Tips on seated meditation

 

I'm working on a book on Buddhism; I guess this is my first public announcement of that.  These ideas I'm sharing here aren't directly about all of that scope, but it definitely overlaps.  I recommended in an online group that someone try out meditation in order to help them with memory and mental focus problems, along with getting their sleep in order, and exercising.  

That was in a Reddit thread here, in an interesting group about "biohacking."  Lots of those people take a lot of new and even relatively experimental supplements or drugs, but it also relates to other kinds of scope, basics, like adjusting sleep, diet, and exercise inputs.  I don't take random supplements or drugs, but it's interesting hearing about all that.

That person asked for tips or starting points on how to meditate, and I commented this:

Sure, along with the usual framing limitations. I tried practicing on my own a long time ago, and then did formal training when I was ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk, for two months, but all that is still limited. And there are different forms of meditation, etc.

Keeping it simple could help. It's probably best to try conventional seated meditation, "cross-legged," because that form is functional, but if you have a problem you could try in a chair instead. Not the lotus position, that most people's legs won't do, ordinary sitting. I'm going to explain why you might have problems, and how to work around them. That's beyond having a "bad hip" or whatever else; that is whatever it is. People carry tension in their bodies and it's essentially almost unnatural to try to remain motionless. It makes the tension in your body intensify, creating a feedback loop of feeling tense, feeling stress from tension, and so on. I'm only talking about sitting cross-legged for 10 or 15 minutes, early on; nothing too taxing. Still, it will probably feel unfamiliar.

Watching your breathing and relaxing it makes all the difference. Your breathing actually connects fairly directly with your mental state. Usually the link goes one way, and happiness or stress causes relaxed stomach breathing or tense, choppier, faster, upper chest breathing (respectively). You can practice and make it go the other way; you can adjust your breathing to adjust mental state. To meditate you only need to relax a bit, pay some attention to your breathing, and acknowledge random trains of thought as they come up, and let them go. In the very beginning your mind will be a bit noisy, but it will settle some. You can practice mental calmness while you walk too; that will help.

A limited amount of shifting around won't change anything, repositioning yourself. Later less will be required. If you can get to where you can do 15 minutes and it isn't a problem you can keep going, but beyond a half an hour things get harder, and there's no need to push it. Definitely set a timer, otherwise you'll keep guessing how long it will be, or looking at a clock. You can sit on something, a thin mat, a pillow, whatever, but it will be helpful to learn to let your body structure shift to a comfortable position, versus making a thicker cushion do the work. You are calming your body and mind at the same time. Your body's weight should settle into how your skeleton rests; that's a part of it.

Why do it? It seems reasonable to ask, even important to. It's not a wrong answer just to see what comes of it. It will relax your mind and give you more patience and focus throughout your day, but the process is slow enough that if you watch for it you'll be disappointed. Over a month of practicing every other day there might be some change. It takes more mental focus and causes more stress than it seems it might. That mostly drops out not so long in, but it's like how people are when they first try out running. They suck at it, and it's unpleasant. Later you can relax into it and it's familiar. You figure out what works for you.

I would avoid music, or any background noise, but some is fine. Your own mind will be noisy enough. There's a tipping point past which it's a lot more comfortable. In some training forms they might do more with breathing (just breath from your stomach, in a very relaxed fashion, a bit on the slow side). One approach alternates walking and seated meditation. I'd just sit, not too much, daily if it works out to. No need for too much pressure; skipping a day won't matter. If you feel very tense, sweat a lot, or feel pain you just need to relax more. It will bump your body temperature a little, the extra effort, more than it seems that it would. You don't have to be good at it, or put a lot of time in, or experience a quiet mind, for it to feel pleasant. Maybe just more so after you finish.

The rest of what I'm writing, the book that I mentioned, isn't mostly practical guidance like that, but one section is roughly exactly that, those ideas.  Then it's funny how the audience that you imagine or speak to changes how you frame and communicate the ideas, so the form wouldn't be identical.

The rest is about other interesting experiences with Buddhism, and about my own take on what Buddhism is supposed to be, how core teachings can be put into practice.  A long time ago I experienced a high degree of disruption in my life and looked into all sorts of explanations of what the human condition was all about, and how to make positive changes, and within a couple of years I gradually focused almost entirely on Buddhism.  It works.  Earlier on I was reading philosophy, psychology, random New Age oriented themes, whatever I ran across.

I have two degrees in studying philosophy and religion (and one in industrial engineering); that's related.  That came later though; it was more a part of trying to communicate what I had learned, over many years of study and practice, which ultimately didn't work out.  Now I'm trying again, and if communicating through writing a book doesn't work out I can live with that, but I feel compelled to try.  It could help people.

no need to make that face, but this is basically it

Buddhist teachings in relation to white lies

 

An interesting subject came up recently, whether it's ok to tell white lies in relation to Buddhist precepts or teachings in relation to being truthful.  It seems like that would depend on interpretation, wouldn't it, with lots of context required for which branch or school one is referring to, and the situation?  

Just as Christian teachings and end-point positions on specifics can vary a lot depending on context, the frame of reference (how teachings are taken in a specific group), and per individual it all can vary a lot within Buddhism.  The general question seems to reduce to whether or not Buddhist teachings would tend to be more literal.  Prior to that one might question if the application of Buddhist teachings is all one thing, somewhat uniform across different schools, or even prior to that if all branches and schools are working from the same set of core teachings.  

They're not the same.  The Pali Canon is an older collected set of core teachings, taken up by the Theravada tradition (a broad branch of individual schools, not one unified thing), which to some extent would apply to the other later forms, the other two main broad branches and schools (Mahayana and Vajrayana).  I have pretty deep background in all that related to a good bit of personal study and academic review, getting two degrees in religion and philosophy, after my initial degree in Industrial Engineering, but for the most part I want to set all that aside here.  I suppose I can spare a few sentences on the history and broad forms, because it's interesting, but it has nothing to do with this answer, since I'm not going to move towards some mapped-out breakdown at any point.  

My input draws on common sense, so this isn't really all that closely related to Buddhism.  In a different sense I think that it is, it just doesn't tie back to a specific teaching.

I'm working towards how this question came up: it was asked in a Reddit Buddhism sub-Reddit (group).  That group stays a little more on-topic than Facebook groups tend to, just leaning towards people who participate in foreign traditions, often advocating very narrow perspectives and approaches based on what their own "religion" teaches them.  Buddhism is most conventionally a religion, although it can also work as a philosophy (just not as well), and to me even better as a practical guide to introspection and perspective shift.  To me at its core that's really what Buddhism is.  Mapping that to modern forms of teachings, references, and guidance it can be a little hard to place; it's not exactly psychology, and probably as close to self-help content as anything else.  But then the form is completely different.

Buddhism background

The oldest school of Buddhism relates to a first wave of developed references, teachings, and religious traditions.  Buddhism originated in Northern India, with the Buddha himself actually from a location that's now in Nepal (with all this from memory; I studied Buddhism as philosophy and also religion, and people in history or religion programs actually covered this in classes, while I didn't).  That broad school is called Theravada, or if memory serves in the later Mahayana tradition they renamed it as Hinayana, or "small vehicle."  That's not a reference to it being lower or less important; the idea was that later on, in that second wave, practitioners supposedly focused on attaining enlightenment for all beings instead of only themselves, the Bhodisattva ideal, with "small vehicle" a reference to people only trying to become enlightened for themselves. 

It's not as much a divide as it seems, put that way, more just a difference in emphasis and approach.  Those waves were historical periods of different forms of teachings being spread; Buddhism was popular, then less, then renewed in broad uptake, in different places at different times.  The older tradition started in India and also rooted in Sri Lanka, and now it remains the main religion in Thailand.  As we have visited ancient temples throughout South East Asia, in places like Cambodia, and also in Thailand, this history is filled in with more detail as temples converted from one type to another, and art forms changed over time, official state religions did, and so on.  I'm not the best personal reference for that side of Buddhism; my memory doesn't hold matrices of ideas as it did back in my 20s and 30s.

Mahayana spread to become Chinese Buddhism (Chan Buddhism), which merged with Taoist teaching to become Japanese Zen.  Or maybe that's an oversimplification, as many of these points must be.

Then the third main branch or wave is the one based mainly in Tibet, Vajrayana.  I studied from this branch as philosophy in a grad school course, and oddly the official core teachings background seemed completely separate from my informal and limited understanding of what the religious practices are really all about (which is normal, oddly).  This is the branch that Richard Gere was into, the one that relates to unconventional sexually oriented practices.

All of this doesn't relate much to where I'm going with the final answer, just filling that in because it might be interesting.

The Reddit starting point and initial answers there

The question was this:  Your friend cooks you a meal. The food is bad. He asks you whether the food was good. What do you say?

Additional clarification [part of the same post]:  Actual experience I had leading to a question of how I should respond in keeping the precepts.

Most people commented that telling a white lie would be fine, saying that the food is good, and others suggested saying something positive about what was ok about the meal.  At least when I first commented no one mentioned telling the truth, saying that the food is bad.  Looking back to cite a reference from the comments that input all shifted; later on most people recommend either saying the food is bad or that it's good in some ways and could be better in others.

Basically that's what I suggested, being honest, just framing that as complimenting the meal in relation to some part being ok, then not avoiding saying that the overall effect is negative, and why.  

It amounts to doxing myself but this was my comment (it's not really an anonymous profile anyway, as those tend to be):

If someone is learning to cook they need that feedback; you have to tell them. It's possible to mix together a compliment about what part of the cooking outcome worked (something had to) and which part didn't. Then you can honestly say that your experience is mixed, and that there is room for improvement, and pass on to them what it is.

