try to focus continuously on the breath just for a few minutes and notice the amount of thoughts that manage to pop up. You’ll quickly see how easily the mind is carried away. It’ll drift away, either to the future, or to the past. Bringing it back and keeping it in the present is a constant, seemingly endless struggle.

Our toxic addiction to our own thoughts creates the biggest hurdle. Over the course of our lives, we have been conditioned by our parents, school, society, even language, to think a certain way. Like the words we associate with objects to learn the alphabet in kindergarten, we continuously associate abstractions — words — to ideas; to the way things work. Our names for objects, people, places, feelings, situations, etc. are just names. They are concepts that are formed in the mind. In other words, our brain holds maps to reality which are drawn and redrawn over the course of our lives. But the map is not the territory, yet we are constantly under the delusion that the map is real.

Our fascination and attachment to our artificial concepts of what is real, important, and urgent is what hinders progress— the practice is essentially training the mind not to identify with one’s thoughts. In other words, to heal trauma, you need to learn to dissociate with the feeling which triggers the trauma. Trauma comes in many shapes. It may take the form of the stories that we forge for ourselves to make sense of who we are. The story we tell ourselves turns into the very bondage that keeps us in indefinite servitude to the mind.

The mind is a slippery serpent, as dangerous when untamed as it is powerful when mastered. Most beginners often find it frustrating how difficult it is to ‘control’ their minds. But therein lies the effort. It is a skill to be cultivated like any other. Exasperation and the desire to stop is a natural byproduct of the conditioning described earlier. There is an inertia to progress that needs to be continuously overcome. With time, it gets easier.

Meditation is simply a tool to harness and rein in the unruly mind.

3. Everything is connected. Every action has a consequence, and it matters.

This can be argued as a simple scientific principle. Richard Feynman in his lecture, “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences,” describes the artificial divisions we create, forming a myriad of distinct models of understanding to comprehend and explain to ourselves aspects of the same reality. Brian Cox takes it even further.

My understanding leans towards the philosophical side, but bear with me. Most religions and spiritual traditions preach purity of mind, speech, and deed. Whether through scripture or ritual, they teach compassion, loving kindness, mercy and wisdom. I’ve realized that there’s more to this than mere morality.

To greatly simplify this, let’s imagine the world as a closed, finite system — something like a small swimming pool. Any kind of movement results in ripples that gradually extend across the body of water, affecting everything in their path. Eventually, given enough time, those ripples will bounce right back to whence they came. Sooner or later, your actions will meet their maker. But don’t mistake this as a need to be nice out of selfish necessity. The picture is bigger than this.

The world, much like our hypothetical swimming pool, is a melting pot of events resulting from simultaneous interactions causing countless, spontaneous consequences. It’s a chain reaction and an ocean of chaos, with the ebb and flow of individual currents that mingle, coalesce and form waves, crashing into one another to give us the great churning of the wheel that Buddhists speak of, and the agitation that we are almost too familiar with.

The turbulence, in essence, is the mind being washed away with the tide, engulfed and drowned in the vicissitudes of a constantly changing life. To remain steadfast and solid in such stormy waters would require nothing short of supreme mastery in the art of mindfulness. A cornerstone of such an endeavour requires the cultivation of a conscious effort to sustain complete awareness and acceptance for the present moment.

When one remains vigilant of thought, speech, and deed, and acquires a resolute and unwavering focus, then all the torment the ocean can muster will be but powerless against this tranquil state of mind. But even beyond that, tranquility will give way to reflection, understanding, and empathy. In other words, when you respond to anger with love, you cast water over the fire.

With practice, each action undertaken will arrive with more effort, more purpose and consideration. That is the delicate insight to be gained — that every action, every moment, every breath is sacred. Every bit of conscious presence is a gift to be treasured.

4. Nothing matters as much as you think it does…

Vipassana meditation is an exercise in cultivating insight through self-observation. You watch your breath and the sensations across your body as they arise and pass away, each time acknowledging their transient and impermanent nature. That, you come to realize, is the truth of all reality.

You realize that suffering is a form of mental attachment, not to any external object, but to the sensation that object has on your mind. This attachment is sometimes so subtle and imperceptible that it is impossible to witness it without a mind that is steady and calm. These attachments are what cause dukkha or suffering. Attachments are not limited to sensations that feel good. Any sensation that makes you feel like had more of it or less of it — desire and aversion — is attachment. The mind runs after pleasure, runs from fear and pain. These are attachments and they are a hindrance to the practice.

As you grow into your practice, you will gradually slip out of your old patterns of thought, replacing them with a more open, willing, and fluid presence of mind. What once bothered you may gradually dissolve into nothingness. What once seemed as part of you, possessed you, caused emotional havoc when you didn’t get what you wanted, might simply vanish from existence. No, you won’t turn into an emotionless robot. No it won’t make you give up everything in life, turn into a vagrant and move to the beach, unless you already desired those things. Meditation will only help sort out what you really want.

