UnbornTao

Ah, BS. Your body will slowly get used to longer periods of sitting. You just have to do it. You can also meditate while walking, cooking, etc. Awakening isn't really the aim of meditation; it's generally directed at calming and focusing the mind and shifting to a more relaxed state.

Haha, yep. Where the drugs at?

@r0ckyreed You're barking up the wrong tree here.

Sure.

Have you ever been angry without apparent external triggers? You can actually do this. What does this say about your role in that?

The presumed realness or validity is implicit in you having it (thinking it). This is not the same as a frivolous activity that's commonly thought of as thinking, like talking to oneself internally, or intellectualizing. At a very basic level you don't seriously "think" that what you "think" is false. "I'm already experiencing reality as it is."

Yes, you experience the urge. The urge comes from you. Say you got angry because I insulted you just now, but I had the wrong person - I meant to call the person behind you an idiot. Are you still angry? Just a simple exercise.

If you recognize and then set aside everything you think is true (believe), you might be left with a deep sense of uncertainty or openness, so go do that.

We could do this all day. If I'm understanding you correctly, you mean the experience of grass? "Grass" for you would be a different experience than for everyone else if you were blind, or didn't know of its existence at all. Even before language there would be some learned correlation or distinction between that thing and that other thing. I'd say this faculty of recognition is not a function of language, although it does add to the experience of objects. Sounds good. Some additions, just for fun: "Grass" isn't a fact of the universe. You had to learn it, recognize it, differentiate it. Imagine how humans lived prior to the development of the conceptual mind. It might not have been a given at all. It might have been invented. And then it became a given. I'm just using the mind as an example. It's likely that by "the thing by itself" we still mean our cognition of it, our experience of it. We may be trying to open the door to some kind of direct encounter with being, independent of perception. Tricky.

Not sure "irritation" is the most appropriate term here, but I take your point. What's underneath the desire to destroy? If I insulted you, where in your experience would you find anger? (As if.) In any case, you can see that these, by themselves, don't demand a response. I bet you've experienced this at least once: being angry, and then suddenly not. So what's up with that?

There is slop, and then there's whatever this thing is.

Countless explanations can be given, but what is your actual experience of the emotion?