cghigliotty

[cghigliotty]

@markiplier thank u <3 (I should be studying for midterms rn)

[cghigliotty]

Aichi, Japan via 岩屋堂公園の紅葉 Autumn Leaves

[cghigliotty]

Mindfulness Embraces Suffering

‘The aim of mindfulness is to know suffering fully. It entails paying calm, unflinching attention to whatever impacts the organism, be it the song of a lark or the scream of a child, the bubbling of a playful idea or a twinge in the lower back. You attend not just to the outward stimuli themselves, but equally to your inward reactions to them. You do not condemn what you see as your failings or applaud what you regard as success. You notice things come, you notice them go. Over time, the practice becomes less a self-conscious exercise in meditation done at fixed periods each day and more a sensibility that infuses one’s awareness at all times.

Mindfulness can have a sobering effect on the restless, jittery psyche. The stiller and more focused it becomes, the more I am able to peer into the sources of my febrile reactivity, to catch the first stirring of hatred before it overwhelms me with loathing and spite, to observe with ironic detachment the conceited babbling of the ego, to notice at its inception the self-determining story that could tip me into depression.

And I am not the only one that suffers. You suffer too. Every sentient creature suffers. When my self is no longer the all-consuming preoccupation it once was, when I see it as one narrative thread among myriad others, when I understand it to be as contingent and transient as anything else, then the barrier that separates “me” from “not me” begins to crumble. The conviction of being a closed cell of self is not only delusive but anesthetic. It numbs me to the suffering of the world. To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.’

- Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.

[cghigliotty]

Day 145 Gymless: Rest day and a little yoga session that Thief wanted to be a part of. 🤗

[cghigliotty]

[cghigliotty]

Hi~

Coming quick at you, all the help that had been sent to my Island, is apparently on hold. Also the U.S. won’t open the borders so other countries can send aid and Trump is tweeting about it’s our fault. Puerto Rico has been an U.S. territory since 1898 and to this day we have no control of what comes through our borders because of The Jones Act.

You wanna help Puerto Rico? Call your Representative and your Senators and tell them to waive/repeal/ban The Jones Act.

We need to reconstruct and rise up again, not to be dragged while we’re down. We don’t need to be reminded of the country’s debt when there are towns that can’t be reached almost 7 days after Hurricane Maria, when power is still out and there’s no running water and communications are down. We don’t fucking need some inept talking about our debt, instead of opening the borders so doctors and engineers come and help, so other countries nearby can come and bring provisions too. So roads can be open and people can be helped.

Again, you wanna help? Call your Representative and your Senators and tell them to waive/ban/repeal The Jones Act.