Nelson Mandela spent 27 years and 4 months in jail.
A journalist asked him: “How did you survive breaking rocks and doing nothing?”
He replies: “ It depends what doing nothing means. Doing nothing is doing something”
By the way, Nelson Mandela was an avid reader of with Zen literature.
When someone is asking you “How are you?” Most of our replies ends up with the word: “Busy.”
We know what the brain is but we have no idea what the mind is. Maybe the mind is our consciousness or part of it or has nothing to do with it. For the purpose of discussion we will use the computer as metaphor where the brain is the hardware and the mind the software. I will use the word brain in this talk.
Definition: The word plastic means to mold, sculpt, or modify. Neuroplasticity refers to the potential that the brain has to change and reorganize its structure by creating new neural pathways to adapt, as it needs to. Physical and mental stimuli induce neuroplasticity. Neuro-morphological changes are the brain’s way of tuning itself to meet your new needs either physical, or mental (cognitive and emotional)
Click on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity for an extensive and good review.
Book: The brain that changes itself by Norman Doidge.
Yes! Absolutely! But don’t judge! You may quit. Zen says that meditation can be boring…very boring! This is a tool used by the mind to challenge you and force you to quit. Your mind hates meditation and it will let you know. It is like a wild horse under a lasso; it will jump and kick around. If you are not bored it means that your mind is wandering and you are not meditating 100%. Being boring is a big problem since everyone starting meditation is excited about it because everything new is perceived being exciting by default. After few weeks most of the new comers are gone because they are attached to their judgments regarding meditation.