Once you are close enough with someone you can tell them the complete and honest truth. If my wife makes food that's bad I can say that it's bad, and why, and we can usually even laugh about it. Her cooking was awful for quite awhile, and it got better and better over time, and now when I say that's really good that's exactly what I mean, and she is satisfied in an important way. It's a part of life to learn by starting at the beginning.

When you have kids this pattern repeats, over and over. You can keep telling them you are truly awful at this one thing you are only considering doing, but you need to work through that, taking these steps in practice, and you won't be then. You need to nudge them, to say not to give up, or to not even start, but encourage them to move on to working through it. That's why when you tell your friend they've ruined the meal including things that went well and suggestions for changes can help them see the path forward, and you can say that you want to try the next version that's better. Presented in the right way you could even cook them the same dish and point out the small differences, and if your approach is from the heart they won't feel like you are one-upping them. At that point you need to ask them to prepare a better version for you, to ask them to try again.

Absolute and complete honesty can set you free, really. You just need to know how to use it to help people.

One person cited part of core teaching reference, which I thought was a good answer; this lists the first 3 of 6 points of guidance on truthfulness:

[1] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial [or: not connected with the goal], unendearing & disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

[2] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, unendearing & disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

[3] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

You get the point; it takes some reading and thought to sort that out, and it's more interesting when you do.  Someone else cited a parable that was described as relating, as an external source link, but I didn't read through that.

What is the lesson here?  It's not about patterns of Reddit comments shifting, or even related to how different schools of Buddhism would vary on lying about telling your friend the meal he made is bad.

As I see it the lesson is that we need to turn things around and look at what is being discussed from the other person's perspective.  Your friend intends to cook you another meal later on, most likely, and to go on practicing cooking for the rest of his or her life.  It's nice for them to hear back that the meal is delicious but it's important for them to get good feedback, to know what you think.

Then related to lying in general, to white lies, I think we can often respond to others and clarify the context and broader meaning in what we say, and typically not really lie.  Using another random example, if someone gets a relatively bad haircut no matter what you say or don't say if they're not going to get another haircut to correct for it that's just how they're going to look for a few weeks, so at first it may seem best if they ask about that to say that they look fine.  

The same problems come up though.  They could get the results fixed a bit, trimmed and adjusted further, and if they go back in three weeks and get another bad haircut, and ask you again, it's a recurring cycle that should've been cut off the first time.  The same approach might have worked; compliment the length being suitable, but actual style leaving room for improvement, or the opposite.  

My wife has taken to cutting my son's hair and he looks flat-out awful every time, and I go ahead and tell him that every time; she butchered you.  He already knows it; saying anything else is clearly ingenuine.  Then that stings a little but if we can have a laugh about it when he goes to school and his friends have the same reaction he can play it off with honesty; my Mom took a course in cutting hair--she really did--and she's still terrible at it, and she butchered me.  He's not done with looking like that but it's out in the open, accepted; everyone can move on.  It's very healthy to not be insecure when part of what you experience is a limitation of sorts, like a bad haircut, or an inability to cook well.

the closest photo example I could find; this is after his local barber fixed it

Even at work, where everyone can't really use the complete truth in expressing opinions, for obvious reasons, I think this kind of general strategy still works.  You never need to express a complete lie; you can always mix quite a bit of your real opinion with background context and some other scope from an opposing view to communicate more of what you think, if not all of it.  Ok, maybe sometimes a relatively complete lie is in order, if your supervisor tells you to do something that you completely disagree with, and it's just not the time or place to press the point, and then they ask a specific question.  Usually I would go with that other approach, mixing two opposing answers, but sometimes you can't, or it just doesn't make sense to.

A bit of tangent can help place that, related to part of how I see work themes.  To me at work if something doesn't matter then it doesn't matter; if two opposing choices or plans lead to essentially the exact same place then picking the one that you favor is a battle that you don't need to fight.  Unfortunately plenty of things framed as important don't really matter, a good bit of the time.  Then when things really do make a difference, and a negative outcome seems likely to come up based on a bad choice, that's the time to change communication approach.  

All this could seem off the subject of white lies, but if your work manager asks if a dumb idea seems dumb, and the context is set up in one particular way, then the most honest answer may not be best.  If there's no harm in it you can say that's fine.  Then if your judgment is off everything won't be fine, and you can learn from that mistake.

I think people often get too comfortable with adjusting how they communicate about reality in terms of lying to others.  The white lie theme seems to naturally come up more and more often, and drift or morph into telling people whatever works best instead of what is actually accurate, a lot of the time.  People catch on to how you communicate, and it's soon clear as day that you don't really mean what you say.  Beyond that it can be more positive to be genuine for your own sake, to take communication and representing your own perspective differently.  

There's the old idea that if you don't lie there less to remember, but I mean beyond that.  There is a purity in communicating the truth.  It's harder, in a sense, because you need to adjust for how others take what you say, which takes some practice.  

In the original example, asking about that prepared meal, it's the simplest thing in the world to say "it's good."  Then if you want to instead say "it's bad," without just being rude and thoughtless, you need to add words and layers of concepts, about how it's your intention to be completely honest, and some aspects are fine (citing a couple), and some aren't (referencing those), and then summarizing that in general there's lots of room for improvement, but that it shows cooking skill in some areas.  It could seem tiresome.  That friend definitely wants to hear "it's good" instead, but the feedback will help them.

Getting all of this communication approach wrong is a big problem, and without practice in being fully honest one would botch it.  It's like cooking, or cutting hair; no one is born good at it.  But as with those other things it's important to stick with it.  Maybe not the cutting hair; people can skip doing that.  

One of my kids picked up this pattern of trying to be as honest as possible all of the time from me, and the other picked up the more conventional form from his mother, lying when it's more convenient to.  I don't blame him when I catch him doing it, but we often pause to run through how the whole cycle works, how people can only trust you to the extent that they recognize that you typically tell the truth.

Then an odd secondary theme enters in:  if you ask Keoni if he is lying his poker face fails him, badly, and he ends up making a weird series of shifting expressions that Kalani and I refer to as a "melting face."  She can stone-cold lie, if she wants to; she just chooses not to, almost all the time.  Maybe there is some connection?

that's something else; a Gigachad impression

Whether there is or isn't I teach them not to lie, ever, if possible, for the reasons expressed here.  They seem to get it, and they're both now good at seeing how interpersonal relations and communication styles work out on that deeper level, and how approaches and outcomes can vary.

How to meditate

I was talking to an online friend recently who asked for input about meditation.  I'm not exactly an expert, probably closer to the opposite, just someone who dabbles a bit, but I have been meditating quite a bit lately, averaging more than half an hour a day for 2 1/2 months.  

I was ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk 16 years ago, and I received formal training in meditation in a center at that time (daily training sounds strong; I visited the center, at least, but their input was limited).  I was only a monk for a bit over 2 months, which might sound short, but it's nearly two months longer than the standard stay of two weeks for a younger Thai man to temporarily ordain.  That part is complicated; let's get back to the meditation theme, leaving out my background about a couple of other short term trial periods, the first of which was way back when.

That discussion and input covered what seated meditation is about, not intended as comprehensive background or complete practical advice.  I'll add some thoughts afterward, but never will cover either in lots of detail.  This is basically that input word for word, not adjusted much: 

Of course it's complicated, and people would say different things, and I'm not really some sort of expert.

Your experience would change over time, and probably your approach with it. Initial expectations could also vary, with people seeking different goals.

Probably it's best to set aside what benefits might occur, even though intention and perspective are the main starting points. Let's say that you want to experiment, and maybe increase mental clarity, patience, and a limited degree of insight into your own nature, and that of experienced reality. That works.

A main initial factor will be your tolerance for sitting, how it feels physically. If you plan to sit for only 10 minutes I think that won't be an issue, but within 15 to 20 it probably would be. Maybe adjusting by starting out with short sessions is good, so you don't have to work through too much related to that part. We all carry tension in our bodies much more than we realize and use constant movement to work through it, on a subconscious level. Being still triggers a negative response of tensing up more. For 10 minutes it should still be fine though.

Mentally, internally, there are different types of practices. I've trained some and the range of what I've heard and experienced doesn't narrow down well, but I'll narrow it anyway.

The idea is to still your mind, to an extent. It won't work to take up internal quietude, so next it turns to how to approach that, not to resolve the noise but to work through it. Watching your breath is a common technique, or focusing attention at some point in your body, often the stomach at or around your navel. To focus on breathing you can focus on a point where it moves, in and out of the tip of your nose, or for me focusing on relaxing and breathing from your diaphragm works better.

If your mind is a real mess of noise counting can help with that. As it settles some turning to focus attention on breathing at your stomach can work better. The mental practice is about how to deal with random thoughts, or daydreams. Common advice is to acknowledge thoughts and let them go, to not keep following them. That sounds more like stifling thought than it ends up relating to. You can't force your mind to stop thinking. You can gradually let it settle over time. In 10 minutes, even practicing for days on end, you might not seem to experience mental quietude, but it can settle some.

There is potential usefulness in the noise. You already know which lines of thought you continually return to, what your concerns are, but you might be avoiding directly experiencing these, and accepting them can be helpful. It's possible that insight could occur, a part that you haven't considered, but at first you experience noise, then acceptance of the issues can help quiet that some, then a more calm but still random thoughts based inner experience can seem different. It's at this point that a different form of progression begins. On the other side of that limited experience of mental stillness is possible.

