When I was a kid and heard about people worshiping a stone statue or a mountain or a river, I felt pity for such misguided ideas. Then, I paid attention to the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3), which in my King James version reads,"Thou shalt have no other gods before me". I wondered what other gods there might be and what if they did not come before?
Fast forward to 1974-1980, the period well past childhood, when I got interested in meditation. My first exposure was to transcendental meditation. Then, I read "The Inner Game of Tennis" and saw a connection between action, calmness and thinking. "Superlearning" intrigued me with both the idea that every movement of my body requires some muscle to relax and stretch as well as others to contract.
I knew that Eastern religious practice focused on meditation but I looked at American sources that told about the actual physical practice and played down religion, worship, and petitionary prayer (asking supernatural powers to intervene in the world for me.) As the years have gone by, I have followed more and more paths into Buddhism, but never with any religious interest, just psychological and physical.
"Buddhism or Bust" by Perry Garfinkel reports on current practice in countries where Buddhism is a major religion and it is clear to me that reading what the Buddha is supposed to have said and asking him to protect me in battle are quite different. Still, Garfinkel's book makes clear that those entering battle anywhere on Earth tend to hope to prevail with serious loss or damage and in some lands and some temples and some villages, the words for Buddha are invoked.
Jack Kornfield's "Bringing Home the Dharma" explains what it was like to try and export some of the Buddhist ideas and insights into a very different culture with very different ideas and history. Kornfield is not the only person to try to grow seeds from Buddhism or graft some of the tree of Buddhism into American plants. Jon Kabat-Zinn seems to have seen likewise what might be of use to Western people, especially those near death and no longer able to profit from medicine. Daniel Siegel, MD, as well as Goldie Hawn and Susan Greenland Kaiser, and many other teachers and practitioners, have also benefitted from meditational practice without including religious activities or convictions. Yoga, in several different forms, is also a popular path to quiet and still meditation, often enhanced, by stretching beforehand.
It seems that any idea or practice can get to be too ordinary, too much the same old thing, to matter, to really pay attention to. Still, sitting still and focusing on a point or one's breath or any religiously significant word or image, repeatedly returning attention to the appointed focus, seems to be a fine way, in ten minutes a day, to improve one's awareness of both where one's attention has been focused and of one's internal feelings and impulses.
Such a practice has certainly not been limited to Eastern religions but it seems that just as attention training, it is inexpensive in all senses, quick and one of the most helpful of all tools a person can use to live in contented harmony with one's body, one's lot in life and other people.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