Practice will help you detach yourself from your thoughts until you realize that your thoughts are not you. Feelings come, feelings go. They are impermanent, and they don’t matter. All it requires is time and the simple act of observation.

5. You are not an experiential bubble.

For many beginners trying to embrace the many forms of mindfulness, one of the toughest obstacles to overcome is doubt. It may be doubt in oneself, doubt in the practice, doubt in one’s teacher, and so on. But it’s a natural response to something new, especially to those completely unfamiliar with these types of practices. Imparting trust is a transactional habit. Unless one is certain of attainable benefits and can measure their worth, they may find an unwillingness to take even the first step.

Couple a doubtful mind with the myriad of mental encounters one may face during meditation and the result might just kill the desire for practice. People have reported everything from swirling lights, out-of-body experiences, synesthesia, to demons. This is not unusual. Meditation is a gateway into the unconscious — a surgical procedure as S.N. Goenka, the person who brought the teaching of Vipassana back to India, describes. Through the process of Sankharupekkha (observing mental formations with equanimity), the practitioner encounters dormant impurities in the unconscious that rise to the surface of the mind, and manifest themselves as physical phenomenon.

Juxtaposed with modern-day culture, the meditative experience stands out like a sore thumb, often causing its students great confusion and mistrust in the very quality of what they are learning. It doesn’t help that the ideas and general philosophy presented by spiritual traditions are outright antithetical to “western” schools of thought.

Concepts such as avidya, anicca, dukkha, shunyata, samsara and nirvana are like salt. These are concepts that are almost impossible to understand through mere language—one must personally taste them. They are often horribly misconstrued and usually thrown out, replaced by a far shallower understanding that barely skims the surface of the teaching, conflating meditation with stress reduction and labour productivity. After all, these are the values our industrial societies can easily relate to.

We often make it harder on ourselves by letting our experiences fester. Remember to talk about them, discuss them, debate their true essence, and let them be out in the open. Let these ideas, however alien, achieve coherence and solidity. Give them a better chance to struggle and survive. There are many people out there experiencing the same reality, watching the same movie, feeling the same thing. The emotional outlet, especially when you are starting out in this practice is immensely valuable. It’s a small thing but it matters.

After my first ten-day Vipassana course came to a close, as the new students could finally open their mouths and start speaking with each other about their ten days spent in silence, we could all see the benefits this strange new thing had given us. I was in a room full of fifty-odd people that seemed to have had a similar experience in the course as I did. They all seemed calmer than on the first day, happier for having made it through; in the process, they had visibly changed. That’s what brought forth trust in the system; not only because it seemed to work across a diverse set of people, but because it made me realize that we are all in the same boat.

6. Compassion takes practice.

There is no absolute right or wrong. Understanding which is which requires not only context but patience. An impulsive and ignorant mind does not have the capacity to form correct judgement. An angry and intolerant person cannot be trusted to make rational and thoughtful decisions. Why do you need to develop proper judgement? The simplest possible answer: to progress in your practice. Hence, while Vipassana may bring insight, on the last day of each course, students are taught a slightly different type of meditation.

Metta, meaning ‘loving-kindness’, is a type of meditation that involves concentrating on directing love towards ourselves and others, even those (especially those) who may have hurt us. A daily practice of metta has its benefits, but most significant of all, is the way it complements insight meditation and brings out lasting, positive changes in mind and body.

The feeling is hard to describe, but all I can say is that (at the risk of sounding cliched), through the course of one’s life, pain is an inevitability, but suffering through the pain is a choice. With regular practice in metta, instead of being swept away by one’s emotions, one learns to consciously bring awareness to the suffering being experienced and replace it with compassionate and loving thoughts. Suffering is simply a negative reaction of the mind to any form of pain. With practice, mental aversion to pain gradually fades. Like mental ointment, compassion can heal the deepest of wounds.

But compassion takes practice. Think of it as learning a new language. Even if you have no prior experience reading the script or pronouncing the words, with time, you might just achieve fluency.

Compassion towards all beings, regardless of the situation, is an important goal for anyone serious about walking the path. When you emanate a constant stream of loving thoughts without ever missing a beat, then you might definitely consider yourself having changed for the better.

7. It’s all just glorified play.

By the time children reach the age of 3 or 4, their ego begins to form a cohesive identity — a map of themselves: I am this, I like that, I want to be so and so. Whether through nature or nurture, the child learns to take on a role for themselves depending on what the situation may bring: during interactions with their parents, with other children, and with society in general.

From an early age, children are engaged in play. Their games may be diverse, but are usually a form of role-playing: tea parties, dollhouses, make-believe — simulations of the adult world, to test its boundaries and see how things react. Fueled by curiosity and the joy of discovery, they rehearse and solidify their understanding of their surroundings, finding their place in the greater familial and societal picture, and simultaneously strengthen their masks of identity.