One might wonder what the point of putting hours of effort into not thinking anything might be. It's about calming your mind, not just temporarily stopping it. That calm can and will extend to greater calm all the rest of the day. It's not magic, it only goes so far, but mental clarity and stability are hard to pursue in any ways. Exercise can help a little, and I think the two experience forms overlap more than people might expect. You take focus off your body by sitting motionless, but running for an equivalent amount of time also frees up space for internal focus, even though keeping yourself moving also uses some attention.

I've experienced stress--physical tension--moving from one place to another within my body as I've meditated over the past 2 months. I can't really place that as meaning something in particular, I'm just including it for completeness. I've experienced less mental or emotional change than I would have expected. Some, but not so much. Maybe I feel slightly more stable and grounded, even though I've been through a lot in the last 2 months.

a bit off topic, Keo ordained as a novice once too (covered here) 

Background context reference

There's a lot that I could add, about what my life context has been like recently, or what doesn't seem clear and developed in this.  

First I wanted to mention a background context reference.  A friend recently recommended this site for a lead on where to practice, as a meditation center (a large set of those, I think), promoting 10 day retreat practice, the Goenka organization (maybe not used as an organization title reference?), linked at dhamma.org.  It talks about background and covers limited information about practice, but of course most of the "how to" part is only conducted on retreats in person.  Let's sample a bit of context though.

To be clear what I was taught was described as vipassana, the form of meditation they describe.  It's hard to say if the two forms are quite similar or not; maybe the category name is the same but actual practice differs.  Their description:

Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India's most ancient techniques of meditation. It was rediscovered by Gotama Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a universal remedy for universal ills, i.e., an Art Of Living. This non-sectarian technique aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation.

Vipassana is a way of self-transformation through self-observation. It focuses on the deep interconnection between mind and body, which can be experienced directly by disciplined attention to the physical sensations that form the life of the body, and that continuously interconnect and condition the life of the mind. It is this observation-based, self-exploratory journey to the common root of mind and body that dissolves mental impurity, resulting in a balanced mind full of love and compassion.

So far so good, but it doesn't say much about the purpose, in detail, or the actual practice.  This part goes further:

Therefore, a code of morality is the essential first step of the practice... 

The next step is to develop some mastery over this wild mind by training it to remain fixed on a single object, the breath. One tries to keep one's attention on the respiration for as long as possible. This is not a breathing exercise; one does not regulate the breath. Instead, one observes natural respiration as it is, as it comes in, as it goes out. In this way one further calms the mind so that it is no longer overpowered by intense negativities. At the same time, one is concentrating the mind, making it sharp and penetrating, capable of the work of insight.

These first two steps, living a moral life, and controlling the mind, are very necessary and beneficial in themselves, but they will lead to suppression of negativities unless one takes the third step: purifying the mind of defilements by developing insight into one's own nature. This is Vipassana: experiencing one's own reality by the systematic and dispassionate observation within oneself of the ever-changing mind-matter phenomenon manifesting itself as sensations. This is the culmination of the teaching of the Buddha: self-purification by self-observation...

More detailed, and of course that's as far as web page content is going to go.  Again I'm no expert, as I suppose the people guiding others in a meditation center probably would be, but I'll still get back to adding some clarification to that advice to a friend.

Another book reference, Mindfulness with Breathing, is good for outlining in very practical terms how our body and mind are linked by breathing patterns and mental state.  I'd recommend that even for people who have no interest in meditation; it's interesting, and fairly easy to notice and confirm--the initial parts--just by observing your own mental states and breathing forms.  

The basics are this:  when we are very calm our breathing is naturally very smooth, deep, slow, and even, based from our stomach / diaphragm, and when we are mentally agitated it is based from our upper chest, is shallower, faster, and the airflow is more constricted.  It mainly works the one way, with breathing reacting to mental state, but you can even turn that around, and breath slower and deeper to calm your mind.  Or to an extent you can breath faster, shallower, rougher, and higher in the chest to trigger a more agitated mental state (not that a need for that would come up so often, but it's interesting to try out).

Further discussion

I had never really did much with developing why one might meditate in that, although on a fast read it might seem as if I did, since I added a conventional possible set of goals within that.  That was there more as a place-holder than a likely list of potential benefits; one would probably meditate largely to experience the effects for themselves, with only vague expectations about potential benefits.  Or maybe within the context of other learning the goals could be quite clear and detailed, even including stages of expectations and varying levels of goals.  Maybe it would be just to remain more calm, be more focused, or control temper; there's no reason why goals would need to be elaborate or exotic. 

It could include a spiritual / religious context, or mental-state goals and expectations could vary broadly, so that the question "why meditate?" is too much to cover adequately.  Let's set that aside again.  

I didn't add much about what I've experienced, even though I've mentioned that I just meditated for over two months (almost 3 now), about the same time period I was ordained way back when, so I've been meditating for longer now than then.  There isn't much to say, really.  I feel slightly calmer and more stable, but I felt somewhat calm and stable before.  The way my body experiences retained tension has changed, but of course that was never an initial goal, and I'm not sure that it's helpful.  

In that website, for that meditation center, they describe how meditating for 10 days, many hours a day, is often experienced as transformative.  I've not experienced that.  Probably my own less informed practice wouldn't lead to that, even if I could somehow work up to comparable exposure, two work-weeks worth of practice time within a week and a half.

So shouldn't readers disregard this, and listen to a Goenka-trained practitioner instead?  Sure; you should probably do that.  I'm passing on discussion with a friend, based on limited exposure myself, and it's uncommon to hear from a friend in such a way, but if you can tolerate some reading in a limited sense you will have done so (someone acting in that role, at least).  

I tend to do that, discussing subjects I'm not an expert in.  I talk about fasting here, even though I've only fasted for about 25 days over the past year (water fasting, essentially, but I've also been drinking tea).  I mention experiences with running, and I'm not much of a runner, having built up to training for 20 miles or so a week this year, falling well off that for months now (first due to Bangkok heat, lately related to minor knee problems).  I don't even run races, although I have in the past.  10 years ago I started writing about tea here, and I'd only had limited exposure to the subject back then, only trying a couple of dozen versions of loose tea by then.  It's awkward looking back on those early posts.

Back to closing thoughts, what I've left out earlier.  It's a little odd moving so directly past why to meditate, what better goals might be, or later expectations, but given the context I'll have to.  I can say a little about what limited exposure has been like, I guess nearly 40 hours of trial over more than two months.

I might have understated what that body tension experience is like.  Meditating for 15 to 20 minutes might still be ok, but the tension in your body tends to collect in places and express itself more than one might imagine.  I'm sure that must vary a lot by individual.  For whatever reasons for me I feel fine for the first half an hour or so, and then tension issues become a problem.  The effects vary day to day.  Some days it's not really an issue, and some days I quit after half an hour because one leg is asleep or cramped.

In that temple training center I was discussing practice with guests and a young woman, who was a regular there, described the issue of discomfort while sitting, which stuck with me.  She said that she tries to make the pain experience seem smaller in her mind.  In a way that seemed to work, and it also missed part of how I saw it.  It had seemed to me that fully accepting the physical feeling helped you move through it, and any limited form of mentally rejecting it or setting it aside would make it worse, because it was going to remain a big part of your momentary experience.  Not wanting to feel it was worse than the actual feeling itself, in the same sense that it can be maddening to wish the planned time ended, because you absolutely can't affect the rate of flow of time.  Moving on...

  

The experience of patience is interesting, seeing the experience as unpleasant versus neutral or positive.  That fades as it becomes normal, over a relatively short time-frame, within a couple of weeks or so, but earlier on very trivial discomfort brings up an aversion to continuing.  That must vary by individual?  It seems normal before long, not positive or negative, although as physical discomfort increases that can shift. For the rest it will go without saying "that must vary by individual," just assuming that the context here is talking mostly about what I've experienced over the last three months, and less so related to the other two times I meditated regularly.

The experience of flow of time changes, a lot.

One might wonder about inner voice issues; to what extent would your mind become quiet, or not?  It does quiet down.  Early on it seems noisy as could be, then daydreaming and tangents replace that, and only then it begins to still.  I don't know that there's any sort of more positive condition associated with more quietude; it's interesting, but the experience seems to be about calming, not becoming calm.  The noises tell a story, or different stories.  For me the daydreaming part is more trivial than one might imagine; deepest fears or repressed goals, problems experienced in life, aren't turning up so much.  Some, sure, but it seems to include more noise.  Ego seems to drive a lot of it; random self-association, something like short-term goals or reactions.  Once in awhile an interesting idea gets mixed in.

It seems necessary to move past a constant daydream phase, the second part you experience, to get to deeper insights.  Noticing thought patterns and letting them go leads to this gradual calming.  There is a very pleasant, deeper calm that can occur, which you can't necessarily trigger intentionally; it's interesting when that happens.

This still lacks a lot of guidance about sitting on a mat or not, closing your eyes or looking at the wall, or even returning focus to breathing instead of thoughts (it's simple, but it might not seem so easy or natural in practice).  It's probably as well to leave all that vague.  It goes without saying that using a timer makes a lot of sense, otherwise you'd never stop thinking about how long it had been, or would look at a clock the whole time.

Between those parts about mental experiences, and another main outcome being body tension reducing and moving around it, it doesn't sound like time well spent, does it?  Maybe not.  Maybe I should free up 10 days and get some input on a retreat, although that's not something that could align with my life, for the next decade or so.  

