My experiment: Counting 'Sticky' Thoughts

[shikantazen]

Yeah the mudra is resting on my lap and not in the air or against my chest. The heaviness is also accompanied by a kind of "rock"/still feeling as if I am inside a rock or the air around me has become a rock like hard substance making me immovable.

It definitely sounds like an illusion but it happens pretty often to ignore. I don't think I am holding my hands or muscles tight but may be doing it without my knowledge. Do I need to intentionally relax my body head to toe when this happens?

Karasu, my legs are fine

[Jundo]

Hi Sam,

Try to relax the muscles for a moment, see what happens.

But after that, most importantly, just pay this "no nevermind" and turn your attention back to just sitting. Let it be just another something in the room that you neither run toward or away from, another image in the clear mirror. Unless it is a condition that is truly painful for long periods or life threatening, I would just ignore it as a curiosity. I have a hunch that, when you stop noticing, fixating on it and grabbing it with your mind, and just sit in a relaxed way ... POOF, it will be gone.

Keep us posted.

Gassho, Jundo

[pinoybuddhist]

Sam:

Just wanted to add that this practice is kind of like being a daruma - which is a kind of doll in Japan with a weight on the bottom so that no matter how many times you knock it down it always gets back up. Let's use that image, okay? So you fall and get back up. And you fall and get back up. And you fall and get back up. That is the practice. And who knows? Maybe in time you will get to a point where you will not fall too often, or you'll fall but you'll get up faster than you do right now (when I look at my own few measly years' experience though, I doubt it - but who knows, right?). But whether you do or not is not the point of the practice. It is not the point of the practice to get to a level of no longer falling (and therefore no longer needing to get up). The practice is the point.

Laundry constantly builds up. Do not seek to eliminate the laundry. One just does the laundry 10,000 times and 10,000 times again, until learning to pay the laundry no nevermind.

Gassho, J

Gassho,
Rafael

[Jundo]

Sam:

Just wanted to add that this practice is kind of like being a daruma - which is a kind of doll in Japan with a weight on the bottom so that no matter how many times you knock it down it always gets back up. Let's use that image, okay? So you fall and get back up. And you fall and get back up. And you fall and get back up. That is the practice. And who knows? Maybe in time you will get to a point where you will not fall too often, or you'll fall but you'll get up faster than you do right now (when I look at my own few measly years' experience though, I doubt it - but who knows, right?). But whether you do or not is not the point of the practice. It is not the point of the practice to get to a level of no longer falling (and therefore no longer needing to get up). The practice is the point.

Nice Raf. Like a Karate guy, one does get better at falling and not falling and getting up.

One also "gets to" a point where on realizes that ... falling and not falling, getting up or getting down or holding in between .. there is simultaneously no place to fall, no up and down or in between. ALL AT ONCE.

Gassho, J

[shikantazen]

Thanks Jundo, will try that and see next time it appears. Rafael that's is a pretty good metaphor, thank you for that.