The Guardian for this meeting was Zen Arado. The comments are by Zen Arado.

We started at Kira because the region was down for restart:

Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): that was strange
Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): i couldn´t tp to my default kira landmark
Zen (zen.arado): your usual place must have been down
Zen (zen.arado): there was just a little island here with Kira cafe on it
Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): usually it works when the wednesday bieupdowntime
Chrae: hi :)
Zen (zen.arado): Hi Chrae
Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): welcome
Chrae: thanks for the tp
Zen (zen.arado): we meet here when the Pavilion is down for maintenance

Zen (zen.arado): have you been to PAB before?
Chrae: Yes, although not lately
Zen (zen.arado): So you are happy that the conversation is recorded and put on a wiki?
Chrae: yes, that is fine
Zen (zen.arado): That's good :-)
Zen (zen.arado): it makes it sound like we are going to say something important :-)
Chrae: hahaha
Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): i usually never write much in the chat, so sessions can be quiet
Zen (zen.arado): it's funny I didn't get the message from friends of players being until Yaku had already sent you a teleport
Zen (zen.arado): you seem to be more restrained using text than voice Yaku
Zen (zen.arado): I don't see much difference
Zen (zen.arado): except that writing takes longer
Chrae: what is the topic today?
Zen (zen.arado): I'm not sure
Zen (zen.arado): is it still 'dropping'
Chrae: lol sounds good
Zen (zen.arado): I don't really know what it means is the problem
Zen (zen.arado): but everyone else seems to in PAB
Zen (zen.arado): :-)
Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): and i always thought you did zen :)
Zen (zen.arado): who drops what?
Zen (zen.arado): I just pretended Yaku :)
Yaku (yakuzza.lethecus): here we go 90sec silence soon
Zen (zen.arado): we better drops something then
Zen (zen.arado): I think the Pavilion is back if you want to go there?

Yakuzza Lethecus: well letting 90seconds pass and really just observing our perceptions and thoughts float is really not that easy
Zen Arado: I think I prefer to have a subject or topic
Zen Arado: not if you only have 90 seconds to do it in
Zen Arado: I find even 10 minutes meditation pretty useless
Zen Arado: at least 20 minutes
Zen Arado: it takes my mind a long time to settle down
Zen Arado: even half an hour my mind can still be buzzing the whole time
Yakuzza Lethecus: i could never sit still that long, at least at the moment
Zen Arado: why not?
Zen Arado: Are you sure that just isn't a story you tell yourself?
Yakuzza Lethecus: i constantly have the need for distraction
Chrae Resident listens carefully
Yakuzza Lethecus: it probably is
Zen Arado: Well challenge it
Zen Arado: investigate it
Chrae Resident: I find the longer I sit the easier it gets
Zen Arado: ask why you can't stay still
Zen Arado: yes exactly
Zen Arado: it's funny how we believe all these stories we tell ourselves
Chrae Resident nods
Zen Arado: although I agree it is hard to sit still when you begin meditation
Zen Arado: I remember finding it difficult to sit for 20 minutes
Chrae Resident: Yes, the first few minutes are always the most difficult for me as well
Zen Arado: but I finished up being able to sit for six days had Zen retreats
Zen Arado: at
Zen Arado: sorry I'm using voice typing
Chrae Resident: oh neat, haha
Zen Arado: I have been thinking lately that my main problem at Zen retreats was being able to keep awake
Chrae Resident: I haven't been able to go on retreat yet, but I'd definitely be interested in something like that.
Zen Arado: I did them for about seven years and only realising the problem with that now
Chrae Resident: the problem as in keeping awake?
Zen Arado: I read somewhere lately that when things start to come up that you don't want to face your brain can automatically send you to sleep to escape that
Chrae Resident: I believe that
Zen Arado: I used to put it down to having to get up so early and not sleeping very well at night in a strange bed
Zen Arado: so I remember being in this kind of dreamy state most of the time at retreats
Zen Arado: and at the end of them I wonder where the time went
Yakuzza Lethecus: is there somekind of invisible muscletraining while sitting long, sitting in the same postion for a very long time would be a problem for me
Yakuzza Lethecus: do you change the pose slowly
Zen Arado: you have to find some way to be comfortable so that you don't need to move
Zen Arado: people who sit on cushions as we are doing now often have problems with their knees and backs even in a half Lotus position
Zen Arado: sometimes it's better to use a little seiza bench or just sit in a chair
Zen Arado: in Zen they are very fussy about the sitting position
Zen Arado: it is part of the training to be able to ignore itches and desires to shuffle about
Zen Arado: you don't want to annoy people sitting beside you either
Zen Arado: it is interesting to notice if you are itchy and you want to scratch your nose or something
Zen Arado: you just analyse the itchiness
Chrae Resident: Yes, they say if your knees are above your hips than prop ourself up on something. Releases a lot of stress on your joints
Chrae Resident: Zen, I love practicing that
Zen Arado: yes there is no need to put yourself through torture either
Zen Arado: it's amazing how hard we find it just to sit still
Zen Arado: perhaps it's this age we live in too
Chrae Resident: Yeah especially if you're OCD fidgets over here...haha
Zen Arado: :)
Zen Arado: I think Moder and kids are so used to fiddling with their mobile phones and tablets etc
Zen Arado: it would be far harder for them
Chrae Resident: Oh yes, we want everything to happen "right now" these days, don't give ourselves time to look around and think let alone sit.
Zen Arado: like a video somebody posted on Facebook