I would never choose to spend 10 days on a retreat versus with my kids, unless I could expect far more dramatic positive results than I've ever had reason to expect.  It's my job as a parent to never make a choice like that, as I see it.  I'm separated from my kids for 4 months now, as things stand, but I'm also working to earn a living to support them, so dropping out for a long week would relate to missing a long week of time with them later.  It's a no-go.

That's pretty much it for background context too, as far as I need to go.  I live in Bangkok, working, although I will return to working remotely in January--I think--while living in Honolulu with them, where they are now.  The rest is complicated but not so relevant.  There was another story about problems related to a cat but I'll leave that out too (it is covered in a post here anyway).  I'm living with three cats now, and it's nice how they practice meditation along with me, only fighting each other, knocking things over, or asking for attention once in awhile.  They get it; they want to be supportive.

I would recommend trying out limited meditation, and then if it seems interesting or productive maybe looking into getting better guidance in a meditation center somewhere.  I'd recommend trying out fasting too, but running probably isn't for everyone, since there are less impactful ways to become more active and then get fit.  

If you have good faith in your joints then why not though; get on with running.  Walking quite a bit can help as an early transition, then running mixed with jogging while your body adjusts more, trying to ramp up distance and pace very, very slowly only later on so that you don't get hurt.  Wearing good shoes should help, and talking to a doctor if any part seems questionable.  Of course I wonder if I won't pay a price, having knee problems later on.  Never mind later on; it's been a rough month for one knee.

As for meditation I don't see much related to it being scary, dangerous, or even potentially negative.  Just as someone with a heart condition could drop dead if they try to run someone with a severe underlying mental condition might experience some serious problems.  You could get a doctor to check your cardiovascular health easier than mental health could be reviewed, but I think most people would be fine meditating, with limited trial exposure.  As with running practicing moderation in increasing duration would seem to make sense; there is no need to go straight to longer sessions.

I just saw something about a "quiet walking" trend on Tik-Tok, about a girl filming herself walking without any electronics (or simulating that, since the video recording is surely on a phone?).  If someone feels anxiety if they don't use their phone for 10 or 15 minutes I'm not sure how seated meditation would work for them.

Mindfulness practice versus meditation

For someone feeling like all this is running long and venturing into tangent after tangent this is a natural place to stop reading.  When I trained to meditate in that center they advised mixing seated and walking meditation practices, with walking practice more a mindfulness exercise, which really is something else.  They're two different parts of the eightfold Buddhist path.  Mindfulness is practice of expanding momentary awareness and presence, while meditation is what I've been going on and on about, an odd range of concentration exercises, basically.  Or maybe that still describes mindfulness better.

It might seem a little odd, this focusing on the present moment.  How could one not be present; where would they be?  Daydreaming, following random thoughts, immersed in the next thing they want to do or get, or a range of repetitive behaviors, pursuing anxiety or rejection of parts of experience, caught up in ego-related repeating cycles, on and on about how any given circumstances reinforces whatever repeating pattern makes them seem special.  Walking meditation and focusing on the present moment can help with all that.  

There's lots more to it, and this isn't going to branch into a second full treatment of that background, and practices that work to develop it.  It's all not really separate from meditation; the two themes naturally connect.  You might think that if you sit in quiet sitting meditation there is nowhere to be but the present moment, and then it's interesting how the opposite turns out to be more true, for quite awhile, and your mind wanders to anywhere else.  It's much easier to be mentally still and aware with a much higher degree of stimulus, for example out on a walk.

It's tempting to keep going, to add tangent after tangent.  Core Buddhist teachings about the experienced self and nature of reality come into play.  That context informs what meditation practice is about, what an expected outcome might be, how ideas and perspective make up an ordinary worldview, which can be adjusted to a more functional version.  It's unique how that's generally all a "negative" model, about removing errors included at the level of assumptions, so that you end up with a lighter and lighter final model of reality, that tends to function better and better.  Later functional approaches and acceptance tend to replace internal assumed modeling.

It's as well to not go there though; covering this much seems appropriate.  Good luck if you plan to try it out.  Again I'm no expert or authority on the subject but if you get stuck you can reach out to me to discuss part of it.  I'm definitely not into any sort of "life coaching," but you can imagine how embracing Buddhism tends to couple with being open to helping people.

Fasting for 5 days, running, and meditation

 

I'm trying out fasting again, for the fifth time.  Twice before I fasted for 5 days, and two other times I stopped before that due to problems, probably mostly related to electrolyte balance.

A main point:  why do it?  It was always to experiment with the experience, to see if some of the associated health benefits seem to occur.  Weight loss wasn't necessarily one of those, for me.  I did gain a little weight over the last two years, up from 71 kg to 74, from around 156 pounds to 163, but that seems fine, even though I have bit of a gut.  It's claimed that fasting can improve mental clarity, and initiate autophagy, which can remove some visceral fat, some fat problematically located actually inside or around internal organs, and even potentially lower cancer risk.  Who knows; some research I checked indicates there could be something to a lot of that, but research findings don't seem to confirm most of it.  Of that list you might only notice the mental clarity; I don't think it's possible to change pants size.

To me the main benefits have been serving as a reset for diet habits and improving metabolic flexibility, my body's ability to use fat for energy.  How would I notice that, without fasting, and judging degree of suffering from switching to ketosis?  My energy level when running seems better, more continuous and consistent.  Of course if a meal runs late, or I miss one, then that doesn't seem like a problem, related to acclimation.  

My diet wasn't terrible before but the few fasting trials helped me dial it in to be closer to optimum, very low on sugar and other junk foods, based on very limited between meal snacking, and only moderate sized normal meals.  I eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, limited meat, eggs, and dairy (so I actually supplement protein a little), including diverse rice, grains, some bread, and beans.  I've switched from eating chocolate for a snack to nuts.

The main concern in trying fasting is electrolyte supplementation, which I've addressed in earlier posts.  It's tricky.  It seems like it should be simple, add some salt, potassium, and magnesium, but it's a lot more of those first two salts than you'd expect.

blue pea / butterfly tisane, picked from the garden to drink once during the fast

it's from here, beside the house

I'll write out how this went, starting writing this post on day 3.

Days 1 and 2:  in the past these were rough times, working through a lot of hunger and loss of energy, and some impact to mental clarity.  For the most part none of that happened.  Even hunger experience was very moderate; it just didn't seem like I was skipping eating most of that time.  

I think if I was hearing of that from someone else I'd be skeptical; two days of not eating was easy, no impact?  It kind of was, especially in comparison with the first three trials.  On the fourth attempt the first day was really easy, but I went out for a speed-work run, a training form relatively new to me, and I think that might have thrown off my electrolyte balance.  Or maybe it was too much for energy conversion from body fat, going beyond what I was adapted to?  Sleep disruption is a normal side effect of fasting, especially if your magnesium level runs low, and I went through that too that time, and then stopped.  

Hunger level, on that fourth trial and for these two days, was like when lunch or dinner runs an hour late; you can feel it, but it's not bad yet.  For someone accustomed to a strict eating schedule maybe an hour late would already be uncomfortable, and it wasn't even that bad.  It was strange.

Energy level and the rest seemed fine too.  I didn't worry about drinking some tisane (herb tea) on the first day to offset the gap from experiencing any food intake, but I did brew some blue pea flowers, chrysanthemum, and stevia the second day, which I drank with potassium and sodium salts added.  

This time I kept drinking a good bit of that salt water, which can be nasty, but didn't use the approach of measuring it out, which I suppose adds a bit of risk, getting it wrong again.  I've had some tea every day, the leftover of some sheng on the first day, shu pu'er on the second (easiest on your stomach, the natural call), and aged white tea today, which worked out.

The oddest part was a lack of impact.  I felt fine on the second evening so I went out to try a short run, just 2 miles, limiting the distance to avoid going through any energy level or electrolyte balance disruption, to see how I felt.  I ran the first two km at an easy 6 1/2 minute pace and set a faster cruise of 6 minutes for the third.  That felt fine, like I could keep it up, or could've pushed faster to run at 5 1/2 min / km speed if I'd wanted, but I had already pushed it too far the last trial, so didn't.  I meditated after that run, but I think I'll cover what that's all about in a separate section.

Day 3:  right away in the morning it really caught up to me, the disrupted, low energy, off feeling.  Not eating for the prior two days definitely didn't lead to an experience of increased mental clarity.  I took the cat to the vet too, running an unpleasant errand, and went via a stupid route for getting it all wrong, missing a couple of turns.  I botch driving here sometimes but not like that.  Waiting at the vet when you haven't eaten isn't much worse than when you have; it's still a bit annoying.  That's even for bringing a laptop so I could check in with work, and catch part of a meeting, before my appointment time interrupted that.

The cat has gingivitis, a mild gum infection.  She's almost 16 so I was worried she might be nearing the end, but after a shot, taking antibiotics in pill form later, and special mouthwash rinse for however long she should be ok.  She scratched the vet because I wasn't holding her legs tightly enough; maybe another focus issue.  It'll probably be my turn to see my own blood tomorrow when I try to rinse her mouth alone.

I'm not sure how the next 2 1/2 days will go.  I hadn't planned to run again right away but if I feel normal later I might try to run for 4 miles, my normal short loop, two routes around the local royal palace.  Muscle and other tissue recovery can be an issue when you don't eat but I didn't feel any soreness from that short 2 mile run.

