I am NOT THAT

I'm still making my way through Osho's "Book of Wisdom" and what he says about meditation is relevant to my last post about keeping physically fit. He describes meditation as anything that brings body, mind and spirit into harmony. To that end, jogging could be a form of meditation. So could swimming. He says it is important to choose a form of meditation that suits you. Sitting quietly observing the rhythm of your breathing may suit some but not others. You have to find techniques that work for you. He says that whenever a person is creative, absorbed in creativity, he or she is meditating.

As Brian Eno says, "If you study the heuristics and logistics of the mystics, you will find that their minds rarely move in a line". He goes on to say, "So it's

much more realistic to abandon such statistics and resign to be trapped like a leaf on the vine". It's easy to be trapped of course. We are trapped by identification. According to Osho (so this may be apocryphal), George Gurdieff said, "If I could summarise my teachings into one word, it would be 'disidentification'". I like that. Don't get trapped. Don't identify.

You can start by not accepting labels. I used to proclaim, with my ego nodding agreeably, that "I am a vegetarian". Oops, label. Of course once you allow yourself to be categorised, there are sub-categories to consider. People would ask "Do you eat eggs?" I would smilingly say "I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian, which means I eat eggs (non-fertilised of course) and milk products". Inevitably someone asks, "Do you eat fish?" and I would be compelled to say, somewhat sternly, that I don't eat fish because if I did then I wouldn't qualify as a vegetarian. Categorisation feeds the ego. It's far simpler to say that I don't eat meat. If someone asks whether I eat fish, I can calmly say that I don't. It throws the onus back on the questioner to decide on a categorisation for my eating habits if he or she feels that it's needed.

The same goes for nationality. If someone were to ask me now, "Are you an Australian?", I'd have to say that I have an Australian passport. If the person then wants to classify me as an Australian then that's their decision. It's easy to get cute about this and use this "via negativa" as an ego trip but it's also important to free oneself of categories and this is a step in the right direction. If I say I am a vegetarian, then that implies there are non-vegetarians and immediately a divide is created. If I say on the other hand that I don't eat meat, it's rather different. It's more like saying I don't eat chocolate (not quite the same, but similar).

It's very common to describe oneself in terms of one's profession. I might say "I'm a teacher" but what I really mean is that "I'm qualified to work as a teacher in a Secondary school". It's not quite the same thing. I guess it come down to trying to remember that "I am NOT THAT". You can only find yourself by forgetting what you're not and reinforcing your false sense of identity through "I am THIS" is sensibly to be avoided.

Exercise Time

When I went to England is late March, I dropped my normal exercise routine and since returning to Jakarta I didn't pick it up again. I decided tonight

that it was time to start again because physically I've been feeling stiff and uncoordinated. I had a tape measure so I decided to take some measurements in order to monitor my progress. My waist measurement came in at a disturbing 98cm with 94cm being regarded as acceptable for Western males. My biceps measured 30cm when tensed. Expanded chest was 101cm and unexpanded 101cm. Triceps measured 53cm at groin level. I'll take the same measurements in a month or so and see what sort of progress I've made. I was reminded that while meditation is important, the body needs to be attended to as well.

Active Meditation

There's nothing like a busy end of the school term and a week's long holiday to disrupt the regularity of blog posting but I'm determined to resume. I've done precious little meditation recently but I did follow an interesting tweet today from SambodhiPrem on Twitter that said "How I Entered the World of Meditation, Even Though I Couldn’t Sit Still! by Shanti World of Meditation, Seattle http://tinyurl.com/d8u66v".

The hyperlink led to Shanti's page on the "The World of Meditation Center" and the graphic above was taken from the Meditations link on the opening page and shows links to various types of meditation, most of which I weren't aware of. Some of them are called "active meditations" that Osho recommended for busy Western minds that found sitting in silence for long periods to be very difficult. Shanti first met Osho on Christmas Day of 1973 in Bombay and the story is an interesting one. So I'm currently reading about these different forms of meditation and may end up applying some of them in my meditation practice.