The Great Allowing (guided meditation)

The Great Allowing

Monks' Buddhist Peace Walk amputation

(Fox 26 Houston)

• Buddhist monks' Peace Walk across USA to DC

Forest Bathing: de-stress in nature

Hiking in giant Angeles National Forest/Preserve above Los Angeles at Bridge to Nowhere 

Shinrin Yoku: The Art of Forest Bathing | film

(Matador Network) Stuck swiping Insta every day? The practice of “forest bathing” can change what life is like. Unplug with Mike and Kati on an ancient Japanese trail, learning the creative and health benefits of Shinrin Yoku. #travel #shortfilm #outdoors #forest Shinrin Yoku: The Art of Forest Bathing was a 2020 Webby honoree in video: Travel and Adventure. Feb. 6, 2019. #outdoors #shortfilm #travel

There is a real Bridge to Nowhere in L.A.

"Forest bathing," or shinrin-yoku in its original Japanese, is a mindfulness practice that involves immersing oneself in nature.

The decades-old practice pulls from research that shows that spending time in nature can help lower stress levels (Harvard) and improve focus (U Michigan).

The resonance of the plants, rocks, spirits

Recently, forest bathing is growing in popularity, thanks in part to social media where people are sharing their experiences exploring forests and other green spaces and taking in all that they have to offer.

Over 45,000 videos have been shared on TikTok with the tag #forestbathing. Users say they've seen an improvement to their mental health. More

• Taking inspiration from Forest Bathing to reduce stress in the office - Frezza
• Harnessing the Healing Power of Nature: A Comprehensive Guide to Natural Forest Bathing - Dr. Pradeep Albert

Am I 'spiritual,' Joe Rogan? Levels of awakening

Joe Rogan: The Path to Roganlightenment | The Daily Show

(The Daily Show) July 30, 2025: From his humble beginnings in Newark to his scrappy days in Boston, Joe Rogan has always pushed his brains to the limit. Rogan's stand-up comedy led him to a career in television, eventually inspiring him to start his own podcast where he could ask the really important questions, like, "Wouldn't it be crazy if a wolf wore a fedora?" This is The Daily Showography of Joe Rogan.

Learn to meditate this spring (How to)

Beginning meditators are babies in white, so go easy. Meditation may make one sleepy at first.

.

An outfit just for practice helps.

It's spring. This is a good time, maybe the best time, to begin a regular meditation practice,. Well, actually the best time would have been seven years ago, but the second-best time is right now. Sitting can graduate to walking meditation, mindfulness in nature, then deep stillness and clarity to see things (vipassana) as they truly are.

Do the basics: Put on all white. Find a quiet spot apart from distractions. Use this spot over and over again. It becomes powerful. Set down a mat and cushion (a bundle of leaves or grass is enough to get the tailbone higher than the knees). Sit. Inhale deeply. Release. Do it again a few times, without forcing the air out. It's just about letting go completely, so completely that the body hangs as if held up by a clothing hanger, not stiff, not slack.

Straighter is more comfortable, even though it doesn't seem like it at first. Posture is important to attention. Bring (advert) the attention to the present moment, this moment, and to stay in just this moment, remain aware of the breath. Which breath? This breath, just the one happening now all by itself. Become the watcher (not the commenter, fixer, improver, slowdowner, or anything else), just the watcher. This is mindfulness -- clear awareness of the present without evaluation.

Whoa, what a trip! What was that? I want that again!

Set a time limit in advance and keep it. Even if it would be nice to go longer because it is going so well, know the time of rising. Even if it is going horribly with raving lunatic thoughts of a psychopath with lurid fantasies and wrath, lust and revenge, delusion and a lightshow, know the time of rising. The mind will thank you later.

Ten minutes is a good start time, slowly working up to an hourlong sit. That seems impossible now, but in time, whaddyaknow, it suddenly is possible. What changed? I'dunno. This practice is about persistence. It does itself and then there is no effort. The enemies of that are expectations, unsettled greed or desire for achieving something, and the Five Hindrances. They will come to hinder. They are already present. They can be overcome. But whether or not they have been overcome, persist. This is spring. This is the beginning. Have "beginner's mind" in place of the "monkey mind" that usually rules the cage. Smile. It helps.

