As a Zen practitioner, aloneness is something that I have recognised as a result of many years of meditation practice. The truth is that we are alone - always - yet we are together in that alone-ness. We cannot live in the mind of another, so everything we know about others, is created in our own minds.
As I continued meditating and contemplating this through the years, I have realised that alone-ness and loneliness are two different things. The difference is desire.
If we desire to be understood and needed by another and it is not forthcoming, then we will feel lonely. but if we drop this desire then we can be full of "self presence" and realise that we are part of the whole universe and that nature itself cares for us. To realise this though, we need to accept and realise that we are more than just a physical body. That we are an energy (or spirit) inside a physical body and mind. We came into the world alone.. We go out of the world alone.. In between we worry about being alone sometimes, but really we don't need to.
We were OK when we entered the world, so who is to say that we are not OK when we leave the world?
From a discussion I have particpated in.. For other points of view click here.
Zen is a spiritual challenge to live life with awareness and focus. It is not a religion but a Way of Life. Zen can be used as a Way in any religion. Zen is a training in mindful awareness during the process of day to day life. Words can't really describe Zen, but living with Zen is spiritually empowering.
Expansion and Suffering.
This is interesting discussion on religion I got involved in regarding resistances from the point of view of my own Zen life.
As a Zen practitioner, I do not believe in a creator deity as such, but will acknowledge the existence of the Whole or Universal. When something is experienced to completion, it disappears as it becomes one with the whole. So if I am suffering, I focus my attention fully on the experience and allow it to be, allow it to expand into the realm of everything or All. At the point of complete expansion, it disappears. With a headache or other pain, I feel it expand to become everything as I meditate upon it. With the emotions the same thing can happen.
There is no time limit to the duration of such experience, for if I am motivated to free myself of the pain and use acceptance to do this, I will get to keep the discomfort, because I am looking to rid myself of an experience, therefore resisting and not experiencing it to completion.
It is not always easy because resistance to discomfort feels to be wrapped around my mind layer by layer, like onion skins, each layer will disappear to reveal the layer underneath, which may or may not be more pain, and there are some problems that as I get closer to the core, where before it will disappear, it will grow more intense.
As a Zen practitioner, I do not believe in a creator deity as such, but will acknowledge the existence of the Whole or Universal. When something is experienced to completion, it disappears as it becomes one with the whole. So if I am suffering, I focus my attention fully on the experience and allow it to be, allow it to expand into the realm of everything or All. At the point of complete expansion, it disappears. With a headache or other pain, I feel it expand to become everything as I meditate upon it. With the emotions the same thing can happen.
There is no time limit to the duration of such experience, for if I am motivated to free myself of the pain and use acceptance to do this, I will get to keep the discomfort, because I am looking to rid myself of an experience, therefore resisting and not experiencing it to completion.
It is not always easy because resistance to discomfort feels to be wrapped around my mind layer by layer, like onion skins, each layer will disappear to reveal the layer underneath, which may or may not be more pain, and there are some problems that as I get closer to the core, where before it will disappear, it will grow more intense.
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