First time group meditation

So I joined the gym of my local college campus. Pasted on the entrance one day I happened to catch a schedule for a previously unknown to me meditation hall annex to the sports center. I decided to check it out.

I've been meditating for myself over the previous year. Frankly I would have never started had not physical troubles pushed me to it. Meditation as alternative medicine was frequently mentioned in the books I consulted and decided to give it a try. If nothing else as a way to take over my own recovery. Well, I had been meditating with more or less success in a standing posture, but felt I could do even better with some guidance. My first impetus was posture itself. Though not prohibited by any means, standing straight is not mainstream. Maybe some regular time tested sitting might help.

The first couple visits to the meditation hall were unsuccessful as it was they were sessions already going on (yoga I think) and didn't want to distract the girls there. On the third go, I chanced on a general meditation workshop. Being a slow day, there was only the instructor and a student. As I entered the teacher was explaining the concept of koans to the student. The instructor invited me to join, but startled at the unexpected welcomeness, I decided to let them be and left. Undaunted, I tried yet once more, and finally caught the instructor by himself the following week.

He was sitting there by himself already on meditation with three more unoccupied cushions at his sides. He stopped and kindly asked me to come in. He turned up to be a soft spoken Westerner with 35 years of meditation experience.I explained that I was there to try the cushions out. He said that by all means and promptly proceeded to induct me. He asked me if I already meditated and which meditation school I practiced (makeshift zen). He gave me a crash course anyway: how, to sit,  where to feel the breathing (2 inches below the navel), keep the eyes open, focus on no point, think on nothing (he did say that) and to just return the awareness to it.

With that he told me we would go for 20 minutes. He laughed when I tried to negotiate it down to ten, my then maximum, set some meditation timer app and then we were at it. Before long two more persons came into the hall, one sitting on the line of cushions and the other behind us three.

Well, those twenty minutes were not so bad as I expected. Actually, far from feeling any pressure from the others I felt motivated by them. The practice felt more flowy, easier and at times, deeper. Nothing dramatic, but the momentum did build upon itself.The time for its part flew, but unlike my own practice I wondered from time to time how much we had left, not out of anxiety, but of curiosity. Despite trying to get into a proper posture (Burmese style) at the onset, I still felt my right knee was off the floor. A bit uncomfortable on the whole, but not painful.

So when the digital bowl rang from the phone, the instructor bowed forward, took a silent pause and took a look 'round. One of the latecomers I recognized as the koan guy from before; the other a female student. When I tried to stand up I found that my right leg had numbed over; the koan guy seeing that, good naturedly chuckled and said that it happens but over time it gets better. The girl, I saw, had pulled a meditation bench from somewhere and on the spot I decided to try that next.

The instructor proposed that we now switch to a five minute walking meditation. Same thing, just fist over the thumb on the right, left hand. We went single file behind him round the hall, although I had to stand there for the first few while sensation came back to my leg. On the whole I liked this change, although it was hard to focus on my breathing or on anything for that matter. Just the circuit again and again. Probably that's the point if there's a point at all. Maybe that's how the whirling dervishes, on another scale, get their kicks (Update: from the 3 Pillars of Zen I learn this is called kinhin and its for its own sake, to allow variety and to allow longer sitting periods) .

After another bowl ring, the instructor invited us to another 20 minute sit to close the allotted time. I politely begged off, having had my fill for the moment, but promised to come back next week.

And so I did on the weeks following. Same dynamics: sit around 20 to 25 minutes, walk five, sit another 20. Different persons came and went, but we averaged three or four consistently. The benefits I had noticed on my first try were still there with differing intensity. I tried the bench and found it even better and eventually bought one for myself on an auction site. The teacher gave a few pointers here and there ("your posture is good, but you must let yourself drop"). My own solitary practice has strengthened. If you ever have the chance to try to group meditate with a handful of people, I'd encourage you to to not let the opportunity pass.


(If you are a Catholic, some, perhaps all, meditation practices might be harmful to you spiritual life. Check out Women of Grace or read what Sue Brinkmann has to say by googling her)

More next time

Meditation AND Mindfulness for Dummies review

Starting this week a small series on meditation

In order to solve some issues  I have, I decided to take up meditation. I had already read and enjoyed Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, but felt I needed more step by step instruction. To sift through the mounds of books on the subject, I established that the book I'd read had to:

• Be Western oriented. I knew that the techniques had already been distilled for Western consumption. I did not want to learn any Eastern philosophy to practice, if I could help it. Thus, it also had to have:
• No oblique language. Hand me clear, precise concepts and instructions. No mumbo jumbo. Straight forward lingo for me. Thank you very much.
• Cover the basics and offer alternative approaches for me to try or adapt.
• Address mindfulness. Felt that I needed this, so it had to be in there too.

