A glimpse into my Browsing History as I look into this whole "Spiritual Quest" deal.
-Dalai Lama's Instructions for Life, in conveinent poster form
-Checking out a field trip! Directions, About and Hours of Operation of a Peace Pagoda in Grafton, NY (close to Albany)
-Directory to all things Buddhist, including How To Meditate.
-YouTube's take on Instructional Yoga Videos, complete with relaxing tribal music (non-pornographic version)
-More Yoga videos from iyogalife.com, which as far as I can tell is not pornographic, at least not in these studio-backdrop settings that I've been finding.
-I was raised Catholic-- how do Buddhist practices work with that? Historical interpretation here; then here's a real-life blog of a Buddhist-Catholic (complete with pic of Buddha and Jesus hugging!). I'm not trying to find a new religion, at any rate. Just some new insights. Maybe you can do both.
-Or, according to these people, maybe you can't.
-If I Feng Shui my apartment, will it help me achieve inner peace? About.com tells me so.
-This man wants me to "Tame The Raging Storm Within" me. And he's gonna tell me all about it using the 7 Deadly Sins. Although he seems a little off, timewise, when he says the economy is doing 'great'.
-I prefer the Non-religious approach: the psychological reasons I'm so unhappy and how to fix it.
-According to Newsweek, happiness is all a bix hoax anyway.
That's it for now. More to come later!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Self-Help Book Review #1: The Secret
So I was searching through some quote sites looking for a fast route to the teachings of Buddha. And interestingly, this is what I found:
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. Buddha
This is the exact same message as the bestselling book The Secret teaches.
The Secret is at the center of some controversy. Some people think it’s a hoax, and others treat it like the Bible. The book centers on the Law of Attraction, which is basically the belief that like attracts like: good thoughts will bring good to your life and bad will bring bad. The author, Rhonda Byrne, had gone though some rough times before she learned this “secret”, turned her life around and decided to share it with the world via book and DVD. She claims it’s the most powerful law in the universe and the book is full of testimonials by people who claim the Secret turned their lives around, too: not just no-name crazies, but millionaires like Jack Canfield—who came up with the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series.
Legit? Sure. Or maybe Jack Canfield is just a closet LSD freak. Who knows?
My sister gave me The Secret for my birthday this year. She told me nicely that she thought it would help me, no doubt because I’d been so upset with my own life for the preceding year that it was starting to become obvious to my family and friends that this was not a passing mood. I read it in a day and proceeded to go into obsessive-compulsive freak-out mode. I reeled back and forth between believing the book and thinking it was the biggest crock I’d ever come across. Based on the Law of Attraction, though, I suppose that would be why it didn’t appear to work for me.
Still: if it was true, it would hold that I was headed for car wrecks, disease, and more freak accidents than I could imagine. And that scared the crap out of me. So I chose not to believe in the Secret. But now that might all change, given this new venture, so I thought it was worth a second look.
The book is not bad overall. Oprah likes it, so how bad can it be? My only problems come from out “out there” it gets at points. Ever the pessimist, I find it hard to imagine that the secret to life has been sitting in front of humanity since the dawn of time and no one has thought to expose it to the world until now. A little unrealistic, to say the least.
But that aside, the core of the message is good. The idea that good things bring more good things and bad bring bad holds up, even if for slightly different reasons than the book puts forth. As Charles Swindoll said in his poem, aptly titled Attitude, your mental state does affect your experience:
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude.
I am convinced that life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.
And so it is with you; we are in charge of our attitudes.
So it stands to reason that the Secret has some roots in reality, at the very least. And it’s an interesting theory to test out—I’ve had a few happy results, even though I usually don’t have enough patience or faith to let it go to the “full extent of its power” (hopefully that will change with this "new attitude", as I pay more attention to such things as vibes and thought frequencies). But 4 million copies sold means it’s at least worth checking out, no matter how cynical you are.
FINAL VERDICT: A worthwhile read, if just to expand your mind and give other ways of thinking a try. I give it 4 stars, and thanks to my sister for opening me up to it.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. Buddha
This is the exact same message as the bestselling book The Secret teaches.