I'm not fasting mostly for weight loss but it might be nice to lose a few pounds.  I'm up to around 165 pounds / 74 kg now, and I think the earlier fasting might have caused my body to worry about a shortage of food, to go into a winter mode.  That's probably good in the long term related to offsetting rate of aging.  There's a related long story about why I think being a vegetarian for 17 years probably slowed my metabolic rate for a long time.  That low metabolism allows me to run 20 or more miles a week (30 km) and eat relatively little food and still not lose any weight.  Being lighter would make running easier.  As far as aesthetics go it doesn't matter; I look ok, and it would be fine if I didn't.

I feel like I've not really communicated what the nagging symptom of hunger is like, what it really takes to adapt to not eating for days on end.  It becomes normal, to an extent, but you have to internally accept it rather than reject it, or it would definitely be much worse.  Maybe that leads into the part on meditation well enough, and I can put that in the middle of this day by day account.

Meditation:

Again, why do it?  I'm separated from my kids, who are back at school in Honolulu, while I take care of the cats, watch the house, and work locally here in Bangkok.  I can work remotely but someone needs to cover those two tasks, and Eye's mother--their grandmother--is there with them.  She's concerned the months she is separated from them might be some of her last, because she's getting up there in age, but it's also not easy for me to miss some.

my only form of contact with my daughter for now

So I'm making the most of it by meditating, running, and fasting, and holding a tea event here or there (one so far, planning a second).  And some job hunting, but it's hard to log a lot of hours at that activity, so I just keep plugging away at it here and there.

I've settled on meditating for 45 minutes at a time, almost every evening, missing a few sessions if a day ran long or if a run seemed to drain me too much.  It's really hard to describe results.  I might first add that I meditated some as an experiment when I was much younger, seeing interesting results from that, then again 15 years ago when I was ordained as a monk for two months, undergoing limited training at a meditation center.  

Nothing extreme changes as an outcome (usually).  It might give you a bit more mental clarity and focus; that's about it.  I've noticed that I carry tension in my body and experience the background noise in my mind slightly differently than I did early on, 2 1/2 to 3 weeks ago.  My mind seems more settled, and the tension I was holding in my upper shoulders has mostly dissipated.  My lower back tension isn't resolved, and maybe from running my legs tend to hold it too, which may settle out further within a couple more weeks.

Running is also a form of meditation, in a sense.  I have to set my mind to support that exertion level for an extended time, for around an hour for my standard run of 10 km (6+ miles).  Then I sometimes cut that short if heat exposure gets to be a bit much, often when I run at mid-day.  That heat effect feels a little like tiring from running but not exactly like that, more feeling a little off.

As far as the meditation experience itself goes following your breath is a standard practice, to help still your mind, or putting focus in one particular place within your body, maybe your lower stomach, around the diaphragm, or where the breath enters your nose.  Counting can help.  I try to let my mind quiet naturally and only use counting or other focusing techniques when that's not working, although there is always some chatter.  The experience of body tension can be uncomfortable, especially after the half an hour point.  It seems to me that's coming from mental disturbance, as much as retained tension, and that the expectation or desire to stop the meditation is causing it.  

I can settle to be much more comfortable just sitting than 3 weeks ago but I'm far from "there," if there even is such a level.  I set an alarm and it's hard to stop fleeting thoughts from wondering when it will go off, which seem partly triggered by body tension that is uncomfortable.  

Uncomfortable is all relative; maybe it's like the effort and tension from when you walk and carry groceries, and you'd like to put them down, but it's not to the point of a strain like a cramp.  I don't mean 100 yards / meters to a car; in Honolulu we had (/ have) no car so at times we would carry groceries quite far, along with using the bus at other times.  After a km or two the groceries get heavy, even though they're not really heavy, unless you think a couple of gallons of milk plus that much food is.  I could add that my wife switched us to large, sturdy re-usable bags back when that was trendy here a half-dozen years back, saving on plastic use, so it's not as if that looked exactly like someone walking down the street from a grocery store, but it's not that different.  It was odd.

What about meditation plus fasting; how has that changed things?  My patience seems just a little reduced.  If anything my mind might be a little quieter, more calm, but past the half hour point--which I don't track; I'm not watching a clock--there's more "when is this going to end?" feedback.  Physically I might be slightly more relaxed, which could support my theory that my mind's quietude and body tension level are connected.  

Maybe meditation is helping me not experience eating disruption as unpleasant, as it should normally be?  I'm not sure, and at a guess acclimation from prior fasts is more of a cause of that.  My body gets it, that this is one more normal state of being I'll go through.  The same must apply to running or carrying groceries an absurd distance, that after it normalizes one more internal negative feedback loop goes mostly quiet.  I actually like running now, which is strange, since it started as an easy way to exercise in a short period of time instead.  Even running in cross country and track in high school (long ago) I always had mixed feelings about it.

Day 3, later on:  I'm feeling it.  It would've made for a good story to have ran for three days but due to feeling off, tired, and at times very slightly dizzy I shouldn't try.  I've been drinking that nasty sodium and potassium salt water all day but tomorrow I'll measure out what I see as more optimum and parse that out across the day.  Hunger still isn't too bad; odd.  Different foods sound ok, and I feel a bit empty, but I don't spend much time thinking about that.  

Given the way I take these 5 day spans I'll eat at the end of the 5th day, not pushing on for what is really 5 1/2 that next morning, as the clock goes, so I really only have one more full day to go, then most of one.  I don't even stay strict about timing; if I end up fasting for 4 days and 22 hours because dinner timing varies that's fine.  It would be easy to add another half day, and eat the next morning, but it's nice getting the recovery done that extra day earlier, and getting back to normal the next.  

I don't "go big" and eat a lot at the end, and it's really not even possible to, without feeling sick (for me; others who fast say that they can).  Healthy and simple foods taste great at that point; I should probably try breaking the fast with homemade cheeseburgers.  Sort of healthy, I mean.

Day 4, mid-day:  I've really been feeling it all day.  I woke in the night feeling off and re-upped electrolyte intake, then slept well, but it was another rough morning.  I've not had normal energy, clarity, or focus all day.  I think it's not really electrolyte level issues; I measured out the daily salts intake this morning and took a magnesium tablet, plus multivitamin and calcium.  It seems like I'm just not accustomed to ketosis, what people sometimes call "keto flu."  Your body will adjust, but I've probably only been fully in ketosis for the past two days, using the last of what I was digesting or holding as glycogen on both Saturday and Sunday.

Hunger isn't much of an issue; I barely think of food.  That's another thing I didn't mention about meditation, that food might cross my mind, but no more so than what shows I've been watching, one more minor part of mental background noise.

I drank a mild black tea today and that was fine, no problem.  Shu pu'er is most sensible, easiest on the stomach, but just avoiding green tea, sheng pu'er, or very low oxidation level oolong is enough.

I expect that I'll feel a little better tomorrow.  I'd like to try running again this evening, to see if I can push it for forcing my body to convert fat energy.  It would be a stretch though.  I could essentially just crash for the next 12 hours or so afterwards, but I don't know what that fallout would be like.  Other somewhat scary symptoms go with the territory for fasting and electrolyte imbalance:  irregular heartbeat, dizziness, problems sleeping.  Walking for half an hour would be playing it safe but that's a tough call as a runner.  Not very many runners ever sort out if they can keep running after 4 days off food though.

Day 4, after a run:  I felt "keto flu" symptoms all day, only recovering after a nap after work.  Then I felt ok, so I went out for a run.  No matter how that went I planned to keep it short, because I just spent two days feeling quite off.  It went well, it felt normal, and slipped back into a normal 6 mile per km pace for the last 1 1/2.  I probably feel as good as I've felt over this fast now.  I experienced a little leg cramping during a stretch, a sign my electrolyte balance might not be right, so I came back and drank another cup of salt water and took a magnesium capsule (adding up to double the daily requirement; I guess that's fine).

I think if I fast again within the next month or so I could probably do those 2 mile runs daily, for being better acclimated, or even bump it up to 4 miles for a couple, at a slow pace.  Better safe than sorry this time; it's as well to not rush fasting experiences, as I've learned from a couple of failures.

Day 5, morning:  I was up in the night again, drinking more salt water at 5 or so.  I did drink shu pu'er this morning.  I feel much better than the last two days but still not normal, still disrupted.  It all makes me question if it's a good thing to even try this.  I won't know if most of the supposed benefits occur (more mental clarity, later on, autophagy, visceral fat reduction), and I don't expect to lose weight.  My diet was as good as it's likely to ever be, so that reset function doesn't apply.  I feel relatively ok today, not so tired and slightly out of it, but perhaps still not completely normal.

On the other side I think it all would normalize, if someone kept it up, I guess if they were pursuing weight loss (the main reason), or were really convinced of those benefits.  In the Reddit fasting sub people discuss applying radical rotating fasting approaches, rolling 48s or 72s, not eating half the time on either a 2 day or 3 day cycle (or 4 or 6 counting both parts).  One person recently commented they ate only 2 days a week, so with 5 days off, for an extended time.  Those people often mention body weights and loss amounts that related to more extreme circumstances.  

Even someone really wanting to lose only an extra 20 pounds of fat may use fasting.  One guy commenting in the Reddit fasting sub was at optimal body weight but was very low in muscle tissue, with a high percentage body fat, and he was asking if fasting and working out would help him.  My guess is that eating a moderated caloric input but healthy diet while working out would be better under those circumstances.

Day 5, at about the end:  towards the end it's natural to keep thinking that ending an extra hour early would be fine.  I went to the grocery store during lunch, since there's no food here, and being around food wasn't a problem.  I felt a little off earlier and drank the last of the saltwater mix I had made up and I'm fine.  Energy level and clarity have been close to normal today.