Looking around I almost settled for Mindfulness: an 8 week plan… by Williams et al. and the Mindfulness Solution by Siegel.  While considering these and others, Meditation for Dummies by Bodian made its way into the list. Whittling down the choices by comparing the contents, Bodian's finally beat all the other contenders despite being the most expensive of my choices. It delivered.

It is chockful of goodies and with it one is unlikely to need anything else for many many months. Starts with general aspects such as the different meditation traditions, the benefits of and research on meditation and so on. Meditation instruction doesn't start until chapter 6 but the author encourages the reader to jump around if she feels like it. Practical aspects, such as what to where and where to sit, are explored and troubleshooting section for more challenging problems. Chapter 14 is a godsend as it recaps the material and offers suggestions to build one's own practice.  In the Dummies tradition, it has a Further Steps section towards the end for even further exploration.

The book's meditation style leans towards Buddhism, but offers plenty of meditation alternatives from different traditions for one to try if one feels like it. Some Jewish and Christian meditation is in there as well.  An added bonus is that the author has a psychotherapy day job, sothats a bonus as I feel he writes with experience.

When I placed Meditation In the shopping cart, I was also recommended to also check out another Dummies book, Mindfulness for Dummies (2010 edition) by Alidina. Did so, and saw that it also covered my requirements and gave another look to about the same topics. Decided to  bite the bullet, get these two and draw from both. I was astounded  that it were Dummies books, two of them, who trounced the competition.

Mindfulness for also is is quite agnostic and doesn't try to get you adopt any spiritual beliefs. It even warns against joining cults and stuff (unless you want to). Both are good, but Bodian's has an edge over Alidina's. Now, there's nothing wrong with Alidina, only that it is more constrained in its scope. If Mindfulness is the only one you can get, that's fine as it's oriented to beginners as well and covers about the same material, but I kinda felt it as a second course. My original plan of reading them both concurrently didn't pan out as despite their similarity, in my experience they don't quite reinforce each other. Better stick with one at the time, and if possible, make that Meditation.

Both 4 stars

(Both print books include meditation Cds which I've skipped for now)

(Despite their apparent agnosticism, If you are a Catholic, some, perhaps all, meditation practices might be harmful to you spiritual life. Check out Women of Grace or read what Sue Brinkmann has to say by googling her)

More next time

Is Kyubey Mephistopheles?

Am I cute, or what?

I find that the character Kyubey from the anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica, not as interesting or important as others , nor do I find him (I assume he's male) the most important aspect about the series (by far!), but I thought that a point should be made about him.

What follows contains spoilers up to episode five, which is a respite from the events of previous episodes and because this is as far as I have watched. Spoiler avoidance is especially important in this series.

Comet B68 engine for endgame training

I want today to give a shoutout to the Comet B68 chess engine. Might not be the best or perhaps not even among the top 100, but its peculiarities makes it an estimable companion for endgame training.

Nowadays top engines, will generally put an obstinate fight on endgame positions (no tablebases)  coming up with strong moves consistently. That's fine on one level, but that's also unhumanlike. Humans will try a variety of plausible moves and, if inspired, try to bamboozle or swindle.  The Comet engine , unlike the stronger engines that share too much DNA, will try approaches that may not be objectively the best, but that will still pose problems to the opponent, even more if he is mechanically playing. That is a plus for endgame training as it keeps the player on his toes. The most dangerous opponents are frequently those that are devious or who don't know better.

So far I've not been able to find another engine with similar characteristics, if you know of one,  please let us know.

According to computerchess.org.uk Comet has an estimated rating of 2396 as of August 2014 and can be downloaded for free at http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/Comet.html

HTML5 and CSS3 All-in-One For Dummies book review

By just being a markup language HTML is arguably easier to learn than formal scripting and programming languages. However, I had not had much of a traction with it over the years, other than few basic notions, just enough to conjure up the most basic of web pages. On my latest attempt at it the panorama has cleared thanks to Andy Harris' hot off the press HTML5 and CSS3 All-in-One For Dummies.

The book is just what I had been looking for: current with the newest standards, step by step, and uncontrived. At this point in time HTML and CSS have been polished enough to remove some of their worst warts leaving more logical cleaner languages which makes this a great time to learn. Harris' approach, in the Dummies tradition, builds from scratch both keeping the curve a level as possible and focusing on what one is likely to need to build solid, attractive webpages and move on to more advanced material if one wishes, and does not attempt to be exhaustive. His writing, code and extra material makes it easy to follow along.