The masks we carry, birthed from the ego, may be necessary for our survival, but they are simply roles — the games we continue to play even as adults, with ourselves and with others. When the student of Vipassana comes to notice their own desires and attachments to the world, the identity of the self is often seen as the greatest attachment. It is the great epic; the story of ourselves that we’re so engrossed in writing and reciting— and madly in love with.

This story never ends. It lies permanently in the state of becoming: I am like this, I like that, I want to be so and so. The attachment to a false idea of oneself is the most difficult thing to witness and understand. It is the biggest delusion of the mind, and the greatest hindrance to one’s liberation from samsara — the endless cycle of birth and death. Whether you choose to believe that is unimportant, but recognising one’s tendencies to cling to one’s beliefs, one’s masks and identity, is a crucial process towards self-discovery and insight.

Recognising the mind for what it is — a constant stream of consciousness always in flux — will bring you a step closer to deciphering it.

8. You Know Nothing.

I know nothing. For knowing involves being certain, but if everything is impermanent and things are constantly in flux, then nothing can be certain.

To understand how truly inept we are at comprehending reality, consider the incredibly narrow spectrum of perception our brains provide. Our sensory organs: the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin offer only a slice of all the information that they come into contact with.

The eyes, for example, see only a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, which we call visible light. Similarly, our hearing is restricted to frequencies of sound that fall between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. In the same way, we carry only a limited cognitive capability and intelligence.

It’s a humbling thought. At the very least, reminding oneself of the fragility of one’s understanding is a way to minimize cognitive bias. Further, since no one knows anything, knowing you know nothing will actually put you a step ahead of most people.

“I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do. I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know.” — Plato’s Apology of Socrates

Similarly, from the Dhammapada:

“A fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but a fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed.”

Lastly, Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen Master calls the state of knowing nothing the “beginner’s mind,” the constant prerequisite for progressing in one’s practice:

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” — from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

May all beings be happy.

#meditation #vipassana #insight #zen #buddhism #philosophy #wisdom

8 notes · View notes

pkansa · 7 years

Text

It was not all that long ago (see here) that I fell pretty hard for the Alpina Alpiner 4. It was my first time going hands-on with the brand, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw there. Well, if you know me, you know I like GMT complications. I’ve been starting to focus in a little more closely on those watches lately, and I saw Alpina had a few in the mix. Put two and two together, and you’ve got our review today of the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours.

Ostensibly, the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours is for the traveling businessman (given the 44mm diameter, I am guessing it will not grace the wrists of many women). How so? Well, it’s that Business Hours part of the name, which shows up on the chapter ring as an interpretation of the iconic “Pepsi” bezel. With it, you get the red to indicate the normal working (banking?) hours (9 am – 5 pm), with grace time on either side in white, showing when people are actually going to be in the office. That leaves the blue to indicate when folks are, well, not at work.

This chapter ring is not moveable, nor can you adjust where those colors bands are hitting. While those may have been clever paths to go, this keeps things much simpler. If you are traveling around, you will just have that GMT hand set to the home time of your home and office, and you won’t risk trying to get a hold of someone in the middle of the night. Conversely, if you find yourself dealing more with an office on the other side of the globe, you’d set that GMT hand to the foreign time.

What about someone like myself, who really does not travel much any more, and has a remote team but in the same time zone? Does a watch like the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours have a place? Perhaps not the “Business Hours” iteration, but a GMT, there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally like the complication (these days) as it’s something slightly different than a simple three-hander, without making things overly complicated. How my love of the complication started, that’s different.

I was drawn to the GMT complication back before I had any sort of watch winder, and I found myself constantly needing to wind and reset watches. With a three-hander and date, I was always winding things around to figure out where “midnight” was in the movement, so I’d have an accurate date set. With the GMT hand, that became vastly simplified, as I could use it, at a basic level, as a 24-hour indicator. Easy peasy, and less manual manipulation of the crown and handset. Not particularly an issue for me these days, but it’s where things started for me, and that extra hand really has stuck with me.

And, frankly, as far as complications go, the GMT hand is a relatively simple one. It’s just one additional hand, geared to turn at half the speed that the hour hand is going at. That’s at a high level. For each watch, there can be variations on how that is all implemented. On the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours, the hour hand and GMT hand are set independently. In this case, the hour hand is set with the crown in the first position. Rotate it one way, the hour hand jumps in hour increments; rotating the other way gets you adjusting the date. As to the GMT hand, that’s set along with the minute hand (i.e., how you would expect an hour hand to work on a standard three-hander).

