Monday, July 22, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Watch as Obstacles Dissolve

Something remarkable happens when we go on sitting through all the but’s, through all the thoughts, sensations, and emotions that we would so like to oust. Gradually they begin to feel less alien, less like obstacles in the way, rocks in the path. Our deepening awareness becomes a kind of dew, falling on everything equally, allowing everything to sparkle.

—Noelle Oxenhandler, “Ah, But the Breezes…

Via Daily Dharma: Nothing but the Present Moment

Don’t worry about the future; don’t worry about the past. Stay right here. Ultimately you get so that you can’t say that you’re going forward, you can’t say that you’re going back, you can’t say that you’re staying in place. There’s nothing to be attached to.

—Ajahn Chah, “The Last Gift

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Karma’s Equanimity

The principle of karmic retribution—cause and effect—works with perfect clarity right before our eyes. Even the smallest, most minor evils are consumed in this fire, burning like dim stars in the night.

—Hakuin, “Black Fire

Friday, July 19, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Use Imagination as a Spiritual Tool

If we really want to go beyond the surface of things to the deeply hidden, actual experience of being alive (as spiritual practice encourages us to do), we need imagination as an ally. The senses, reason, even our moral and emotional faculties are not enough.

—Norman Fischer, “Saved from Freezing

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Making the Most of Samsara

We inhabit a land of deep samskaras, karmic imprints that demand even deeper purification to dissipate. It is also a land where some of us are lucky to possess conditions for practice: sufficient food, good people, serious teachers and students, and, above all, a reason.

—Lisa Kremer, “Sitting in Wartime

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 17, 2019 💌


You go from using the spiritual journey in the service of your psychodynamics to using your psychodynamics in the service of your spiritual journey. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: A Guide to Generosity

Two important things about true giving: First, it requires some sacrifice on the part of the giver. To give away something that one doesn’t need is not dana. Second, the act must not be condescending but must show respect to the one who receives the gift. In fact, one is grateful to the recipient who makes the act of giving possible.

—Taitetsu Unno, “Three Grapefruits

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Moon Landing Launch Day 2019




I am pretty sure I know now when my fall from grace began… It involved the NASA Space Program and a summer church camp. 

Let me explain.

From the very beginning, the space launches were very much part of my psyche - and still are. 
In those days the world stopped every time an astronaut was sent into space. Like most kids my age, I begged my parents to buy me the plastic  models of each rocket and spent countless hours in my bedroom gluing pieces together and patently applying paint and decals to each model... Mercury, Gemini and then a huge almost 1m high Saturn V, with a tiny little LM that you could detach and connect to the Apollo spaceship. Later I made Enterprises and Jupiter spaceships to mess around with in my own little universe. When I left the USA, I still had that Saturn V in a box, it went to the estate sale, I hope someone is taking great care of it.
It was an age of promise with a few air raid drills (mostly 2nd and 3rd grade) in between. Moonshots, atomic menace, giant  monsters on the 4 o´clock KTVU after school movie. Our games on long summer evenings with kids on the block were hide n seek plus duck n cover. 
In 6th grade my family uprooted us from San José and moved to my father´s boyhood town of Grants Pass, Oregon. It was my first experience with travel, adventure and new friends, new beginnings. We were closer to Grandmother, Aunts and Uncles on the ranch in Northern California, and soon my parents would send my sister and I on the Greyhound for long weekends…
Neighbors got new tv´s, big things in fancy consoles – with hi fidelity record players with the TV in front. Once, a neighbor invited everyone over to see the Wizard of Oz in color. My students and my own kids think I am crazy, but it WAS a big deal.
So it was that Mrs. Olsen, who lived next door and brought us her homemade Swedish pastries every Saturday morning, invited us to watch the launch of Apollo 11 with her and on her TV. Though it was 50 years ago today, I remember sitting on the rug and counting down with almost everyone in the world as the rocket motors engaged and the thing took off.  Everyone was proud and listened to every last communication, I had followed every step of the program since it began, I was a nerd, and this was religious. Soon we were going to have moon and Mars bases. 2001 had come out, and I was going to work in space for sure!
By accident, I was headed to a Church Camp, the next day or so.
I was so anxious to see them land, and a couple of us snuck up to the camp counselor´s house to look in the window. Yet the owners of the camp shooed us away from their window while watching the landing themselves.
And, that was the beginning of the end of my Christianity. 
To this very day, I can´t for the life of me understand why the  reverend couldn´t have moved his tv to the window of his house and allowed all off us to watch something so massively mind-bendingly world changing. The reverend could have used that as topic for his evening campfire sermons and had me forever in his congregation. Nope. 
That week away, though was also the first time I developed a crush on a guy, a kid from Medford, dark Italian features… don´t remember his name. He looked great in his swimsuit, and me a gangly skinny kid he invited me with two girls he knew to make out in one of the abandoned cabins. He and his girl on one bed, me the other on another bed. Nothing more than kissing, I wouldn´t have known n what to do anyway at that stage. I remember that the young lady  and I got shushed by the other couple, as were giggling hysterically with fear that our braces would get caught. Nothing really happened, but it was my first make out session, and also my wondering began as to what was so great about it. I mean I liked girls as people, still do, the other stuff not so much. In those days no one knew anything about LGBTQ anything.
So it was that 50 years ago my first questioning of organized religion and sexuality happened (it wasn´t until 25 or so years later,  a series of uncomfortable relationships with good women, trying to like  heterosex while not knowing what was gay sex, marriage that ended in a train wreck with an extraordinary son) that I discovered what was bugging me. 
So, both spiritually and sexually - a giant 30 story Saturn V rocket and its phallic representation and all - this is how and why I have such deep appreciation for NASA and for everything that is good in my life.
Freud explica tudo...