The Secret is at the center of some controversy. Some people think it’s a hoax, and others treat it like the Bible. The book centers on the Law of Attraction, which is basically the belief that like attracts like: good thoughts will bring good to your life and bad will bring bad. The author, Rhonda Byrne, had gone though some rough times before she learned this “secret”, turned her life around and decided to share it with the world via book and DVD. She claims it’s the most powerful law in the universe and the book is full of testimonials by people who claim the Secret turned their lives around, too: not just no-name crazies, but millionaires like Jack Canfield—who came up with the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series.
Legit? Sure. Or maybe Jack Canfield is just a closet LSD freak. Who knows?
My sister gave me The Secret for my birthday this year. She told me nicely that she thought it would help me, no doubt because I’d been so upset with my own life for the preceding year that it was starting to become obvious to my family and friends that this was not a passing mood. I read it in a day and proceeded to go into obsessive-compulsive freak-out mode. I reeled back and forth between believing the book and thinking it was the biggest crock I’d ever come across. Based on the Law of Attraction, though, I suppose that would be why it didn’t appear to work for me.
Still: if it was true, it would hold that I was headed for car wrecks, disease, and more freak accidents than I could imagine. And that scared the crap out of me. So I chose not to believe in the Secret. But now that might all change, given this new venture, so I thought it was worth a second look.
The book is not bad overall. Oprah likes it, so how bad can it be? My only problems come from out “out there” it gets at points. Ever the pessimist, I find it hard to imagine that the secret to life has been sitting in front of humanity since the dawn of time and no one has thought to expose it to the world until now. A little unrealistic, to say the least.
But that aside, the core of the message is good. The idea that good things bring more good things and bad bring bad holds up, even if for slightly different reasons than the book puts forth. As Charles Swindoll said in his poem, aptly titled Attitude, your mental state does affect your experience:
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude.
I am convinced that life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.
And so it is with you; we are in charge of our attitudes.
So it stands to reason that the Secret has some roots in reality, at the very least. And it’s an interesting theory to test out—I’ve had a few happy results, even though I usually don’t have enough patience or faith to let it go to the “full extent of its power” (hopefully that will change with this "new attitude", as I pay more attention to such things as vibes and thought frequencies). But 4 million copies sold means it’s at least worth checking out, no matter how cynical you are.
FINAL VERDICT: A worthwhile read, if just to expand your mind and give other ways of thinking a try. I give it 4 stars, and thanks to my sister for opening me up to it.
Monday, September 28, 2009
F*!@# THE LAUNDRY.
I fucking hate my washing machine. And I don't think there's anything Buddha can do to help me.
In saying this I must include that I hate my landlord, who installed the God-forsaken thing. It took him a good six months to get it done, as he promised it to us in February and it did not arrive until late July. As if that wasn't bad enough, I went into my basement the day after (at my own peril, as the pipes of my eighty-year old house were dripping non-pottable water the week before that my roommate's sixteen year old brother, a plumber, diagnosed as "fatal if you were to stay down here all night") to find that this monstrosity it took him half a year to install was, in fact, a total piece of shit.
When your landlord tells you he's going to be installing a washer and dryer in the basement, you might assume he means a "new" washer and dryer, correct? Why would I think otherwise? But what I arrived to was a disappointment at best, a crime at worst. The piece of shit was older than the house itself, if in fact washers were manufactured before 1920- I believe it might be the original model, and it sits in my basement in all its whining, twisting, rickety spendor and makes itself known. And I can't fucking stand it.
I am not spolied by any means, but when I do a load of laundry and come back three hours later to find water stagnated in the bottom and a strange buzzing sound echoing from the machine, I do draw a line. And I just came upstairs from a good twenty minutes spent basically washing my clothes by hand after the thing was finished.
The stupid piece of shit manages to wrap all my clothing around the swirling corkscrew-esque centerpiece, including hooking a tanktop by its straps to the underside of it, which to me seems like it should be impossible. I took the blame the first time, but by now it's become a regular occurance. And it's not okay. It's not okay when I have to spend fifteen minutes disentangling my underwear from the spokes of the washing machine's death trap. When I have to wring t-shirts and enough water pours out to stop the drought in Texas, I can feel my temperature starting to rise. So in the interest of inner peace, I tried this time.