Of course, if those hands are moving around on a busy or otherwise illegible dial, then it won’t make a lick of difference as to how they’re set. That is not the case, thankfully, with the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours. The black sunray dial provides a deep background for the polished (and luminous) indices and hands to set against; even the GMT hand (with it’s splash of red) is easy enough to pick out. Speaking of the dial, we mentioned the Pepsi-bezel inspiration on the chapter ring. You might also think of the four lines of text on the lower half of the dials coming from another brand, which it may (I didn’t interview the designer). Fortunately, the text is small enough that it’s not a significant distraction. There is one other larger influence as well, and that shows up on the case.

That particular detail would be the lugs of the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours. This “twisted” style is something we commonly see on Omega watches (and is something I had a good watch friend point out), and I have seen it used on some others (particularly, the Benarus Sea Snake). As with so many of these little details, you can cry “copy cat!”, or you can accept them for what they are – details that, because they have worked well and look well, show up across a variety of places. For the lugs in particular, I like the look, as it gives things a somewhat more streamlined look, and the alternating surface finishes are something I am always a fan of.

Ok, how about a detail that I have not seen on any other watch, that the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours has? Take another look at that date window – does anything seem different there? Go ahead, I’ll wait. You see, there is a magnifier there. On most watches, this takes the form of a cyclops that is glued onto the crystal. I know that is a particularly divisive feature (albeit one I’ve come to like given it’s extreme practicality). Well, then, setting the magnifier directly onto the date window (yet below the main crystal) is a particularly clever solution, and one I certainly would not mind seeing popping up all over the place (see, that’s how these good ideas can start showing up across a variety of brands).

On the whole, while the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours does have some details that are reminiscent of other brands, I would say it is indeed it’s own watch. It’s not paying homage to any one model in particular, it is cutting it’s own path using maps from prior adventurers. Even how to classify it is sort of it’s own thing, in my book. More often than not, we see GMT movements implemented into sport watches, which are then polished up a bit to make them fit into a dressier setting. Here, I would say the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours is going in the other direction. They started with what is very much a dress watch, and then by enlarging the dimensions a bit, putting the GMT in, and then including their “Big 4” features (anti-magnetic, anti-shock, water resistance, stainless steel) we end up with a dress watch that can hold up to some sportier activities.

Sure, you come to the same result – a somewhat sporty, a somewhat dressy watch – but where you start can make quite a bit of difference. Well, more realistically, it makes more of a difference in the mind of the buyer. Are you looking for a rough and tumble watch that can fit with the occasional suit? Then you want to start with the sport watch. If you find yourself more in the office (and wearing suits with frequency), then starting with a dress watch makes sense; adding in the sporting sensibilities then turns a watch like the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours into a very capable travel companion, ready for the board room or the beach, all in the same trip.

So, yes, I did enjoy my time spent with the 126g Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours. It is perhaps a touch larger than I might prefer for regular wear (both in diameter and thickness), but it’s not like we’re talking dive watch dimensions. Ok, yes, the diameter is like a dive watch, but with the small bezel and those twisted lugs, it wears smaller than the 44mm might suggest. And, yeah, it is going to look a good sight better with a suit (particularly if you are partial to French Cuffs, as I am) than your sport watch-based GMTs. Yes, they work, but the Alpina GMT 4 Business Hour ups the game. If you’re on the hunt for a great travel (and everyday) watch, you certainly should consider the $1,995 Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours. While I won’t advocate (yet) just owning a single watch, if that’s what you’re going for, this is a watch that will work for just about anything you would want to throw at it. alpina-watches.com

Review Summary

Brand & Model: Alpina GMT 4 Business Hours

Price: $1,995

Who’s it for?: You like GMT complications, and you like sport watches, but you want something dressier (and more affordable) than what some of the “regular” recommendations might be

Would I wear it?: Indeed I would. I don’t know that it would supplant my favorite GMT from my personal collection, but this is a solid watch for a variety of scenarios

What I’d change: As with my Alpina Alpiner 4 review (LINK), a thinner case would be welcomed

The best thing about it: The best small detail is that “hidden” cyclops on the date window. The best overall detail is how Alpina managed to take a dress watch design and embiggen things to create a capable sport watch, while still retaining the dress watch looks

Tech Specs from Alpina

Movement

Caliber: AL-550

Frequency:28’800/h

Jewels: 26

Winding: Automatic

Power Reserve: 38 h

Theme: Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Date, Compass turning bezel

Case features

Materials: Stainless Steel

Crystal: Scratch-resistant sapphire crystal with antireflective treatment

Dial: Black sunray dial with applied luminous indexes

Crown: Screw-in

Water resistance: 10 ATM

Diameter: 44 mm

Strap or Bracelet Width: 22/18 mm

Strap: Genuine leather

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Getting busy with the @AlpinaWatches #GMT 4 Business Hours It was not all that long ago (see here) that I fell pretty hard for the Alpina Alpiner 4.

#gmt #Pepsi bezel #swiss

0 notes