How Buddhism and Meditation can help us in the coronavirus pandemic

[raushan]

How Buddhism and Meditation can help us in the coronavirus pandemic? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[stillpointdancer]

I got this link from another forum, which may be useful:
http://buddhismguide.org/dealing-with-isolation/

[raushan]

Thanks stillpointdancer. That's a good article.

[Happy Sumo]

Meditation can help with every aspect of life. During the current predicament I am actually happy to have more time for meditation and practicing mindfulness. Now is the time to explore and work on your awareness, rather than being scared.

[mobius]

yeah since the quarantine began I had one week off of work (unfortunately no more) and during that week I thought; what a perfect opportunity to put in a lot more than usual meditation. 

[Matthew]

Impermanence, suffering, non self.

Compassion.

Non attachment.

Insight, tranquility, concentration.

Lots of time to practice. Self isolation can be made into a mini retreat, or a long retreat, depending on what you are used to.

Applying all the things we have learned walking the path and sitting on our arses.

Build a healthy routine, be mindful of your own needs, habitual ways of stressing yourself out etc, slow down in everything you do. "Bring mindfulness to the fore" - apply it to everything you do, think, are aware of.

"This too shall pass".

[stillpointdancer]

It's a useful time to understand why Buddhists used to meditate where bodies were laid out to decompose or by funeral pyres. It is be a useful meditation tool to think about how fleeting life is, and so bring more energy to your practice. Although there are plenty of films about the end of the world, deadly viruses, supervolcanoes, meteorites, and so on, these are Hollywood distractions rather than realistic portrayals. 'When the Wind Blows' is one exception and is a dark cartoon of life in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Life really is fragile and much too short, but until something happens to place us in real danger we really tend to dismiss the possibility of death as something which happens to other people and not us. As such, the current pandemic can be a useful opportunity to bring real emotion to our practice, to face up to mortality mindfully and with the kind of insight which can only come through living the experience.

Of course it depends on the current state of our mental health and is not to be taken on board lightly. Perhaps some of us need to be more upbeat and maybe think back on this when it is no longer hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles. For those interested, though, the Satipatthana Sutta is useful and is something I have used. There are many links to it on the internet, but this one is useful for the cemetery contemplations I was talking about, https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html.

[dharma bum]

Perhaps some of us need to be more upbeat and maybe think back on this when it is no longer hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles.

There is the story of the monk who is hanging over a sheer cliff by holding desperately with one hand to a creeper with a tiger at the top waiting to pounce on him if he managed to pull himself up. And then he sees a bush with berries. One hand engaged in hanging for dear life, he picks some berries with his other and pops them into his mouth. "Wow, these are delicious!"