I only drank a tisane that once; I didn't miss eating enough to try to replicate it.  My throat felt odd so I drank the juice of a small lime on the last day.  Google says that I might have ingested 20 calories doing that.  There must be people out there who would see that as not really true fasting.

Related to the meditation again I keep thinking why am I really doing this.  I'm not that far in the hole related to mental clarity and focus, although my memory is slipping.  I don't think that I feel cranky but but it's not easy to maintain the same stability and sense of ease dropping out something as fundamental as eating.  My wife was yelling at me about something (over a call) and I yelled back, when normally I could just ignore it and let her have her say.  She's under a few levels of pressure too, and if it comes out in being cranky with me over something minor I should be fine with that.

Not much of a final retrospect take here, or new perspective.  It's possible that this practice could become really easy after one or two more trials, I just need to sort out if there is really any reason to keep trying it.  What if I am preventing cancer, suspending aging, improving internal organ function, and boosting my mental clarity?  Or what if every single potential health benefit isn't really happening?  I'm not even bringing up the "detox" theme, or letting my body drop off insulin resistance, which would be more of a concern if I was eating more sugar than I am.

Concerns about fasting; should people fast?

I've been thinking lately about whether I would recommend this to others or not.  I think not.  For people who feel like they need it, mostly for weight loss, or if they have a burning desire to mess around with how their body works, sure, it's fine.  For almost everyone it's just too disruptive, difficult, and unpleasant.  I kept saying that hunger wasn't much of a concern, and energy issues and loss of clarity only happened on 2 days out of 5, but that feeling of your body being empty of food never goes away.  Some people report feeling a related sort of euphoria, getting a high from it, but I seem not to.

One recurring theme in the Reddit fasting sub is communicating about fasting; many claim it's better to never bring it up, like that Fight Club rule about not talking about it.  The concern is probably over others taking it wrong, them being overly concerned, or you coming across as saying "woe is me!," when it's clearly an intentional personal choice, and definitely not a necessary one.  It absolutely has to become normal or it won't work.  

This includes impact to other daily life activities, beyond perspective and communication.  Few people could forego work or other activities for days to work through eating disruption, but I guess if someone has nothing going on laying on a couch for 5 days would work.  Even that defeats one of the main purpose though; if you drop normal activity level your metabolism will plummet, and weight loss won't occur to the same degree.

Related to other potential impact I slept like a baby, beyond getting up to drink salt water however many times, but then I tend to do that.  I might usually wake up to use a restroom and stay up for 15 minutes messing around online but my middle of the night insomnia days are behind me, since it's been a few years since kids have woke up frequently.  Storms wake my daughter, and then she wakes me up, but that's different, infrequent now.

It was cool that it seems like I could do longer runs if I try again, or probably could have this time.  Will that translate to feeling more energy on longer runs now?  I took an extra day off running after the fast because I felt soreness in my calves, maybe from disruption of normal recovery process, since I usually run a lot more than 4 miles in 5 days, often 6 miles in an outing.  But I'll run again and can check.  It would be nice if I didn't live in one of the hottest and most humid places on earth so I could check on that without disruption, the constant near heatstroke.  

I guess at a bare minimum I'll appreciate eating more again; there's nothing like fresh, plain, healthy food when you don't take eating for granted.

cheeseburgers and sweet potato, yam, and regular fries; that tasted good

the next day; chicken breasts are really easy to cook too

Art of Living, and Matthew McConaughey's ideas, compared to Buddhism

 

credit The Art of Livin' site

I recently watched almost all of a special live event, The Art of Livin' (not "Living;" that's an Indian self development organization), primarily hosted by Matthew McConaughey, the Hollywood actor who ventured into self help / life advice.  It was ok, with some significant limitations.  It's still being shown at that link, and probably through a Youtube post, but they say that they'll take it down soon.

It doesn't naturally make much sense to compare it to something like Buddhism, which is usually taken as a conventional major religion, but as I see it Buddhism, at its core, is really practical psychology, or a very early form of "self help / life coaching."  It's a lot to get to, so I'll be skimming over essentially every part, but it all links, and Buddhism informs perspective on the rest.

Event / ideas presented overview

Matthew McConaughey was the main speaker and presenter, covering the most material, with four others supporting him.  I'll not go into too much detail about specifics; this definitely won't be a complete summary.  It was hard to keep track of whether any of the speakers or sessions were making clear or actionable points, even though it all sounded ok if you didn't think it through too much.  Then if you did the scope was always a bit general, often more motivational than actionable.  My memory of it won't do summary justice but let's sample a little.

I'll also not not really address the folksy tone, use of music, signaling graphics (eg. hearts and stars background), laugh track, and other sound track input to help signal audience reactions, and themed background setting to help set tone.  It was set up well.  A Zoom meeting audience interaction theme was more of a symbolic attempt, and a way to charge extra to people who wanted to feel more involved.

McConaughey (what they kept calling him; somehow the one-name form seemed catchy):  apparently this extended ideas from his "Green Lights" self-help / life coaching book.  In theory he was going into greater depth about what red, yellow, and green light type conditions mean, how to evaluate each, and what role those play.  Those are circumstances in your life when the going is easy (green lights), or difficult or relating to impasses (red), and I never caught on to what yellow meant.  

Since the overall main theme was this event selling a longer, later, differently formatted life coaching package (for $400, I think it was) his input was limited and spread around different topics, more about what he would tell you more about later.  He almost did more with building a character / persona than actually communicating anything, playing drums, wearing a wrinkled, buttoned down, and folded sleeves dress shirt, not shaving for days prior to look more natural.  All the hosts but Marie had deep tans for the event; it was as if they were all on a beach vacation.

Tony Robbins:  the biggest name in motivational speaking / life coaching; it was repeated that he's been at it for over 40 years.  His content was ok, well presented, smoothly outlined, just also not so substantial.  His main advice was that fear limits your ability to redefine yourself, to take chances, and achieve optimum life results, absorbing too much focus.  Ok.  

At least his skill in presenting such messages in charismatic, storytelling fashion came across well, even if the content itself didn't say much.  He recommended buying Matthew McConaughey's further help package, including some content (a module?) of his own, and no doubt making a cut from sales.

Dean Graziosi:  apparently a main organizer, a partner of Tony Robbins, and another life coach.  He did a couple of intro segments, and presented a "Find Your Why" themed segment (which may be someone else's framing of similar ideas; the coaching ideas tend to repeat).  He seemed fine, if less charismatic and genuine than Tony Robbins.  

McConaughey was pulling it off slightly better too, but leaned into the manically happy / folksy character a bit too much, adopting presumably organic looking mannerisms like chewing on his fingertip to seem natural, beyond all of them waving their hands a lot.  They're all salesmen, literally admittedly so, so seeming like salesmen may be something that should be forgiven.

Marie Forleo:  I've never heard of her, but her talk was ok.  The core idea was that if you say that you don't eat sugar (cake, soda, whatever) instead of that you can't that it's a psychological trick that makes it stick better (applied to whatever topics).  Sure, maybe.  But then it seems like the kind of person who can drop sugar out of their diet won't be affected by such simple tricks, and for others who would struggle to it also might not help much.

Trent Shelton:  he covered the most typical motivational speaker range, "you can do it!," examine your strengths and weaknesses, don't listen to the doubters, I believe in you, and so should you.  I couldn't finish watching that part, even though it seemed short.  I watched some later after it was over, enabling skipping around; I couldn't sit through 6 or 7 hours of all of it live.  

At the end it cut off abruptly, without any closing or notice it was going to end, presumably so those people who bought in for the full experience could hear more, that ending part.  It seemed like they wanted to communicate that the buy-in had extra value, but couldn't spell that out clearly without it seeming offensive to the free viewers, so it just cut out as a result.  Live viewership had dropped from 300+k to around 50 later on anyway, so only a small proportion caught that.

Strengths of the material and event:  it was free.  For people on the right page the fact that it could be edited to one fourth the length without cutting out a single idea probably wouldn't matter, because they could probably enjoy the experience.  There is a shorter edited version of the event out there somewhere (identified in an email response, since I got on a mailing list to sign up to see it), but I'm not sure if Google search can find it, or how long it would be around.  It will surely go in later related content packages.  

Surely parts of the content must be more useful and seem more creative to others than I'm framing it.  Aspects were very well done, and the advice was fine, it was just much longer than it needed to be.  

The speakers kept saying "write that down!," and in some comment feed notes people said that it seemed worth unpacking more later.  They kept using audience input (as comment streams) to create a feeling of engagement, just stopping short of saying that "we are a community," or maybe drifting over that dividing line just a little here and there.  No doubt the paid package version will add to that.

Weaknesses:  it was as much a long ad for the next packaged advice as actual packaged advice.  One fourth of the content was explaining what was coming, in general terms, and lots only summarized what had been said, and included small talk between hosts, with no significant content.  The folksy tone was stretched a bit thin.  Bongo drums were employed to make it feel informal and organic, points were repeated over and over for emphasis, and the Zoom call audience engagement background context employed was strange.  Periodically a speaker would say something like "I can relate to you, Ann, Bob, and Dave," and with thousands of people in a Zoom call it hardly mattered if those names were on a script or were actually read off small video call labels.  I like the novelty, but the effect was just odd.

It all seemed to add up to targeting people who are easily manipulated, who would "fall for" one cheap and easy emphasis trick after another, like warm smiles, a sunset background effect, overlapping messages that gave it a continuous feel, and really obvious examples to highlight every point.  Maybe all that shared input was from genuine comment streams, or maybe not, and again it kind of doesn't matter.  It's an old speaking engagement trick, like asking an audience to greet the people sitting beside them, which of course they couldn't use in this context.

If the life coaching / motivational range was more substantial I think these packaging issues wouldn't matter; it would still be great advice.  I'll go out and read Green Lights, just to get a deeper take, but I don't think it's going to matter.  There is really solid advice in conventional wisdom, but many of us have experienced more than half of lifetime of exposure to that kind of thing already, so we kind of get it.  

All of us could do more with our lives, or appreciate things more, or re-balance life components, but little enough of all that was presented seemed like real "tools" to do so.  It was fine, the kind of decent advice a well-meaning friend might pass on:  look at things from a different perspective, ease up on doubts from time to time, try to get some space from your own pre-conceptions to see other alternatives or new directions.  It probably sounds like I'm criticizing the examples here for being overly packaged and trite but they were really fine, very well crafted and communicated.

How Buddhism differs, why it's better:

I'll need to cut short what Buddhism really is, and 99% of the teachings and concepts, to make it one more section in a set of several, but let's go there.  This won't include my own background with Buddhism, but I wrote about that sharing some ideas here awhile back.  Buddhism passes on life coaching advice (really!).  The core message is that the main source of our own unhappiness and dissatisfaction isn't external, not that we lack something, or resulting from unique personal weaknesses, or problems, but instead that problems are added to life experience as unhelpful assumptions, and faulty perspective, built into how we interpret reality.

with one of our cats, who I met as a kitten at that temple

Let's step back just a little, to set the ground for how it works:  reality is actually a construct of ideas (mostly), not something external that objectively happens to us.  Matter is real, for sure, and our model for what a human organism is works well (an animal that can think, and so on), but a lot of what we experience is from layers of assumptions and ideas, from framing conventions and societal inputs.

A good example is self-image; what is it that makes someone beautiful, and someone else ugly, and why is it that clothing and image conventions distill down to a lot of clearly defined sets of norms?  Facial symmetry, healthy skin, preferred skin color, height, in-fashion body shape, fitness:  all of these come into play.  But layers of other conventions add to that, about hair style, accessories, and clothing choices.  Just from the last, styles, brands, quality level, cues related to what was spent on the clothes, color choices, and so on build up to an image of "who" someone is.  Expectations come from fashion trends, as much as anything else; the right people can easily identify who is out of touch or perfectly up to date.

Someone's physical demeanor really sets the context for others, their body language, "indexing" what they should expect for level of attractiveness based on the person's self-image, but that starts in on more complicated scope.  Posture tells a story, and speech forms and patterns convey a broad range of different information.  

So where am I going with all this?  The rest of our reality is equally complicated, and equally adopted as assumptions, versus being a series of necessary conscious choices.  Could we "quit doing" most of it?  Sort of, but not exactly.  There is no default neutral clothing style choice, or hair style, fitness level, and so on.  So what does all this mean?

It adds up, in such a way that we end up chasing these details relentlessly, whether we intend to or not.  McConaughey actually said roughly that at one point, but he was talking about finding value in what we pursue, not examining and re-structuring how normal reality is framed.  It's different.  You can stop doing fads, to some extent, like wearing or owning the next trendy thing (eg. using a two year old Andriod phone versus the latest Iphone version), but that would never typically drill down to a conscious awareness of the almost exclusively unconscious levels of worldview, self-image, and perspective building.

this is my son as a novice monk, one related role in the Buddhist religion.

Buddhism explains to us how to access and understand this level of reality.  It's actually quite close to impossible to do so, because listening to six hours worth of four speakers' life advice is a good example of the noise that we would need to filter out to ever even begin.  Cutting deeper than ordinary, surface level perception alone is relatively unthinkable, without taking steps that few people would ever become aware of, never mind put into practice, which would take unreasonable time and effort.  

We literally can't notice it all to think about making more sense of it, based on using typical inputs and approaches.  So what kind of additional tools am I talking about?

Teachings (part of the eight-fold path, one teaching form):  I'm describing an error-theory general sort of range of structure of reality; that's part of what Buddhism is.  I'm not going to make the mapping more complete here, because again I'm only trying to sample 1% of all Buddhism to show what it is, and trying to get to 10% would make the effort less manageable and successful.  The teachings include a model of reality, but it's not about how things really are, but more about limited basic structure and then the assumptions that go wrong, all relating to practical advice about adjusting perspective.

Meditation:  a tough one!  How is it possible to reduce mental noise, the instinctive mental following of all the ideas decades of life have conditioned us to naturally experience?  Meditation helps.  It sort of calms the waves of a noisy mind, building up a bit more resilience and neutral balance.  That only goes so far, and working up to more effective practice takes a lot of doing.  Encountering good advice about forms of practice is all but impossible; I spent time ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk (a bit over two months) and the input I ran across there was quite mixed, some good, some quite unhelpful, but none of it an easy to apply short cut.

Mindfulness:  meditation and teachings alone wouldn't be enough; even adding mindfulness still isn't close to enough.  This is a developed deeper awareness of momentary reality.  What is that all about?  Normally we grasp the ideas we are conditioned to follow, just the next things we are supposed to want, or feel attraction or aversion to, or extreme boredom if none of either is present.  Training to experience momentary reality more clearly helps us see this experience for what it is, to notice the assumptions in play.

One part is seeing the odd relationship of the present moment to the distant past, recent past, immediate future, and distant future.  Usually at least one of these other contexts is soaking up more attention than the actual present moment, in lots of different ways.  

Maybe it's the motivational-speaker input that we can always strive to do better, we can be more, we can unlock our unique potential, stop limiting ourselves, etc.  All that is advice to put more attention on the immediate and distant future, next steps and then where it all leads, which indirectly de-emphasizes the present moment.  Or for many regrets and anxiety tie perspective more to the past, to expecting negative patterns that either have happened before or may happen, even if they never yet have.  There's plenty of risk to watch out for, in many contexts, or baggage to carry, but the present moment absolutely also requires quite a bit of attention, in order to go well.  Appreciating the positive could fall off the list of things to do entirely.

It's not just about staying in the present moment, or being aware of where urges are coming from, where attention gets stuck, or self-image concerns; it just keeps going.  When we lie to others we set up a mis-match between what we think and experience and what we communicate, juggling one more factor.  When others lie to us there are plenty of telltale signs of this happening in them, and it can be off-putting when you train to experience it more directly, and see it for what it is.  

Then from there all the layers of current culture's assumptions add a lot of weight to momentary experience.  These include the  boundaries of social contexts, settings, and roles, and all the positive and negative inputs of all sorts of social ties.  

Not that it's all mostly negative; I don't mean that.  It's noisy, whether you experience it relatively directly and openly or not.  Someone could try to stay within a very narrow perspective lane, to not venture out of their own sub-culture group very much, and that really might help turn down the noise level, and eliminate some contradictions.  Or taking time off other people to spend time in nature would be even better, or at least turning away from a smart-phone screen or television a lot of the time, which fragment our attention span into seconds-long experiences of content all competing for our attention.

How Buddhism teaches us which parts are problematic for us:  any guesses?  It's back to meditation.  The parts of reality that are problematic for each of us are going to keep running through our thoughts, like a computer program that gets a bit hung in spots, wasting RAM.  The emotional reaction sticks with us, even though it would be really easy to miss where that negative input is entering in, among all the other noise.  

It might be like a knee problem that is caused by an initial issue starting in the hip or ankle; the apparent "pain point" might naturally seem to be somewhere else than where the real cause is located.  Just sitting and letting your mind re-run what it can't drop could help.  Or I guess dreams can contain messages, and conventional self-awareness still works, but I'm focusing here on extra tools Buddhism adds for us.  When you sit and still your mind some noise won't drop out, and often that's a clue there is a problem within that scope.  Later the calm comes easier, and stays with you better.

The problems are different for everyone; this is an issue that is so self-evident that any motivational speaker is going to mention that, even in shorter segments.  Self-image is all-consuming for some, or baggage from past traumas or negative associations, or the pressure of external goals, which motivational speakers would generally advocate accepting.  Then those speakers could easily say that they've moved beyond over-doing it (as one did in The Art of Livin' content), after relentlessly chasing a dozen different directions and seeing 3 or 4 really work out had bore fruit in their own cases.

None of this is ever laid out in clear steps, or clearly defined, partitioned, functional descriptions.  Why not?  Because Buddhism has picked up an awful lot of noise over the last 2500 years.  Just consider how degraded Christianity has become:  Jesus' core message is clear enough, to treat others well, to be humble and generous, selfless, and so on, but that's often lost for other "core" teachings input.  Literal belief in superstitions, rituals, abstract social roles, archaic church practices, even "prosperity" teachings were all added to that core message later.  

Why would Buddhism be different in this regard?  There are a dozen different ways to make wishes defined in Thai Buddhist practices, and original Buddhism has little to nothing to do with making wishes.  The chanting in religious ceremonies isn't magical in function; that was a way to preserve oral teachings.  "Karma" is surely nothing like modern religious teachings portray it.

A second problem applies equally to life coaching advice and Buddhism:  if the problems and resolutions are different in different cases the presentation can only be so targeted and clear, for a broad audience.

So how do we access valid, functional, clear Buddhist teachings?  To make a long story short, we don't.  It's close enough to impossible.  Someone like Thich Nhat Hanh was a genuine teacher, but there are so few of those kinds of references out there.  I guess we just have to sort, filter, and make due with what's available.  Real life experiences are the main teacher, with the other input just starting points to work with.

Ordinarily a ready answer would be "sangha!," that the fellowship of other Buddhists helps teach us, the community.  Today I'm not so sure that's helpful.  Discussion in Buddhist groups almost always reduces down to each person one-upping the last in relation to having memorized their own school's set of definitions, while rejecting all others.  It's a shame.  It would be nice if the core of the sets of teachings was so uniform and common that it wouldn't matter, but the schools aren't that consistent.  And personal practice only gets so far in every given case, as is true again for Christianity.  Learning the ideas is one thing, then digging down to deeper levels of understanding and adopting them in practice  are two other things.

What about the overlap of all this with the "Art of Livin'" input?  There must be some.  Those speakers weren't passing on bad advice.  Folk wisdom is useful; it sticks around and is constantly reinterpreted for a reason.  It's just not the same kind of thing.  

My grandmother taught me to not hold onto unhelpful ideas, or to adopt the stress and conflict others are inclined to feel; her expression was that it's all like water off a duck's back to her.  To me that's a closer parallel to Buddhism; engage the sets of ideas and opinions that matter to you, that are worth working with, and just leave the rest alone.  It's the opposite of reaching out to that higher potential within you, becoming more prosperous and whatever else, much more deconstructive in nature.  

I forget the codes they kept using in those talks for making more money.  What you might achieve was always framed in positive, friendly, tone-neutral terms, about self-empowerment and expression and such, but parts were clear references to being more wealthy.  Which is fine, but it's mixing messages to slip in other general framing of being more self-actualized with the quite natural appeal of greed.  You can be rich!  Your wealth can finally outrun your desires to buy things, and give you power, status, and security!  It's what people wanted to hear, so the demand was fulfilled, just in indirect terms.  Maybe not the "road map" part, but what better way to serve the purposes of the content creators than to offer a part two, for more money, that promises to really fulfill that, just next time.

Buddhism teaches us that it's a bad goal to try to fulfill all your desires; narrowing or eliminating most is much more promising, or just shifting perspective a little.  It's practical; it could actually work.  Surely Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk aren't falling short for fulfilling every one of their financially oriented desires; they can literally afford to pour money into the pursuit of going to the moon, billions of dollars worth, thousands of millions.  But the rest of the problems wouldn't be lessened for them.

Didn't those motivational speakers seem truly happy though?  Maybe.  It's also possible that they're good actors, or that they love fulfilling that role, being a performer and life guide.  It's not as if they've all not performed as those characters in hundreds of public speaking engagements.  Check out Matthew McConaughey in any related public speech, like a university graduation ceremony.  He seems personable, comfortable, folksy, wise; essentially exactly the same persona, one that overlaps with his movie characters.  And that is probably one side of his real personality; why wouldn't it be?  Plenty of people are like that, some of the time.  Some are happier than average, as people go, and others might just be better at maintaining that context.

Which range of life coaching or practical psychology is more practical?

I don't think it's a practical alternative to put a few dozen hours into studying and practicing Buddhism, instead of seeking out life coaching input.  Even ramped up to the few hundred hours level of study and practice finding good references is just too problematic.  New Age interpretations of Buddhism are plagued by superficial levels of evaluation, emphasis on Asian imagery and ceremonial forms instead of applying the core themes.  Most guru types are best avoided.  Ordinary psychology might be a much more reliable reference, if that wasn't also problematic for lots of other reasons, too deep in theory, and also contaminated by varying pop interpretations.

For people who just need some kind of positive input and reinforcement this Art of Livin' approach is fine.  3 or 400 dollars is workable for many people who need that affirmation and range of good advice.  They would see it all as 100% positive, in spite of the limitations, because that's how our ordinary binary processing and filtering ends up framing things, as good or bad.  Maybe "good" is the right judgment, for many.  Or they could just read related books, and watch TED talks, and whatever else is out there that's relatively free instead.  

Any of that wouldn't be packaged and sold in the same way, lacking the heavy layering of reassurances, the repetition of ideas, folksy communication styles, bright and easy smiles, simulated group consensus and shared experience, and so on.  It's all nice, I guess.  Unless the parts that are supposed to be "behind the curtain" seem completely obvious, then it's one part good advice and also partly a carefully packaged grift.  I liked how well they supported that part, so to an extent it was entertaining seeing how well it was done.  If this was changed around to the form of a seminar on how to sell people on material with relatively limited substantial content it might be very worthwhile.

Best case, long term, how do practice outcomes differ?

This is a more interesting way to look at it; assuming both work well (which is a big "if"), how do results differ?

These life coach speakers are offering a range of different advice, from small tips to adjust a very limited practice (stand up straight), to perspective variations (how do your choices and goals seem looking back from the end of your life, hypothetically?), to trying to empower courage to make a lot of brand new starts.  In theory maybe it could lead to radical success, to someone being able to completely redefine themselves, to start a new career, to pursue a successful relationship, etc.  

If there isn't a practical toolset to really do that, beyond a motivational push to take chances, and be positive, then perhaps it's not fair to say that almost anything can be achieved based on following this advice.  But again at the core it seems geared towards selling people on them being able to make more money.  You have to listen closely to the list of goals they promote, and notice how coded phrases are what really seem to resonate with the audience (be prosperous, experience security, etc.).

Buddhism isn't geared towards people gaining wealth, or really even as centered on acceptance of having limited financial success, to dropping all material focus, to the extent one might imagine.  It's just about something else.  The end goal is to reshape perspective and worldview framing so that the experience of owning things, being defined by external imagery, and not really trying to gain power, wealth, or status, so becoming rich doesn't match up.  

A limited personal account of perspective transition

I can't describe what the shift has been like, since I started trying to embrace the ideas and practice a long time ago, 30 years back.  Gradually it took, to some extent.  I don't worry too much about money, even though I kind of have to now because we just moved from Bangkok to Honolulu, and I don't have a job in place that covers this cost of living appropriately.  Even then it's easy to place the stress; I take it for what it's worth.  

Stopping personal spending was unnecessary because I left that habit behind long ago; I own enough, unless a special need comes up, and I'm not always considering what snack or drink to have next, or which dinner foods to consume.  I keep it basic, which is healthier anyway.  Really it's all the rest that factors in more, subtle ways in which viewing the world and acting within it play out. 

To be clear I'm no Buddhism exemplar; the point here is to pass on what limited perspective shift and practice look like.  That's what just generally failed to be summarized clearly, how my worldview and self-definition have changed, not describing some variation of enlightenment.  Let's keep trying.

I feel comfortable in my own skin, I think.  It's not so difficult to notice which themes and moments I should be focusing on and enjoying, and which parts are noise, which is why I'm focused mostly on sharing this time with my kids, for the last 14 years, and supporting their life experience.  That works a lot better than chasing my own hobbies and aspirations, or really it is that, where I place my own meaning.  I keep tea interest as a way to write and connect beyond that, in part because it stays limited well.  For people who collect pu'er maybe not, as I also do (tea that ages to improve), but I buy a limited amount every year, of limited quantity, and don't worry about it too much beyond that.

My kids feel that support as a main life input, and react by feeling peace and connection in their own lives, and we all thrive more as a result.  To be clear I'm not proposing that supporting offspring is a highest possible value.  Not having kids is fine, and if someone had children but focuses on career instead, or two parents do, and a nanny raises the kids, then that could be fine, a very effective solution.

Before having kids experience of nature was more of a connection for me, a way to truly be in the moment, and experience external beauty and novelty, and physical demands.  Related to the last point I run now, a good way to compress a lot of that input into limited time.  I'm still failing in bringing it across as a distinct perspective and worldview, right?  The broad themes would vary by person, and the noise that drops out is hard to describe.  I don't worry about who I'm supposed to be, or how others see me, or getting to some specific status or wealth level, which drops out about half of the issues they raised in the initial Art of Livin' selling points.

Again I'm not necessarily recommending that people look into and take up Buddhism.  I feel it is appropriate to shift theme here and say a little about what I would recommend though, to close on that.

Doing your best within your own life scope using current perspective and tools is fine; ordinary introspection is really effective.  Taking a walk is a great meditation practice, probably a much better starting point than seated meditation.  Just turn the music off, and keep your phone in your pocket.  Notice what stresses you, and emphasize things that really mean more in your life, the connections to others, not so much what you might buy from Amazon, or which phone to get next.

I think if anyone wants to dig deeper looking externally instead works well now, versus this inside-out approach.  Placing social media use and its impact on your life is important.  One might really consider what this liberal and conservative divide is all about, and what is separating people into those two groups (in the US, at least).  I don't mean which parts of "your side" is clearly superior, and the other's completely foolish; consider why it either evolved naturally or was externally reinforced for people to be separated into two broad groups.  Who does it benefit?  Then from there unpacking internal biases can help, sorting through what inputs seem to add stress, then trying to moderate that influence.

One last point is perfect to close on; it can get lost that life experience doesn't always have to be about what we want at any given time, what we experience, and own, our image status, and what upsets us.  It's possible to put emphasis on helping other people, or at least also valuing their experience of reality.  This happens naturally when parenting, which is nice, but then it's easy to slip into trying to condition your children to be however you think they should be, or else take an opposing hands-off approach, and then deal with where that leads.  In every interaction with other people there is opportunity to appreciate and enjoy how they experience the current circumstances, or in negative contexts to genuinely empathize.

Just being open to how others see and experience reality is more liberating than it would seem; we can end up trapped in the noise we create, endlessly caught up in cravings and aversions.  Life can be nice when things are more still too, sometimes, but it helps a lot if your mind is quieter.  Good luck appreciating that quietude with young kids around, but at least then a range of different inputs can still shift you off ego-based obsessions.

appreciating shave-ice, and good company