My previous best attempt last year was with Tittel's HTML, XHTML and CSS For Dummies (6th) which I felt spiked the learning curve somewhere around  the CSS section and left me not learning much if anything and discouraged. This time around I also dabbled with HTML5 and CSS3 for Dummies  by Karlins and CSS3 for Dummies by Mueller but kept coming to Harris's as my guide. And things have changed since last year: with my newfound knowledge for the first time I now understand some of the aspects of my own blog and have quite quickly started editing here and there with confidence.

The 8 in 1 aspect consists in 8 'minibooks' under one cover. The 8 minibooks are:

1. Creating the HTML foundation (98 pages)
2. Styling with CSS (116 pages)
3. Building layouts with CSS (90 pages)
4. Client-side programming with Javascript (174 pages)
5. Server side programming with PHP (126 pages)
6. Managing data with MySQL (106 pages)
7. Integrating the Client and Server with AJAX (150 pages)
8. Moving from pages to sites (86 pages)

The only thing that might be a minus is it's the size of the printed book  which is over a thousand pages long. I borrow an e-version from my local library and read it with the Adobe Digital Editions reader, so you might want to consider that as well. Note too that it not exhaustive: you won't find everything, but you'll also not get overwhelmed by the material. To me that's a plus.

I'm not sure If I'd recommend it to someone who isn't comfortable with computers to begin with; for someone who has a reasonable motivation it will fit hand in glove.

4 stars

How Do You Know?

Once I watched a video on which a dozen or so children from a religious group are taken to their local natural history museum. The teacher/pastor tells the children to be skeptical of the exhibits and explanations for he has discovered that more than an institution, the museum is a temple based on faith. So he asks the children to be on the look out for unjustified claims, and ask 'How do you know?'  each time any of these come up.

Sure enough when the museum guide is explaining one of the exhibits the children chirp 'How do you know?', 'How do you know?' to his dismay. (Wish I could find the video once more to confirm facts)

This sets an interesting quandary. I'm sure the guide knew his stuff, but, caught of guard and with short allotted time, he couldn't come up with a proper response on the spot. What would that response be? Certainly not rebuild all the theory from the ground up. Took me some years  but I finally came up with something that could work.

"What we currently know is based on a body of knowledge that has been accumulated through decades, even centuries, of investigation by thousands of persons. The method by which we have accumulated this knowledge is called scientific, and relies broadly speaking in someone putting forward a possible explanation, called hypothesis, for the observations we have in our hands, and then having himself and others test it as rigorously as possible. This is the key part: we are not wedded to our hypotheses, in the sense that we are ready to let them go if these fail testing, which we call experimentation, or if a better one comes along that explains more or explains as much in a more simple manner.

"What we see here in the museum exhibits and in the words the museum staff and I give you are the best explanations we've got at the moment for natural history. Sometimes, we can't experiment directly to try to disprove our hypotheses, as in the case of what we think as long dead species. For these, we rely on evidence uncovered by digs. Very much as in detective stories, we build our case and, if it holds water, we accept the hypothesis as probably true. Once again, we are glad to revise our understanding if something turns up that contradicts what we already have.

"The beauty is that for each field of science, the knowledge, is internally consistent, meaning that it fits together, as a toy structure, and meshes well along with each of the other. Sometimes our hypotheses are so built, that they allow us to advance predictions. When these come true, by further observation, they add to our confidence. That is how we know."

He could even push for a bit more if he feels the audience as receptive. He could round of with:

"Oh, and science is Bible sanctioned. Remember Gideon from the Book of Judges? He wouldn't take things at face value, and tested, experimented, to be real sure about how things were."

What Do I Believe by Kiera Lee

A few years ago the eMusic online store felt like a very good alternative to the iTunes store mainly because of the low price of the music tracks. Back then I got some very good promotions that kept me subscribed and I made good use of the credits. Probably the best discovery that I made during my eMusic experience was the Kiera Lee 2005 album What Do I Believe. I remember back then comparing the samples with Taylor Swift's first album just as she, Taylor, was about to take off and deciding that I liked Kiera's album much better. In this time I have not changed my opinion: just my liking.

Kiera Lee hails from Canada. As I reviewed in the eMusic site, the music in this album lies somewhere between pop and country. The music and lyrics are uplifting and really change your mood for the better. The first two tracks are the best while the rest do hold up.

I liked the music so much that I went to eBay and overpaid for a caseless physical CD (just checked and there's one offered at this very moment). The tracks on the CD are not the same as in the MP3 album. Some are even different recordings from the same songs, that, if anything, are even more touching, so one can say that there is no duplication in owning both formats. Maybe I got a sampler or something.

With the spread of competing online music stores, the music of this album can be easily found, so if you think you might like it, check it out.

http://www.kieralee.com/

4 stars !