I started taking meditation classes at SF Insight. Meditation is amazing! I've been taking weekend classes that go from 10am to 5pm. The first time I look at my watch, it's already 4-5 hours into the class.
This is not the case with yoga. With yoga, the first time I look at my watch is about 10 minutes into the class. Then I look at my watch every 2-3 minutes until the interminable thing finally ends.
The chapel where my first meditation class was held.
The meditation class touches on questions I've struggled with for years, like how to care a lot about something (e.g. work, parents, a relationship) without getting worked up about it, and becoming obsessed with the outcome. The meditation teacher had an interesting answer about stepping away a little and watching myself behave in an obsessed way, as though I'm observing another person.
Courtyard where we did walking meditations.
Another question that has haunted me for years is how to be around other people, without taking on their material desires. For example, I used to have no desire to fly in business class in an airplane. I had opportunities to do so at Google, and I ignored them because it did not seem important. Last year, I spent a week in Shanghai visiting a dear friend W who loves flying business class. At the time, she was traveling every month, flying 10-12 hours each way. Every day during my visit, it would come up in conversation. Now I've had a desire to fly business class since that time.
This was an innocent example, but there are more pervasive desires that I think are not inherent to me, but just picked up via osmosis from others.
The meditation teacher said that if someone is really affecting me strongly in a way that's hard for me, I can avoid them, like I would avoid a wild elephant. If it's just a minor influence, then I can first make sure to emotionally feel my own preferences throughout my body. If I'm only thinking logically about my preferences, that's not very strong, and I would be easily swayed by others. If I make sure to truly feel my inner wisdom on an emotional level, then I would be less impressionable.
Next I am going to visit Spirit Rock and then the Green Gulch Zen Farm in Marin.
This is not the case with yoga. With yoga, the first time I look at my watch is about 10 minutes into the class. Then I look at my watch every 2-3 minutes until the interminable thing finally ends.
The chapel where my first meditation class was held.
The meditation class touches on questions I've struggled with for years, like how to care a lot about something (e.g. work, parents, a relationship) without getting worked up about it, and becoming obsessed with the outcome. The meditation teacher had an interesting answer about stepping away a little and watching myself behave in an obsessed way, as though I'm observing another person.
Courtyard where we did walking meditations.
Another question that has haunted me for years is how to be around other people, without taking on their material desires. For example, I used to have no desire to fly in business class in an airplane. I had opportunities to do so at Google, and I ignored them because it did not seem important. Last year, I spent a week in Shanghai visiting a dear friend W who loves flying business class. At the time, she was traveling every month, flying 10-12 hours each way. Every day during my visit, it would come up in conversation. Now I've had a desire to fly business class since that time.
This was an innocent example, but there are more pervasive desires that I think are not inherent to me, but just picked up via osmosis from others.
The meditation teacher said that if someone is really affecting me strongly in a way that's hard for me, I can avoid them, like I would avoid a wild elephant. If it's just a minor influence, then I can first make sure to emotionally feel my own preferences throughout my body. If I'm only thinking logically about my preferences, that's not very strong, and I would be easily swayed by others. If I make sure to truly feel my inner wisdom on an emotional level, then I would be less impressionable.
Next I am going to visit Spirit Rock and then the Green Gulch Zen Farm in Marin.