Instructions are confusing because it's so simple.

It is easy to say that "meditation is NOT about thinking." That's clear. That's easy to see. Don't indulge thought; just let them be by turning your attention to this subtle breath that keeps changing. What is difficult to grasp is that "meditation is NOT about not-thinking." Not-thinking may happen. It doesn't matter. As that is not the goal, if it doesn't happen, it's okay. Giving attention to one object and bringing attention back and back again and again ("Begin again" as Sharon Salzberg says) is what is important.

The mind like a petulant and insolent child will resist. Let it. Bring it back. Do not scold it or become upset. Let it be. Surrender completely to this moment, whatever is in this moment, not being moved to do anything no matter what the mind says it must do. See what happens. Could the mind be wrong no matter what it feels or demands or insists is true?

How did Siddhartha Gautama do it?

We'll never see things as they really are so long as we keep believing that we already are seeing them that way. We have never been seeing them that way. If we had, we'd awaken. We'd be enlightened, which is to say, Dependent Origination would make sense. And it doesn't, does it? (Hint: It's a practice, not a theory). That's a whole different kind of meditation called insight (vipassana) after getting good at this kind, which is called serenity (samatha). Don't jump ahead. Let it go. (If all else fails, sign up for a free 10-day Goenka retreat. Everyone should do at least one in life).

• Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen Bradford, Wisdom Quarterly

Practice: What is "mindfulness"?

High quality, handmade Himalayan craftsmanshp of gold-faced Buddha - Etsy

What is that? - I don't know. I just let it be.

The Buddha talked about mindfulness (watchfulness, wakefulness, vigilance, diligence, sati) as a human capacity. It is being aware of the present in a dispassionate, nonreactive, unentangled way.

How do we become entangled? We follow automatic habits (going through life on "automatic pilot" rather than actually living).

• Western Theravada Buddhist monk Ven. Dr. Analayo has looked deeply into the definition of sati: "Mindfulness in Early Buddhism" (Journal of Buddhist Studies)

Love me. I'm cold and all alone and need a hug.

Our most pronounced habit is to crave and cling, to feed our greed and lust for pleasurable experiences. For example, rather than simply observing a beautiful thing, we want (and often do) reach for it, grasp it, hold onto it. This is attachment and clinging. When it fails to satisfy us, displeases, and disappoints, it becomes unlovable, unliked. And we fall into our second habit. Imagine a cute white lab mouse (or baby piglet) sniffling and looking for cuddles. We love it until we don't.

I've had with you, you dirty fat pig! Bacon!

We have the habit of experiencing fear, revulsion, annoyance, disliking unpleasant things and experiences. For example, rather than simply observing an ugly thing, we want (and often do) push it away, grab it and throw it away, resist it, beat it, destroy it (or, fearing it, we ourselves run away). Imagine a dirty rat, greasy and growling with shifty eyes.

Our most fundamental habit, which makes these other two or three (greed, hatred, and fear, fear being a kind of hate or "aversion"), is delusion, confusion, ignorance. It is not knowing, not understanding, not seeing things as they really are. One could say our whole experience is really a hallucination -- in the sense that we are rarely if ever looking at what's actually there, rarely being "mindful."

If we were being mindful, everything would be alright, acceptable, and we wouldn't abandon ourselves or the experience of the present moment.

Could we experience a pleasant sight, sound, scent, savor, (bodily) sensation, or simulation (mental thing) and simply let it be, radically accept it, not get entangled, involved, attached, not grasp or cling?

Mindful when walking, sitting, doing, viewing

If we could, that would be mindfulness.

Could we experience an unpleasant thing (internal or external) and simply let it be, radically accept it, allow it, not get entangled (by the habit of hate or fear), involved, not resist or run away, not deny or attempt to fix or destroy it? If we could, that would be mindfulness, seeing it just as it is and allowing it, letting it be whatever it is or wants to be without "fixing" it or making it be otherwise.

(This would mean fixing ourselves to be at ease with experience rather than trying to fix experience. If we could do this, then we would really be on our way to seeing things as they really are rather than constantly imagining them to be some way or other from our expectations, past experiences, fears, anticipations, neuroses, phobias, vulnerabilities...).

