mindfulness

Nature tries to hide the buildings and walls that the Frenchmen built. It can take the banyana tree a hundred year, but it will in the end strangle the mother tree (or mother wall). The young people want to look forward here, want to learn English, earn money,  buy an i.phone (everbody has one), maybe travel abroad, maybe by a car - but in crowded Saigon it's probably better with a scooter. Often whole families travel on just one scooter. The veterans and the people in party wants to hold the memory of the colonization. But it's not correct to ask if many of them comes to Con Dao, it's a tricky question. It's expensive to go here. Caon Dao is prepering for more turists now. A whole huge hotelbuilding is stopped halfmade a bit south of the city. Waiting for both Vietnamese and foreign visitors, but with walls still in grey concrete it looks like a building from the old Soviet. The very small fishermans village just beside is a contrast with it's tiny shops...

The most difficult thing  when you meditate is often to get to the cushion. At least if you haven't get a schedule for it. Here at Con Dao, I have neither a cushion nor a schedule. So it's difficult for me too. But a chair will do. The next thing to handle is the monkey mind; all the thoughts, regrets, failures, plans and desires that stops your concentration. But that's the exercise - to go back to the breath - again and again... You might label the thoughts as "planning, planning" and then go back to the breath. After a time you will get to know yourself a bit more, often specific thoughts tend to come  back. Sometimes even good ideas or things you had forgot will come to you. I then use to write them down and then go back to the breath. Sometimes I even count the breath to ten and then start again... It's often impossible to find a totally quite place, so if sounds disturb you it might be good to label them too. This day it's a bit more...

(First : updated video in yesterdays blog - my "monastery") Dharma-Burgers isn't a new phenomen, but the term must be pretty new. It's about commercialization of the Buddhist symbols or using them in the new age movement and so on: http://www.lionsroar.com/2015-the-year-in-dharma-burgers/ Quite funny but also a sign of the time. With some exeptions, religion doesn't seem to be as important as it used to be. My parentes where quite religions, my father listened to the mass on radio while he took the Sunday bath:-) But my grandfather was an active baptist. My grandmother was active in a church too. But my mother just listened and sung religios songs. And her children made the degeneration even worse.... Actually David Bowie met a Tibetan lama in the 60th and studied Tibetan buddhism for some years. The Lama, Chime Rinpoche, i still alive and in a video he's talking about skilful behavior for young people: "You don't have to become a Budd...

A black squirrel jumps from tree to tree just in front of the ocean. The little black dog comes to me again and I cuddle him. I look in his eyes and I see the wilderness in them, he's a strax dog alright. And suddenly i bites me. It's in a playful way but I anyway stop the cuddle  and go away. A bit later, a mouse in my room. Now I now who's been eating of my banana. My "monastery" (above) suddenly becomes a bit unfriendly. Yesterday I found ants in my bed. And sandflies has biten me, Then I remember what I wrote about nature yesterday. And I have to smile; If I would like to put a value to nature as such, I also have to value it when it Comes to me. The ants where not so many and the bites from the flies doesn't bother me. The mouse was quite cute and curious too. I asked for a mous trap in the resception, but they hadn't any . Now I'm glad for it... The insects and animals are just looking for food, as I do. They don't hurt m...

How can it be that all the dogs around the hotlels by the sea are so peaceful? They are quite many and most of them are without a necklace. They seldom bark and I have never seem they fighting with eachother. I don't think they have had any upbringing or training at all. But they get food from the restaurants from time to time. Maybe we have interpreted dogs in the wrong way. Maybe they know how to behave if we treat them well too. If we don't shout to them or harm them in other ways. If we look at the planet from an animal view, we would have a different picture. Of course they cannot have the whole picture, but it seems that neither can we. If I read a Swedish newspaper, I can read about climate change at one page and about the new cars or trips to Thailand at the next. Is as af we don't dare to understand the situation. Stephen Hawking speaks out though; http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35344664 The greates dangers for us is nuclear weapons...

I have found my "monastery". A cheap hotel by the sea. But I'm nearly alone here. Just some dogs, I cuddled a small one today. The place is simple like a western monastery. But the view is beautiful. Not as from the last hotel: Every hour you could here the city clock and at six PM the daily news were transmitted to the whole village. It was okay for a while, but here I can hear the sea and I can see the small lslands and the city pier. The small fishing boats coming to the pier to unship their catch. Young people gather to see what fishes they have. The fishes are still alive and are transported in a tub to the restaurant where they have to stay in narrow aquariums until someone eats them. Even small sharks who are starring at the restaurant from their prison. I eat vegetabilie dishes even if the boats are so small so I guess they cannot threaten whole stocks. Now I stay away from all of this on my  new "monastery".           ...

Where nowhere to go With no direction home. Been to the coralreefs today, snorkeling. Beautiful reefs and very intact. So many colours, both on the reefs and on the fishes. (Not my film though) Also lovely people on the boat, from Germany, Scotland, Austraila and of course Vn. Great to talk to for a while... But afterwards I felt lonely. I guess I wanted to be by myself for a while, but when I ate my dinner, at an English owned place, I had the feeling not to belong anywhere. Not in Europe and not in Vn. And they played the song in the heading above. It must have been the time with the nice people around you, and the contrast at the restaurant that made it like that. Then it's good with mindfulness (and with a blog).  The concept of  mindfulness includes to accept the fact that you will never be completely satisfied. You will always look for new things to satisfy your mind. You think that luck is around the corner. So you are looking for the next move and the...