As soon as I opened the machine I had to force my gaze down at Buddha and tried not to get so pissed off. Invariably he smiled out, not the peaceful smile of the skinny (underfed) Buddha, but the jolly and raucous grin of the Laughing Buddha, the only one with enough spirit and charm to have any hope of cracking my furious mood. It didn't work. I was livid. So livid, in fact, that I recorded a video of my anger, which probably won't come out because why would it? But here it is anyway:
And the thing is!! This isn't the first issue with our idiot landlord. He said he was putting in a new porch in August--is it done? Not at all!! Good thing I don't have a three year old, because it would be dead of lead poisoning by now from eating all that peeilng paint. The previous tenants broke all the windows, and they were just replaced last week. And my roommates and I moved in to find all manner of ridiculous shit missing from the house: toilet paper dispensers, even the little bars that hold the condiments in on the door of the refrigerator. I can fix that with a few bucks and bungee cord. I cannot fix this.
Buddha just kept smiling as I fumed over my soaking clothes and shoveled them into the dryer. I was still livid when I went back upstairs, but as I tried to focus on the positive, I started to feel slightly better. A little. Like maybe it's not such a huge deal that the laundry's a pain in the ass? But the feeling was short-lived, as I returned to shove yet another load into the death trap.
No matter how peaceful I become, I'm still not happy to have to deal with this . And my landlord's still a douchebag.
In saying this I must include that I hate my landlord, who installed the God-forsaken thing. It took him a good six months to get it done, as he promised it to us in February and it did not arrive until late July. As if that wasn't bad enough, I went into my basement the day after (at my own peril, as the pipes of my eighty-year old house were dripping non-pottable water the week before that my roommate's sixteen year old brother, a plumber, diagnosed as "fatal if you were to stay down here all night") to find that this monstrosity it took him half a year to install was, in fact, a total piece of shit.
When your landlord tells you he's going to be installing a washer and dryer in the basement, you might assume he means a "new" washer and dryer, correct? Why would I think otherwise? But what I arrived to was a disappointment at best, a crime at worst. The piece of shit was older than the house itself, if in fact washers were manufactured before 1920- I believe it might be the original model, and it sits in my basement in all its whining, twisting, rickety spendor and makes itself known. And I can't fucking stand it.
I am not spolied by any means, but when I do a load of laundry and come back three hours later to find water stagnated in the bottom and a strange buzzing sound echoing from the machine, I do draw a line. And I just came upstairs from a good twenty minutes spent basically washing my clothes by hand after the thing was finished.
The stupid piece of shit manages to wrap all my clothing around the swirling corkscrew-esque centerpiece, including hooking a tanktop by its straps to the underside of it, which to me seems like it should be impossible. I took the blame the first time, but by now it's become a regular occurance. And it's not okay. It's not okay when I have to spend fifteen minutes disentangling my underwear from the spokes of the washing machine's death trap. When I have to wring t-shirts and enough water pours out to stop the drought in Texas, I can feel my temperature starting to rise. So in the interest of inner peace, I tried this time.
As soon as I opened the machine I had to force my gaze down at Buddha and tried not to get so pissed off. Invariably he smiled out, not the peaceful smile of the skinny (underfed) Buddha, but the jolly and raucous grin of the Laughing Buddha, the only one with enough spirit and charm to have any hope of cracking my furious mood. It didn't work. I was livid. So livid, in fact, that I recorded a video of my anger, which probably won't come out because why would it? But here it is anyway:
And the thing is!! This isn't the first issue with our idiot landlord. He said he was putting in a new porch in August--is it done? Not at all!! Good thing I don't have a three year old, because it would be dead of lead poisoning by now from eating all that peeilng paint. The previous tenants broke all the windows, and they were just replaced last week. And my roommates and I moved in to find all manner of ridiculous shit missing from the house: toilet paper dispensers, even the little bars that hold the condiments in on the door of the refrigerator. I can fix that with a few bucks and bungee cord. I cannot fix this.
