I link to that not just cos I found it and found it amusing. Not because anybody's ever said boo to me here. (Had a few nice people wonder why Sinus Arrhythmia's been so quiet this summer, but they're just bein friendly.)
Coming off an electronic-equipment free weekend, I guess. I'm back from the meditation weekend. (Perhaps I didn't mention I was going...I went, I sat, I have returned.)
Buddhist retreats and pagan retreats have many similarities: they both smell a bit like patchouli and nag champa. Buddhist retreats less strongly so, but definitly present. Always vegetarian meals at both. There's always somebody banging on some musical instrument...gongs or drums. Nobody wears shoes (a very civilized practice, I've always held.)
New favorite book about meditating:
In other ways, very different. One has structure, one does not. One has a sense of authority, and when the other does, participants rarely buy into said authority. One is heavy with foreign languages and ancient traditions and the other is peppered with obscure languages such as Elvish, Klingon, and the Channelled Ancient Script of the Great Being From Beyond Whatsisname...and 'ancient' traditions that some people know were borrowed from fragments and the rest was made up. One has a Teacher with Lineage, the other has teachers who figured out what worked and passed it on. (Or got it from a trance state in which they contacted the Great Being Whatsisname from Beyond and were given golden tablets which contained the last testament, oh wait, wrong religion, sorry.) You get the idea.
Things to ponder about the weekend.
I took my trusty zafu with me.
I bought a zabuton to go under it, and a smaller cushion because I tried out a few and the extra layer did help my back. These are completely unnecessary as a towel would have worked just fine to fix my posture. The zabuton is maroon and the other cushion is navy and with the mustard (ugly word, but nice color) the three together should look like Martha Stewart Got Zen.
See how the zafu/cushion/zabuton match my handmade quilt and the curtains I made? Not an accident.
I roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of this purchase, and rationalize it with the fact that I only own one purse, which was a gift, own a 7 year old car and do not have cable. Somehow, this all "karmically" adds up to the fact that I'm only just as spendy and superficial as most Americans, not excessively more so.
And the weekend itself needs to percolate.
I'm also percolating on Tuesday night, a random supposed to be ho-hum shift that was the most traumatic night of my nursing career in terms of patients. We bankrupted the blood bank. No, really. I started to write about it, but haven't posted it to Sinus yet. Will link it to here, since I don't think readers of Betelgeuse are readers of Sinus and vice versa.
Laundry to do, bills to pay, stuff to study for crit care class in the morning. Neglected cats to love.
6 comments:
Very interesting, your discussion of the difference between Buddhist and pagan retreats.
After attending a Samhain celebration recently I found myself thinking about the contradictions of paganism - that, on the one hand, it can be incredibly silly and at times can require all kinds of rationalisations just for it to make any kind of sense; but on the other hand, it's bloody good fun.
I've never attended a Buddhist retreat. Maybe I should. Sounds like they'd at least be organised.
I don't know, after listening to NPR reporting on consumerism tendencies this morning and hearing people brag that they own 100+ belts or shop DAILY it sounds like you're darn well destitute in the ranks of the Great Unwashed Consumer Public. Good for you!
76: That is the kicker with pagan festivals. Bloody good fun, and stunning some of the mental gyrations people will do to make it make sense.
I would suggest a Buddhist retreat with a big fat caution, though: Organized retreats mean salaried people and infrastructure, and that means more intrusive questions about whether or not you're interested in say, signing up for Retreat Part 2 or getting involved permanently with said organization. Somebody like you would likely be as uncomfortable with this as I was. It's not the participants or the loose "monastics", the hippy dippies who genuinely just live in the community and work in the kitchen. It's the few who have titles like 'Assistant Director' but lack gainful employment elsewhere that gave me some oogies.
There's also a bit of a focal cult of personality in Tibetan flavored, vajrayana Buddhism. A Zen retreat may be different. The Dalai Lama is great as is Chogyam Trungpa and Pema Chodron and all those guys. I do not want their picture in shrines. Catholics do that, and it's just as bothersome.
Irrelephant: Maybe we are all in a downward spiral of consumer doom. My small family is slowly coming around to the truth of the matter that NONE of us really WANTS *stuff* for holidays, we just all feel the need to give each other stuff. It's only taken us about 10 years to figure this out. All I want from them for my birthday is a phone call and for them to sing Happy Birthday to me twice. And that's all they want from me, too.
Crazy.
/jo
Happy Birthday!
Birthday? Many happy returns, dear!
Oh, I found the link finally--it's chillling.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/12/consumed3_mmr_2/
It runs the entire week, so follow it forward.
Happy Turkey Day, Jo!
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