mindfulness

As I see it, all of us, including other animals, plants etc are children of the universe. That means we are different manifestations of the universe. Lets play with the idea that the universe is a living entity. Maybe some kind of very big organism. Maybe in the middle age. What does that mean? What consequences does it give? Maybe that we are small parts of that organism. And maybe  important ones... Anyway we are curious as most animals are. So curious that we know a lot about about our own solar system and some about the whole cosmos. We have a lot of information that we probably will have nor practical use of. Why? Maybe because we are the eyes of the universe. The universe sees and learns through us. So the universe wants to discover itself As we want to discover ourselves through mindfulness. An we will discover that we cannot control things like the beard growing on us men. And we cannot control even our thoughts. And it seems the universe can

I have some Vietnamese notes with me from Vietnam. On each of them the face of Ho Chi Minh looks at me. Who was Ho? It's not easy to say. He changed identity, name and look at lot of times. But he had just one goal. He was born Nguyen Sinh Cung, but he was also known as Nguyen Tat Thanh and Nguyen Ai Cuoc. When he worked as a kitchen helper on a steamer going to France he used the alias Van Ba. When he left France for Moscow he used a passport with he name Chen Vang, a Chinese name. It was not until 1940, when he was fifty years old, he started to use the name Ho Chi Minh, which means "he who has been enlightened". I guess it was then he started to grow the long beard. After he had the chance to be he official leader of Vietnam, he let many Vietnamese enemies be killed., even former friends as Trotsky patriots. When his Communist party, with Ho as the president, started to be in charge on North Vietnam, about one million people fled to the south

There are dangers with everything. At least if you do it to the extreme. Even to drink too much water is dangerous. As a mindfulness practitioner, I think it's foolish to exclude Buddhist philosophy from the practice. For me its not just enough to just meditate and let things like ethics aside. You can practice mindfulness to be a good sniper. So the intention with mindfulness is very important. As, right view and so on. But what about the first of the noble truth about Dukkha? That means, all conditional phenomena and experiences are unsatisfying. Interpreters use to say that this is not a pessimistic view, as Buddha suggests a path to liberation from rebirth, and therefore suffering. But what about if we don't believe in rebirth? Well, I guess we can have the secular view, that mindfulness helps even in this life, though it's no miracle cure. Anyway It helps you to not drown in all the suffering in life, it helps you to not be stuck in your own thought

Jiddhu Krishnamurti wanted to take away all dogmas, so that you for yourself could judge freely. He was for sure influenced by Buddhism but disliked the notion of for instance rebirth. (as I do). Here he speaks about that with a Buddhist and other people. He seldom wanted to give own ideas, but here he uses the metaphor for our human condition; we are all swimming in a river of desires, anxiety, anger and so on, paused with small moments of pleasure and happiness. As we all share this, we are more of that common river, than individuals. We are children of that river and it will still flow when we "die". The river will just manifest itself in new bodies with new names. Pessimistic? Maybe, since he gives no method to free ourselves from the river. All he says is that we should empty our minds. But I think mindfulness can be a method. We wan't be free of the river, but we can can get some distance from it and maybe for some time step out of it...

Syria is burning, Aleppo is bombed. So many people killed. So many suffering. But the war will come to an end. We actually live in a quite peaceful time. When we read the news we might not think so, but the big picture is quite bright. Stephen Pinker explains this; To be mindful is to look at the big picture. As Nobel price winner, Daniel Kahneman, puts it; think slow. Our gut- feelings are often misleading - they lead to fast thinking, fast actions. In mindfulness you will learn to not always follow your thoughts. You can let them pass as clouds on the sky. It's even more important when we are angry or depressed. Just focus on the breast for a while, just in some minutes the thoughts and feelings can change. We are influenced by our ancestors by the DNA. Scientist has found out that people that have some more DNA from the Neanderthals in their bodies, often are more depressed. All of us, except Africans, contains some percent of Neanderthal- DNA. So if w

From my seat in the metro I look out on a grey and rainy landscape. Dark concrete and no leaves on the trees, no colors on the grass. People in black clothes staring towards their phones or right out to nowhere. Buddha meant that we are suffering or at least are unsatisfied. Everything is changing. The things that we own will sooner or later fall apart. The ones we love will one day leave us. He found that we have to die, that we are going to be sick and we have to see others who suffers. We worry about everything. We are lead by desires that we cannot choose... But the suggested a way out of the suffering; the eightfold path including mindfulness. Another path is right view; we have no separate I. If we just focus on our selves we will be unhappy. It can be explained in another way;  we are more of interacting processes than individuals - we are small parts of a long long chain... Our ancestors have been here before us and our children and the ones we have influenced

Back in Sweden. It's not easy to describe a country, I cannot describe Vietnam. But I know that the state there wants to keep control of what is written on Facebook and on blogs. The pictures and the films I took was impossible to show on the blog until some days after they were shot. Or they suddenly popped up in the blog and were huge. It was even troublesome to reach the blog from time to time. So I guess they wanted to check what I wanted to show. People in Vietnam have been jailed for writing the wrong things on their blogs. I would't be that but it could be troublesome for me to get back if I wrote a book about my experiences. People told me that policemen in Saigon demanded money to "protect" for instance your shop. Probably the police salary it low so they do what they can to get some extra money. One man. working at a SOS-village, told me that his salary was lower than the average salary in Vietnam. And the average salary is very, very sm