Lana wrote:
So I ask: How do you interact with the people in this world?
Dear Lana:
Have a warm welcome to us.. My advice here to you will be that of forget all
you have learnt so far and start all over completely a new. As if you were a
baby recently borne who has everything to learn, to explore, to experience.
Visualise the baby you were and observe the personality and way of doing of
that baby. Or when you were five years old with no concepts or ideas but
with that huge awe and curiosity for everything?. Can you remember how very
attentive then, you were able to listen to anyone talking to you about
something?. Can you remember how attentive you were to everything that was
going on?....Remember the little child and be simply yourself in that
simplicity, Natural with your laugh and your tears. Free yourself of the
weight of the thought and ideas accumulated through the years. Don't be
afraid of being yourself. Give up about enlightenment and just be happy.
I interact well with people but then I'm very lazy in cultivating them and
most of them give up on me!. But that is not their fault but mine all alone.
Hope you have lots and lots of feedback for your question.
Mayka
--- On Wed, 24/11/10, Lana M. Gibbons <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Lana M. Gibbons <[email protected]>
Subject: [Zen] New Member
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, 24 November, 2010, 20:56
Greetings,
I apparently have been practicing a number of principles of Zen for quite some
time, albeit completely unintentionally. A lot of what I am reading now are
things I have realized through experience without external guidance: It is very
refreshing to see there are teachings for this that I have stumbled on.
One thing I am having a lot of trouble with recently is interaction with others
who simply don't understand - people so stuck in their dualities that they
can't begin to comprehend I just don't have them, people who are so immersed in
the material world that they can't conceive that I am happy without many
possessions, people so focused on having external influences complete them that
they seem to be cut off from simply being. This issue has been so pervasive
recently that I have went from existing with a peaceful thought-free mind
(no-mind?) to one that has been sad on occasion. I have never needed
meditation to achieve that state, but I am starting it to see if it helps.
It seems the issues most frequently presented are that people who feel I
am important to them seem to keep insisting on doing things for me, then being
frustrated that I am not ecstatic for their gestures (nor am I upset, those
gestures simply are what they are - transient, typically materialistic things
that are nice, but not necessary to my wellbeing). They expect to be thanked
as if I had needed their action like food or water. They seem to expect me to
sustain them in a similar fashion. And thus they make their own misery over it
when I simply am who I am. I've tried explaining, but they are not ready to
learn.
I have been called "cold" or "unsympathetic". It seems people expect me to
make assumptions on the intention (or nonintention) behind their actions. Yet
they do them and by doing them they are those actions, yet they take no
responsibility for them. Even more they seem to expect everyone, including
nature itself to excuse their actions, nullify any effect or consequences those
actions may have had. To me it is what it is - yet this makes them miserable,
as if I am expected to wipe away their remorse by reassuring them they were at
the mercy of some power other than their own.
So I ask: How do you interact with the people in this world?
-Lana