P.S. just as I was shutting down my computer I heard whisps of the Blue Danube playing somewhere...

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Via Daily Dharma: Consuming With Wisdom

Mindful consumption requires us to pay attention to the whole multitude of causes and effects that result from our lives as consumers. It asks us to learn about the issues, inform ourselves, and adjust our behavior accordingly.

—Interview with Allan Hunt Badiner by Peter Alsop, “Spending Wisely

Monday, July 15, 2019

Via zenwords / Consciousness

Consciousness exists on two levels: as seeds and as manifestations of these seeds.  Suppose we have a seed of anger in us.  When conditions are favorable, that seed may manifest as a zone of energy called anger.  It is burning, and it makes us suffer a lot.  It is very difficult for us to be joyful at the moment the seed of anger manifests.  Every time a seed has an occasion to manifest itself, it produces new seeds of the same kind.  If we are angry for five minutes, new seeds of anger are produced and deposited in the soil of our unconscious mind during those five minutes.  That is why we have to be careful in selecting the kind of life we lead and the emotions we express.  When I smile, the seeds of smiling and joy have come up.  As long as they manifest, new seeds of smiling and joy are planted.  But if I don’t practice smiling for a number of years, that seed will weaken, and I may not be able to smile anymore.
 
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step —
Source:

Via Tricycle: Buddhism by the Numbers: The Economics of Mindfulness

The happiest and unhappiest apps, apps’ annual revenues, the ranking of meditation apps, and more data on the economics of mindfulness



Via Daily Dharma: Practicing Nothing

You lack nothing, therefore you practice. Therefore you must realize and manifest this no-lack, this realized life, this awakened life that you are.

—Elihu Genmyo Smith, “No Need to Do Zazen, Therefore Must Do Zazen

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 14, 2019 💌


The interesting question is, "How do you put yourself in a position so that you can allow ‘what is’ to be?" The enemy turns out to be the creation of mind. Because when you are just in the moment, doing what you are doing, there is no fear. The fear is when you stand back to think about it. The fear is not in the actions. The fear is in the thought about the actions. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Pain and Pleasure, Here and Now

Buddhism is a practice of penetrating and accepting the here and now—not only the bliss of meditation, but the irritations of mundane human interaction and the pain in the morning paper. Just as the lotus needs muddy water to live, the pain of the world can inspire compassionate and effective action.

—Katy Butler, “The Lotus and the Ballot Box

Saturday, July 13, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: Stay Open to the Unexpected

Emptiness refers to the absence of something that, for some reason, one expects to find—as when we say a glass, normally used to hold liquids, is empty even though it is full of air. The point is not that there is nothing there at all, but rather that what is there differs from your expectations.

—William S. Cobb, “The Game of Go

Friday, July 12, 2019

Via Daily Dharma: A Simple Unity

Without the feeling of separation from the rest of the world, we lose the need to strain and stress to be better, more clever, or more accomplished. We can start to just be. That’s all there is to it.

—Ayya Khema, “The Elemental Self

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Buteyko method



The Buteyko method or Buteyko Breathing Technique is a form of complementary or alternative physical therapy that proposes the use of breathing exercises as a treatment for asthma as well as other conditions. 


The method takes its name from Ukrainian doctor Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko, who first formulated its principles during the 1950s. This method is based on the assumption that numerous medical conditions, including asthma, are caused by chronically increased respiratory rate or deeper breathing (hyperventilation).  However, this theory is not widely supported in the medical community due to the lack of evidence supporting either the theory behind the method or that it works in practice. This method purportedly retrains the breathing pattern through chronic repetitive breathing exercises to correct the hyperventilation, which, according to the method's proponents, will therefore treat or cure asthma as well as any other conditions purportedly caused by hyperventilation. At the core of the Buteyko method is a series of reduced-breathing exercises that focus on nasal-breathing, breath-holding and relaxation. 

Research into the use of the Buteyko method has focused almost exclusively on the treatment of asthma, and have had methodological problems. Studies have not found objective measures to support its use such as improvement in lung function, though there are results showing it may improve subjective measures such as asthma symptoms and quality of life. Reviews of this medical literature have come to different conclusions about the strength of evidence supporting the Buteyko method, with some literature saying the evidence does not support its use, while others have concluded the evidence is enough to consider qualified support. The literature that supports considering its use note the Buteyko method should be used with traditional therapies (and not in place of mainstream treatment) and is unlikely to affect the underlying cause of asthma. There is no support for the use of the Buteyko method in other diseases, such as diabetes mellitus or any of the over 150 diseases supporters of this method claim to treat.

Buteyko Breathing Exercises in 3 minutes by Patrick McKeown


Via Daily Dharma: Inquiring into the Unconscious

To see clearly—to perceive things as they are—we must break the chain between the percept and the concept. This break comes after the senses connect with the object of perception, but before the great flywheel of mental habit boxes that perception in stale cubbyholes of thoughts and feelings.

—Interview with Tara Bennett-Goleman, “Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart