Practice Observing Thoughts

[JonW]

Excellent post, BioSattva. And always good to see Cookie Monster get a mention.
Talking of filling emptiness I've been thinking a lot recently about how we gorge ourselves on all kinds of things: food, drink, TV, noise, possessions...constantly filling ourselves up.
Since embarking on the mindfulness adventure, there's been a big shift for me in terms of the need to gorge. I seem to need less and less "things" in my life and I'm finding it so much easier to let go of things these days. Just last week I gave away hundreds of books to Oxfam, figuring I'd never read those books again and that I'd prefer that my flat looked like a flat rather than a second-hand bookstore. Letting go of all that stuff felt great. My flat still looks like a second-hand bookstore but less so than it did.
I maintain that there are only three things the modern man actually needs: a spaniel, a kettle and a Kindle.
All the rest, to quote Arthur Seaton, is propaganda.

[Gareth]

The compulsion to buy things and own things is just thoughts about the future, so it's hardly surprising that you have noticed this difference in your life. I have noticed these same changes too, although I was never much of a consumer or a hoarder.

[JonW]

True. It is about the future. But I think it's also about a need to fill oneself up in the present - that illusory sense of fullness that comes from shopping, for example. Mindfulness shows us that the moment is deliciously full as it is, if we pay close enough attention.

[BioSattva]

Mindfulness shows us that the moment is deliciously full as it is

Yes, and also this quote I love from from DaoDeJing:

Thirty spokes converge on a hub, but it's the emptiness that makes a wheel work, pots are fashioned from clay, but it's the hollow that make a pot work, windows and doors are carved for a house, but it's the spaces that make a house work, existence makes something useful, but nonexistence makes it work.

And JKZ quotes Soto Zen Master Dogen in Wherever You Go, There You Are (2004), p232:

"Midnight. No waves,
no wind, the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight."

It's amazing to be practising actually living these beautiful (and to many - mysterious) words written around 2500 and 1000 years ago repsectively (!)

[JonW]

Wonderful quote. Thank you, Mr. BioSattva.

[BioSattva]

Dang it you're too quick, heh. I edited above with another quote...

[meditationman]

Great posts by everyone. That's really nice to hear that by merely sitting back and observing our lives and thoughts can provide so much insight.

[BioSattva]

by merely sitting back and observing our lives and thoughts can provide so much insight.

I think the "merely" needs to be checked there a little - the practice is so easy and simple to comprehend that it is very tempting to think that it's not worth doing properly, or even at all. I think this is where discipline becomes the discipline itself - the root of all discplines.

"It's like talking to a brick wall" ..... "It's like watching paint dry" ...... I don't think the word 'merely' would be inserted in those sentences by many... .... that's not to say that brick walls don't have something to share, or that drying paint cannot be beautiful... it's about how we happily relate to the brick wall, and how one happily watches paint drying (if necessary(!)) that takes some getting used to...

[BioSattva]

Haha I just got sent this!

[JonW]

I always suspected that Cookie Monster was the true godfather of mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn merely diluted Cookie's teachings for mass consumption.
In other news: Kermit The Frog was the first Zen Buddhist.