Could we experience a neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant thing (external or internal) and simply let it be without being bored, trying to escape the discomfort or confusion, without trying to figure it out and be one way or another, without trying to replace it with a pleasant and "interesting" thing? If we could, that would be mindfulness -- simply seeing what really is (right here, right now) without projections, distortions, expectations, preferences, just simply letting it (this moment) be whatever it is. That is mindfulness.

So the silly and downright foolish definition or idea that "mindfulness is walking in nature with awareness" becomes clear. We are never walking in nature, not mindfully. We are usually enjoying the change of scenery, the natural beauty, the slower pace, the fresh air, the uncluttered vistas, the everything-pleasant, hating the bugs and mosquitoes, weather and inconveniences, and missing most of the scenery because we're not really paying attention to what's there just noticing what we notice and daydreaming the rest of the time. Rather than ever being "here" right now, we instead constantly abandon ourselves, leave ourselves in the lurch of unpleasant experience, run these wheels of habit and automaticity, fail to engage with the real or the now or the present moment.

We dream of the past, imagine the future, and abandon the present. The first makes us depressed. The second makes us anxious. And the third makes us unhappy because, well, there's an interesting saying that takes some getting use to:

"There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way." If we were happy by being present, everything would be happiness. If we only allow ourselves to be happy when everything is pleasant, boy, we're in for a bumpy ride in life. If we insist we be unhappy when meeting the unpleasant, we have a lot of suffering coming our way (because a lot of, maybe most, experience is going to be unpleasant or boring). That will be the painful, the dukkha (the imperfect, off-kilter, off-center) causing us a bumpy ride.

How now if instead of habitually reacting all the time, judging, jumping to conclusions, thinking we know, being sure we know, we were to look with fresh eyes? "Beginner's mind," a famous attribute of Zen in particular and mindful meditation in general, is far better than the boredom, restlessness, annoyance, confusion, and insanity called "monkey mind."

The Buddha always has a little smirk or gentle smile.

The problem is this. The antidote is instant. It is called mindfulness (sati) because in mindfulness there is no greed, hatred/fear, or delusion. There is just this, just this moment, whatever is in it. And it's okay. It's fine because we let it be. We allow it. We accept it. We radically accept and embrace it because it is and for no better reason. Now it may change. (It will change). But for the moment, this moment, whatever this moment, we LET (allow) IT (whatever) BE (is). Allow whatever is. And smile. It feels nice, and it doesn't need a reason.

Now, the Buddha in talking about sati did not leave it at that. In fact, it's hard to ever find a definition of sati. That should be clear and well understood, implicitly one supposes, because all of the emphasis is what to be mindful of. That the Buddha called catu satipatthana, the Fourfold Setting Up of Mindfulness to be exact or the Four Foundations of Mindfulness to be conventional.

Sure, mindfulness is best. One can never be too mind. It is good for all things, to just let them be and observe them calmly, dispassionately, objectively, unentangled. As a path to enlightenment, the Buddha spelled out FOUR things of which to be mindful, which are categories:

1. body
2. feeling
3. mind
4. mind-objects.

Buddhas teach mindfulness.

We will not be able to be mindful of any of them very well until we establish the habit of mindfulness, which runs against the stream of our other four habits (liking the beautiful, disliking the ugly, fearing the ugly, or being bored or confused by the neutral). Watch. Stay. Be here now. Don't abandon yourself or the present experience.

The Dharma (Teaching) of what it means to practice systematic mindfulness of those four foundations (which is the practice of vipassana, "insight meditation," "practicing to see things as they really are") is taught often enough at Buddhist retreats.

For now, just be mindful of all that is (right now), which is an ever-changing stream of things, always interesting if one investigates dispassionately.

There is much to see and much to learn, but not if we come at it with expectations and like we already know. A little beginner's mind goes a long way as does noble silence, not explaining, categorizing, conceptualizing, imagining, measuring, figuring, minding, or verbalizing. Just let it (this moment) be.

