The Journey

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque

… om mani padme hum …

I’ve just finished a six-week beginners’ meditation course. I missed two weeks in the middle, but it was a great experience. My aim at the start was to try to be better at relaxing, to try to slow the rush of thought that constantly flows through my brain.

I don’t know that that’s exactly what will happen. I feel, having completed the classes, that the goal should be somewhat different: still to try to be better at relaxing, but not so much to slow the rush of thought, but harness it, to be aware of it, and to let it pass if I don’t want to tap it, and to draw from it when I want to. And not let it overwhelm when there are just too many.

The challenge now might well be to see if I can keep it up. There are lots of things I do that I’m more conscious actually count as meditating, and that has been good to realise. But making some form of meditation a deliberate and regular part of my day or week will be key.

Last thing, literally: we ended the course with everyone in the group chanting om together for 10 minutes. I think it took a lot for some people in the group to agree to that. But the vocal harmony happened naturally, without anyone needing to do anything special or be in any particular key, and the calm unison in the room caused me to break out in smile every so often. Simply brilliant.

Image: Christopher J Fynn

Dreams

It seems dreams aren’t just visual non-sequiturs that happen behind closed eyelids. This piece from Jonah Lehrer, on the New York Times Opinionator blog, is interesting (and slightly worrying, for someone with at least occasional insomniac tendencies):

All this knowledge about the important roles dreams play in our waking lives is fascinating. But it doesn’t make me feel better about my insomnia. Obviously, my old consolation — dreams are nothing but useless melodramas — is clearly false.

So, in not sleeping, and thus not dreaming, one deprives oneself of valuable unconscious ‘solving’ time. The question is, how to get to sleep? And what role might nightmares have in this?

Fish on pragmatism

Stanley Fish on the New York Times Opinionator blog, on pragmatism (quoting from Joseph Margolis' new book Pragmatism's Advantage): 

What is truth? What is real? How are we to act? What is the source of moral and/or epistemological authority? Pragmatism’s basic move is to declare that the answers to these questions will not be found by identifying some transcendental universal and then conforming ourselves to its normative demands (like 'Be ye perfect'). Rather, we must, and can, make do with the 'ordinary aptitudes of human beings (ourselves) viewed within a generously Darwinized ecology, without transcendental, revelatory, or privileged presumptions of any kind'. 

Being 'good'

To live well (the breadth of interpretability there is intentional), to live with some compassion, as well as passion. This is, at least in part, my version of the point of living.

That compassion part of it, however, doesn’t strike everyone as to the point, or even necessary. Caring for others, or even simply ‘being good’, isn’t very interesting.

Mark Vernon recently wrote on the idea of the ‘goody two shoes’ (as opposed to a more benignly-looked upon, yet still unfashionable, goodness):

‘I’ve been wondering why it’s so hard for us to talk about the notion of a good person. It fails to appeal, with its overtones of one who obeys the rules – worse, who habitually obeys the rules because they have a cloying, compliant character. 

‘I think that’s a clue to the problem: we’ve become so used to thinking about morality as being about obeying rules, doing the right thing, that we’ve lost sight of a more appealing notion of goodness.’

Love

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.

Vincent van Gogh

Today’s Playlist

1. 5 Years Time, Noah and the Whale
2. Pick Up the Phone, Dragonette
3. Take Me to the Riot, Stars
4. Trick Pony, Charlotte Gainsbourg
5. Open, Kahn Brothers
6. Polyester Bride, Liz Phair
7. Lets Fall Back In Love, Slow Club
8. Hold My Hand, Hootie & The Blowfish
9. Islands, The XX
10. It’s Good To Be In Love, Frou Frou
11. For Emma, Bon Iver

From hope to hope

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson

10 Simple Things

1. Grace under fire.

2. Smile at the right time.

3. Don’t take things personally.

4. Silence can be golden.

5. Lean on your friends.

6. In an argument, deal in the present, not the past.

7. Don’t hold others to a higher standard.

8. Be the bigger person. Let go.

9. It’s all about timing …

10. Don’t overanalyse!