Buddha just kept smiling as I fumed over my soaking clothes and shoveled them into the dryer. I was still livid when I went back upstairs, but as I tried to focus on the positive, I started to feel slightly better. A little. Like maybe it's not such a huge deal that the laundry's a pain in the ass? But the feeling was short-lived, as I returned to shove yet another load into the death trap.
No matter how peaceful I become, I'm still not happy to have to deal with this . And my landlord's still a douchebag.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
About Me and Buddha and Me
According to the card that came attached to my brand new Buddha necklace:
"The Chinese Laughing Buddha is actually the Buddha of the future, Lord Maitreya. Traditionally, he is worshipped by people who are in need of money. He is also said to have infinite compassion, especially toward children. His name means The Merciful, and Maitreya also can mean gentleness or kindness. To many, he is symbolic of infinite joy."
By nature, I am not a patient, happy, optimistic person. I tolerate bullshit the way a person with a nut allergy tolerates a peanut butter sandwich, and it seems that my fuse only gets shorter with time. Invasive roomate situations, irrational boyfriends, heinous bosses, and high-maintainence friends and stupid customers drive me nuts. Stupidity and unnecessary helplessness are unforgivable to me.
I hate crowds, traffic, people who walk, drive or turn too slow, idiots that come close to killing people because they can't drive their cars correctly.
Foreigners piss me off, homeless people piss me off, people with unruly children piss me off.
The government pisses me off like no other.
I hate people who refuse to take responsibility for themselves, and I hate that I have to sacrifice because of it.
I hate part time jobs and classes, I hate the way the world works, I hate having no money.
I love my apartment, but I hate that my landlord lied about half the stuff that was supposed to be worked on. I hate having to be afraid because of where I live, because I am a woman, because there are people lurking the streets that are such pieces of shit that they have to attack someone else to get ahead.
I have hated everywhere I've ever lived and half the people I've ever been close with. So it's not pretty, so what. It is what it is. There's a lot for me to hate.
Taken one at a time, these issues are only minor irritations. But those stupid things that go wrong, day to day, are enough to slowly drive a person insane. Rest assured that most of the things on that list that I hate are a result of some sort of bad encounter in the past. I wasn't always this way. I used to be very forgiving, accepting, generous and patient and always willing to put myself in someone else's shoes, give them the benefit of the doubt or the shirt of my back. Years later, after being screwed over by a good percentage of my close friends and lovers, enduring a few jobs that forced me to shut up and smile while tolerating abuse from every level of society (more to come on that later) and moving from a suburb where I wasn't accepted to the crappy part of a city I hated, most of my good graces have been used up. As a result, I carry my anger around with me everywhere, and it makes me cranky, impatient, and intolerant. It's exhausting, but I couldn't imagine any way around it. Of course, things had been improving by baby steps after I quit my last job, but I couldn't imagine any real progress. After all, I had seen too much.
I know I need help. I'd rather not be so bitter about everyone and everything I come across. How wonderful it would be not to hate Albany, not to feel my frustration shoot through the roof over every snag in my life--whether those snags happen seventeen-per-hour or not. So, a few weeks ago, when I was shopping at a hippie store in the mall and stumbled across the necklace, I bought it. A pendant of the Laughing Buddha Himself, ready to make my problems disappear. Ten bucks for inner peace? I've been wearing it ever since, concentrating on it when I'm starting to get pissed, focusing on the happy face of the Laughing Buddha, who in fact looks so tickled it's hard, even for me, not to giggle back.
And I like that feeling, being able to giggle back. For the past few months, yoga mats and self-elp books have been collecting dust in my apartment, and my anger issues have not been resolved. But lately I've been thinking more and more about letting go of this anger, of trying to give people, life, happiness a chance again.
So this is my experiment. I will try to be happier, more patient, less stressed out and less agressive, with the help of the Laughing Buddha, a stack of books, and some meditation. Hopefully, all that combined will be enough to push me back from the ledge of eternal bitterness. It's not going to be pretty, as old habits die hard. But in theory, I'll be a changed person by the end of this, much more "zen", very peaceful and calm and patient and loving.