• Dhr. Seven; edited by Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen Bradford, Wisdom Quarterly

Dharma Buddhist Meditation (meetup.com)

Mindfulness in Mother Nature (exercise)

Mother Earth (Bhumi, Terra, Gaia), it may be said, is an enigmatic and magical source of wonder. From the delightful colors of the sunrise to the hypnotic light of a full moon, Mother Earth provides limitless beauty and awe.

However, she actually does a lot more than only creating spellbinding sights. She creates life-affirming experiences from connecting to her.

The seasons, for example, are opportunities for rebirth, growth, recreation, and rest. Here are some reasons we should communicate with Mother Earth:

Limitless abundance

We better start by getting out among the trees.

We may grow our vegetable and herb garden, gather fruit from orchards look to the Moon, charts of the stars, or the sun for guidance, select crystals or medicinal and entheogenic herbs for healing. Why? Mother Earth gives us everything we need.

When we are aware and appreciative, we look after what we have been given, and Mother Earth is no exception. In order to excite our gratitude, she gives us provisions and resources.

Limitless empowerment

The woodland devas are all around.

Our intuitive and psychic abilities are actually enhanced when we respect Mother Earth. This is because their natural home is grounded in her warm embrace. While we appreciate, we absorb healing energies and vibrations of various frequencies in line with her rhythms. In this way, Mother Earth is constantly sharing with us, divine powers of a goddess.

Joy and happiness on tap

Mother Nature is a powerful living goddess.

When we are in nature, we boost our feelgood energies, clear our minds, and become inspired to act and express ourselves creatively. Positively energized, we better focus our energies on bringing joy into our lives.

Mother Nature gives us many wonderful opportunities to connect to our psychic selves. Mindfully walking in nature makes us more conscious with improved sensory apparatuses and powers.

Mother Nature reminds us that we are part of everything around us, a web of life. We form a part of her. To bring that to life and give it concrete meaning, here is a walking meditation to connect ourselves with the world beneath our sensitive feet.

Dryads inhabit trees.

Every time we feel we need to harmonize and ground ourselves, simply find nature and perform this: 

• As we start our walk, ask our Mother Nature for help to find the solution to any problem we are facing.
• Focus on the breath and permit the senses to see, hear, and otherwise feel ourselves supported.
• Remain aware that Mother Nature is simply the power in our stride, the air in our lungs, the beating of our heart.
• Listen to the answers she gives, the solutions that will solve our problems and bring peace.
• Stop. Close the eyes, place hands over heart, and thank her for everything she does.

We are part of Mother Earth, the essence of her love, the spark that ignites. Mother Earth loves us. Source: "How to Better Channel the Energies of Mother Nature and Make Them Work in Your Favor"

What is "mindfulness"?

What is that? - I don't know. I just let it be.

The Buddha talked about sati as a human capacity to be aware of the present in a dispassionate, nonreactive, untangled way. How do we become entangled? We follow automatic habits (going through life on "automatic pilot" rather than actually living). Our most pronounced habit is to... CONTINUED: Practice: What is "mindfulness"?

• Conscious Reminder, April 29, 2019; Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen Bradford, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"Reality" is a controlled hallucination

Reality is a controlled hallucination

Are we Karens, the world revolves around us?

(Illuminato) Modern neuroscience suggests that we do not actually perceive reality. That is, the reality we observe is not incoming data (bottom-up processing) towards us from the outside world. Rather, it is a projection (top-down processing) going from our minds out and duping us into believing we are passive observers seeing what's real. We see what we expect to see even when it's not there. Therefore, we are projectors unconsciously projecting our implicit biases, sitting as the audience of the theater of the mind, thinking we are looking at an objective show on the screen.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 What we see is not "real"
• 01:41 Predictive processing
• 05:13 Evolutionary argument
• 06:52 Psychological experiments
• 08:18 Psychedelics

The habit of predicting becomes automatic

Predictive processing states that our brain functions like a prediction machine, constantly predicting what it will observe next and only adjusting its model of the world when its predictions do not agree with the sensory input it receives.

This video tries to explain this concept as well as can be done in ten minutes.

I feel like I didn't really explain the last part about psychedelics all that well, so here is the study from which I pulled the information: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article... (Corlett et al. 2009, "From drugs to deprivation: a Bayesian framework for understanding models of psychosis").