Zen Arado: a man stopped his kids using cell phones all the time
Zen Arado: so they would face up to periods of unhappiness or loneliness et cetera instead of immediately distracting themselves away from it
Chrae Resident: thats a great idea, I wonder how he managed that
Zen Arado: I imagine he would have had a lot of difficulty :-)
Zen Arado: so maybe even getting kids like that to drop what they are doing for 90 seconds would be a challenge
Zen Arado: maybe that's what I didn't realise before
Zen Arado: after doing years of meditation
Zen Arado: and I am quite old so I come from a quieter generation
Chrae Resident nods
Zen Arado: sometimes I just feel like sitting doing nothing for an hour or two
Zen Arado: I don't call it meditation
Zen Arado: especially if I feel tired at the weekend's
Zen Arado: in a way we have two Regiment and organise meditation
Zen Arado: and meditation is really getting away from that results oriented thinking
Zen Arado: our lives are so scheduled and time driven
Zen Arado: I remember telling a friend I was going on a five-day Zen retreat
Zen Arado: she said "that's five days out of your life'
Zen Arado: but I thought, no, it's actually five days IN my life
Yakuzza Lethecus: I guess that reatreat also didn´t happen in a dark cave ?
Yakuzza Lethecus: But propably at a beautyful place.
Zen Arado: the ones I went to mostly took place at an old Servite Priory called Benburb
Zen Arado: it wasn't all that beautiful
Zen Arado: although the grounds were nice
Zen Arado: but the place is very old and a bit run down and seedy
Zen Arado: but better than some of the temples in Japan I suspect which are way up in the mountains and freezing cold in winter
Chrae Resident: brb a moment
Zen Arado: I think it was pretty tough being a junior monk in those places
Yakuzza Lethecus: Well the Malta reatreat was the first time i had RL experience with ppl who actually were really experienced with mediation. That was a really nice place.
Zen Arado: usually around PAB most of them don't want to meditate for more than five or 10 minutes I find
Zen Arado: which I thought strange the first time I went to PAB retreats
Yakuzza Lethecus: Well i don´t know i think eos,bertram,pema i am pretty sure
Yakuzza Lethecus: fefonz and paradise also seemed to have experience
Zen Arado: yes I know they have had experience and that's why I find it strange they never seem to want to meditate for more than 10 minutes
Zen Arado: some of them are into Tibetan Buddhism as well and when I went to a Tibetan temple in Scotland they often meditated for one hour periods
Zen Arado: so there are different customs in different forms of Buddhism
Zen Arado: it's probably best if you meditate on your own to just do what you feel like
Zen Arado: and try to extend the time
Zen Arado: and you find you can sit for longer and longer periods
Chrae Resident: I should head out, thanks Zen, Yaku, great chatting with you. Take good care
Yakuzza Lethecus: i wonder at which point masters actually flip in their mind to say "now i meditate right" or is it just right when they just sit ?
Yakuzza Lethecus: bye chrae
Zen Arado: ok byee Chrae
Zen Arado: I don't think there is any right way
Zen Arado: maybe that's one of the things you discover because you don't know what's going to happen beforehand
Zen Arado: it is a voyage of exploration
Yakuzza Lethecus: so the valuejudgment itself might be an issue in itself
Zen Arado: we want to have a programme laid out like in a education course
--BELL--
Zen Arado: when it is probably the reverse of that
Yakuzza Lethecus: ok, i will log out now too
Zen Arado: okay thanks for coming Yaku
Yakuzza Lethecus: bye for today
Zen Arado: bye for now