Surf's up in Cali: king tides. (Secret to 🧘‍♂️)

COASTAL FLOODING - SECRET TO FLOW STATE MEDITATING

Settle down, Pretty Woman. Hold still. Relax. Ease into it and pay undistracted attention.

I'm not afraid of no high tides. Whatever!

(Watchers.news) Warnings remain in effect for the San Diego and Orange County coasts through October 29, 2026, as high tides and elevated water levels threaten roads and low-lying properties.

The National Weather Service (NWS) also has Coastal Flood Advisories for other shoreline areas, including Los Angeles-area beaches, San Francisco Bay, San Luis Obispo, Monterey Bay, and Humboldt Bay.

Coastal flood alerts remain in effect across the Los Angeles, Oxnard, San Diego, and San Francisco forecast areas through Thursday, October 29th.

Water looks pretty skanky and poopy today, Bro

The National Weather Service (NWS) has a Coastal Flood Warning for San Diego and Orange counties and Coastal Flood Advisories farther north, with high tides and elevated coastal water levels forecast to flood vulnerable low-lying locations and contribute to shoreline erosion, loss of precious sand, and road closures. More

• Urgent flood alert issued across California as monster king tides sweep in | New York Post

Is surfing the most Buddhist sport?

Man, I'm just ONE with waves

What is a "Buddhist sport"? To be sure such activities exist. One thinks of yoga postures and stretch-series, skateboarding, public speaking, performing, standing on a stage free-rapping trying not to shake or let anyone see you sweat, getting into THE ZONE. That zone is what modern psychology calls the flow state and what the rest of the world has long called "Zen."

Zen has a literal meaning -- jhana, dhyana, chan... But most Zen practitioners do not know much about it, being nowhere close to satori or kensho, just sitting in their shikantaza, imagining they're making progress to no goal.

Oh, I thought "Zen" was blissfully zonking out.

"Zen" used to mean "meditation" but in the sense of meditative absorption rather than contemplative practices in the fourfold setting up of mindfulness (sati).

Any sporting activity that allows one to be mindful -- that is, not discursively thinking like that oppressive inner voice slave-driving us most of the time, but rather inner silence, focus, attention excluding all distractions -- could be "Buddhafied," made more natural (less consciously effortful, less of a struggle, more of an allowing, more of an accepting of what is).

What is the secret? Please tell us the secret!!

How to become a great surfer. Step 1: Practice balancing on surfboard when it's still and easy.

Good thing I figured out how to stand up on this slippery board when it was easy and level.

How can you tolerate all that heat, sir?

What is the secret? The secret is obvious, so obvious most of us would rather have a "better" secret for instant enlightenment and no effort at all.

Those secrets follow and unfold from the first and most obvious secret: practice. In the mystical East, India and the Indosphere in particular, this sort of "practice" is called sādhanā by adepts.

It is regular rather than irregular, persistent rather than on-and-off, daily rather than just on the weekends, continuous rather than broken... Imagine getting into a very warm tub. How is that done, assuming there's a "best" or "right" way?

• How does the old joke go? Musician lost in Manhattan asks a taxi driver, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The driver smiles and snaps, "ANSWER"?

The best way to get in untested waters?

One jumps in, scalding the skin, splashing most of the tub water onto the floor, screaming, flailing, biting down on the tongue, squinting, scrunching, holding one's junk? No, obviously not. That's no way to do it. What are we, children?

Be as an actual child, behaving naturally, with sensitivity, responding to the immediate environment, testing, starting slowly and gently.

One slides in smoothly, hardly disturbing the surface, easing into it until it's tolerable and relaxing, letting go, unclutching, untightening, undoing -- allowing. The water washes over one, soothing and softening the muscles, with a smile on the mug. This is the way to the first kind of Buddhist meditation called serenity (samatha).

• It's easy at first then it's impossible. Why impossible? The Buddha pointed out Five Hindrances, obstacles that ruin everything. Introducing them, he teaches how to overcome.

Oh, I get it, just relax and allow the soothing

It's natural, so if we "allow" it rather than "trying" to do it, "struggling," "muscling," "over-efforting," "pushing," "shoving," or tormenting ourselves, poof there it is suddenly, like magic. Now, how to hold it? Hold it as a gentle child would hold a butterfly that doesn't fly away, most delicately, gingerly, tenderly, not staring at it or wanting anything from it, just radically accepting it and ALLOWING.

Ooh, I can do it right here, right NOW.

The second kind of Buddhist meditation (vipassana bhavana or "cultivating liberating-insight") takes a skilled teacher, which are not easy to find. The purpose here is to directly know-and-see things as they really are. What things? Just two, matter and mind, physics and psychology, the world and self, or as the great living Meditation Master Pa Auk Sayadaw puts it, ultimate materiality and ultimate mentality. How?

With a foundation in serenity (stillness, samma-samadhi, concentration, the eight absorptions), attention is turned from the breath (or nimitta) to setting up the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. But in the meantime, just to get to the flow state, the surfing, the rapping, the accepting, allowing, the peace to be experienced here and now, exhale, let go, smile.