The researchers do not directly reference psilocybin (the entheogenic compound in "magic mushrooms") however. Instead, they refer to serotonergic compounds.

Dharmic religions know: It's all an illusion

The Word of the Buddha

Maya means "illusion" in Sanskrit, not always in a negative sense of errant and misleading but also of dreamy and fantastic. We live in a fantasy, in an unreality, in a world (loka) we are projecting rather than taking in the way we think. We think we are being objective and rational, calm, cool, and collected (coherent in mind). But, in fact, we are implicitly biased, predictably irrational, uncalm, overheated, and dissolute, dispersed, and distracted. Meditation (first to calm then to develop insight) is an excellent remedy to "wake up." Enlightenment (bodhi) is waking up to reality. And what is "real"?

Oh, I misunderstood! Now I get it.

Nirvana is reality, seeing samsara for what it is and has always been reality, no longer grasping and clinging and crying about the unreal and illusory is reality. It is for the good, for freedom from all suffering, but we fear it. In our distorted view (our "perversion" or vipallasa) we take the fleeting to be permanent, the painful to hold the promise of pleasure and ultimate fulfillment, and the impersonal to be personal.

Not seeing the Three Universal Marks of Existence, we keep behaving (karmically engaging) as we do and suffering the endless consequences.

"Today, make smiling an exercise" (Thay)

When we act out of ignorance or hate/fear or craving, there's trouble ahead. We could put it behind us, but we would have to first stop, breathe, relax, and begin to mindfully see (i.e., see what really is rather than what we constantly project to be there by dispassionate and steady observation without abandoning the present moment).

Thinking goes in circles. Seeing is direct. If we just see, just watch, drop the reactions, things will begin to become clearer. Life is an illusion, but it doesn't have to be. There is "clear seeing" (vipassana) born of the Ennobling (Enlightening) Eightfold Path.

• Liberation through progressive states of meditative absorption (jhana) and stages of insight (vipassana)
• Illuminato, 8/18/24; Crystal Q., CC Liu, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Need to calm down? Try psycho-biotics

Just Calm from Just Thrive (justthrivehealth.com); Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen Bradford, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What is Just Calm? Just Calm is more than a supplement, it's a secret weapon in the battle against occasional anxiety and stress. It's a specially formulated blend, pairing B vitamins with the unique "psychobiotic" probiotic strain B. Longum 1714™.

This groundbreaking product is clinically proven in multiple human clinical trials to lower stress and support better mood, sleep, focus, and emotional health. Here are 5 reasons why people in the know choose Just Calm to take control:

1. Wave goodbye to occasional anxiety
2. Get deep, revitalizing sleep
3. Ditch the jitters and unlock calm energy
4. Lift the fog and find the focus
5. Improves mood... justthrivehealth.com

What about nutrition for meditation?

I set rolling the Wheel of the Dharma

In a famous story from the time of the Buddha, there were Buddhist wandering ascetics (monastics) living in one area who could not make progress in their meditation. So they went to visit the Buddha to ask him about this. He perceived that their problem was nutritional. He advised them to take the eight kinds of foods (based on the ancient Indian, presumably Ayurvedic, system of flavors) in their diet. The locals, hearing this they prepared for them a diet rich in variety -- hard and soft, salty and sweet, pungent, astringent, and so on. (See, e.g., The Six Flavors of Ancient India). By doing so, they got all the micronutrients (trace minerals, good fats, vitamins or macronutrients, and calories they needed, and their meditation practices miraculously improved. We are mind and body, mentality and materiality (nama-rupa), not just one or the other.

• Indian Food Habits in Ancient Times | Medium

I feel great and energetic.

And maybe a serenity meditation (samatha) practice would become possible. The first thing to do in any meditation is not "concentrate" or focus. It is to let go. We reduce our attention to the here-and-now (rather than the then-and-maybe).

There's that famous saying, "Most of the bad things in my life never happened." It means of all the things we worry and stress about, MOST of them never happen. So rather than living in worry and the future, let's live in the present moment where everything is all right.

We can look around and see that everything is fine. It's the future where the problems might be. It's the past where they were, but right here right now is fine. It's safe to meditate...if only we could meditate.