Yeah, and the Middle East conflicts will come to a screeching halt, the government will become trustworthy and honest, stupid people will grow a few brain cells and my neighbor's German Shepherd will stop trying to maul me to death every time I walk by their house. Right.
"The Chinese Laughing Buddha is actually the Buddha of the future, Lord Maitreya. Traditionally, he is worshipped by people who are in need of money. He is also said to have infinite compassion, especially toward children. His name means The Merciful, and Maitreya also can mean gentleness or kindness. To many, he is symbolic of infinite joy."
By nature, I am not a patient, happy, optimistic person. I tolerate bullshit the way a person with a nut allergy tolerates a peanut butter sandwich, and it seems that my fuse only gets shorter with time. Invasive roomate situations, irrational boyfriends, heinous bosses, and high-maintainence friends and stupid customers drive me nuts. Stupidity and unnecessary helplessness are unforgivable to me.
I hate crowds, traffic, people who walk, drive or turn too slow, idiots that come close to killing people because they can't drive their cars correctly.
Foreigners piss me off, homeless people piss me off, people with unruly children piss me off.
The government pisses me off like no other.
I hate people who refuse to take responsibility for themselves, and I hate that I have to sacrifice because of it.
I hate part time jobs and classes, I hate the way the world works, I hate having no money.
I love my apartment, but I hate that my landlord lied about half the stuff that was supposed to be worked on. I hate having to be afraid because of where I live, because I am a woman, because there are people lurking the streets that are such pieces of shit that they have to attack someone else to get ahead.
I have hated everywhere I've ever lived and half the people I've ever been close with. So it's not pretty, so what. It is what it is. There's a lot for me to hate.
Taken one at a time, these issues are only minor irritations. But those stupid things that go wrong, day to day, are enough to slowly drive a person insane. Rest assured that most of the things on that list that I hate are a result of some sort of bad encounter in the past. I wasn't always this way. I used to be very forgiving, accepting, generous and patient and always willing to put myself in someone else's shoes, give them the benefit of the doubt or the shirt of my back. Years later, after being screwed over by a good percentage of my close friends and lovers, enduring a few jobs that forced me to shut up and smile while tolerating abuse from every level of society (more to come on that later) and moving from a suburb where I wasn't accepted to the crappy part of a city I hated, most of my good graces have been used up. As a result, I carry my anger around with me everywhere, and it makes me cranky, impatient, and intolerant. It's exhausting, but I couldn't imagine any way around it. Of course, things had been improving by baby steps after I quit my last job, but I couldn't imagine any real progress. After all, I had seen too much.
I know I need help. I'd rather not be so bitter about everyone and everything I come across. How wonderful it would be not to hate Albany, not to feel my frustration shoot through the roof over every snag in my life--whether those snags happen seventeen-per-hour or not. So, a few weeks ago, when I was shopping at a hippie store in the mall and stumbled across the necklace, I bought it. A pendant of the Laughing Buddha Himself, ready to make my problems disappear. Ten bucks for inner peace? I've been wearing it ever since, concentrating on it when I'm starting to get pissed, focusing on the happy face of the Laughing Buddha, who in fact looks so tickled it's hard, even for me, not to giggle back.
And I like that feeling, being able to giggle back. For the past few months, yoga mats and self-elp books have been collecting dust in my apartment, and my anger issues have not been resolved. But lately I've been thinking more and more about letting go of this anger, of trying to give people, life, happiness a chance again.
So this is my experiment. I will try to be happier, more patient, less stressed out and less agressive, with the help of the Laughing Buddha, a stack of books, and some meditation. Hopefully, all that combined will be enough to push me back from the ledge of eternal bitterness. It's not going to be pretty, as old habits die hard. But in theory, I'll be a changed person by the end of this, much more "zen", very peaceful and calm and patient and loving.
Yeah, and the Middle East conflicts will come to a screeching halt, the government will become trustworthy and honest, stupid people will grow a few brain cells and my neighbor's German Shepherd will stop trying to maul me to death every time I walk by their house. Right.
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