Who knew MOST of the neurons in the body might not be in the brain? They have been found all along the gut lining and the heart. No one talks to us about those. So the best way to get the "head" in order is to get the gut healthy, both short and long intestines, stomach, digestion, absorption. Stop ruining the lining with gluten, and start absorbing nutrients and supplements (from criticalhealthnews.com).

The way to absorption and enlightenment

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) with Sayalay, Wisdom Quarterly

Say what? Slow down. Sit down? Be humble?

What is it going to take for meditation (natural levels of absorption) to succeed?

Yes, "there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on," if Robert Plant (the lead in Led Zeppelin) is to be believed.

The stairway to heaven is twofold, calm and insight. Mindfulness (dispassionate, non-investigative, attention and radically-acceptance of the present) helps with both. 

I'm ready to start. - You could've started sooner.

But it is better to begin what the Buddha called the "gradual training." That establishes samadhi or coherence (blissful all together mind), on a foundation of virtue (sila).

When these states are cultivated, they become a strong foundation for a more important practice. That is the effort toward enlightenment and liberation, bodhi and nirvana.

That gets underway -- vipassana through systematic satipatthana, i.e., insight via establishing the Four Foundations of Mindfulness). The real secret will be the practice of Dependent Origination (paticca-samupada). But all of that can wait. The mind/heart must first be prepped and purified.

It's nearly effortless now. Allow it.

Stop. Sit still. Or freeze in any of the other three postures (standing, walking, or lying down) and give attention to something that always stays in the moment, in the ever-changing present, such as the ever-present breath. Relax with each exhalation. LET GO of everything. We've been waiting to exhale. This is it.

• The Buddha's admonition to give will make sense now as in giving there is a letting go, and it is that letting go, that non-clinging or internal-renunciation that makes all the difference. How could we let go of the bigger things (views, ego, pride, willfulness, opinions, etc.) if we are still clinging to the small and insignificant ones?

The mind will go into the object of attention, which may be a sign (nimitta) brought about by focusing on the breath to the exclusion of everything else.

The sacred instructions

Who are the noble ones, and how do we know?

Communicating with an enlightened (someone attained to at least the first stage of path fruition) nun, we secured these step-by-step instructions for reaching the first meditation.

We'll reserve those for Part II. This article is about the harder thing, getting started. If there's one word to associate with meditation, it's sticktoitiveness. Persistence pays off. Starting and stopping and not building up momentum is exhausting, leads to expectations, and gets going about as well as a fire from rubbing two sticks together. (Try it and vividly experience how much it's about starting and not breaking off until there's smoke and an ember to nurture, like the pleasant zest and enthusiasm one feels for the nimitta once it appears).

How does it feel? - Meditation or this silly cap?

Now let's get kooky and creative: the cap. What will put us on the path and hold us there until lift off? Lift off is deceptive because of beginner's luck or stories one inevitably hears about "naturals" effortlessly sitting, attaining, and progressing very quickly. People like that, just start. This is for people not like that.

The cap, the cap

that covers the skull

Can crack, be krak,

and never be dull

Helmet to contain

twinkling neurons

and dancing brain

Footballer's drum

Dome of gold

crystal arrayed

Scuffed and old

Binaural at play

Crown, tiara, dunce

magnets, Faraday cage

Employ it young

Come back with age

Where are thought,

Experience, feeling?

Surely the heart,

Not the ceiling...

That may not work. Well, it's OK. Be creative.

A copper wire or band with clear quartz crystal (or amethyst, rose, etc.) will serve for a start. Arrange it over the forehead so the stone rests over the third eye (pineal gland). Then just let it be.

To fall asleep, we have to pretend to already be asleep. Therefore, it follows that to absorb, be as if already absorbed.

Does it have to be a cap, helmet, or headband? Could it be a laurel wreath, woven out of plant-helpers like the vine of the dead, an MAO inhibitor, and the bark of a tree or a mushroom cap feted by datura flower petals, stems, and a creeper?

That might work as the volatile oils, scents, and vibrations begin to do their work by proximity and sympathy. Frequency, vibration, it all seems to be about resonance.

• Helmet in lead photo said to stimulate hair growth (irestorelaser.com)