Via Daily Dharma: We’re Never Alone

 No matter how despairing or cut off we can feel at any given time, we are not actually severed from the essential flow of life or from one another. If we get quiet for a while and pay careful attention, this is what we realize.

Sharon Salzberg, “Forever Connected”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Equanimity

 

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Equanimity

Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on equanimity, for when you develop meditation on equanimity, all aversion is abandoned. (MN 62)  The manifestation of equanimity is the subsiding of attraction and aversion. (Vm 9.93) Having smelled an odor with the nose, one is neither glad-minded nor sad-minded but abides with equanimity, mindful and fully aware. (AN 6.1)

Reflection

Equanimity, the fourth brahma-vihara, or sublime way of abiding, is defined here in terms of its manifestation—how it presents itself in experience. Equanimity manifests as the absence of the two extremes of attraction (greed) and aversion (hatred), which so often rule the mind. Equanimity is the still center point on a continuum between the two, where the mind neither draws toward nor tilts away from an object.

Daily Practice

Equanimity can be practiced with any of the sense modalities, and here we are invited to engage with the practice in the sensory realm of smelling odors. Practice lingering in the presence of an obviously pleasant or an intensely unpleasant odor and see if you can manifest the attitude of equanimity. You can experience pleasure and displeasure and not automatically want more or less of it. See what this feels like, and then sustain the non-reactive attitude toward feeling tones.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Frivolous Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Lovingkindness

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Via Daily Dharma: The Nature of Emotions

 All feelings come and go, and are by their nature ephemeral. But if we don’t train our minds to see that, we end up riding life like the old roller coaster at Coney Island that threatened to hurl people from their seats every now and again.

Pilar Jennings, “Fear”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Frivolous Speech

 

RIGHT SPEECH
Refraining from Frivolous Speech

Frivolous speech is unhealthy. Refraining from frivolous speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning frivolous speech, one refrains from frivolous speech. One speaks at the right time, speaks only what is fact, and speaks about what is good. One speaks what is worthy of being overheard, words that are reasonable, moderate, and beneficial. (DN 1) One practices thus: "Others may speak frivolously, but I shall abstain from frivolous speech." (MN 8) When a person commits an offense of some kind, you should not hurry to reprove them but rather consider whether or not to speak. If you will not be troubled, the other person will be hurt, and you can help them emerge from what is unhealthy and establish them in what is healthy—then it is proper to speak. It is a trifle that they will be hurt compared with the value of helping establish them in what is healthy. (MN 103)

Reflection

So many of our speech patterns are habitual and unfold automatically. The practice of right speech gives us an opportunity to notice this, because we are bringing greater awareness to the action of speaking. It also enables us to change our habitual patterns because it gives us time to respond differently. The ability to pause and reflect before responding is particularly important when in the presence of offensive speech.

Daily Practice

The next time you feel offended by something someone says to you, slow down enough to not react automatically and to take some time to consider whether or not to speak. Not every put down requires a comeback. The critical factor in the analysis above is whether or not what you say will make a difference. It is okay to hurt someone’s feelings if you "can help them emerge from what is unhealthy" and get on a better track.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Social Action
One week from today: Refraining from False Speech

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - February 16, 2022 💌 Inbox

 
 

This is us living the busy and unexamined life, acting from that complex of motives that take us through the day. But when we don’t pay full attention to our inner dialogue, to our feelings and thoughts, and we don’t answer the call of the heart, we feel alienated from ourselves and from life around us, however subtly, and we don’t experience the moment as fully as we might. As we pass by the homeless woman, life passes us by.

Compassionate action gives us an opportunity to wake up to some of our motives and to act with more freedom. It gives us the chance to put ourselves out on the edge, and if we are willing to take a clean look at what we see there, we can come to know ourselves better. We can’t, of course, change what is arising in us at any moment, because we can’t change our pasts and our childhoods. But when we listen to our own minds and stop being strangers to ourselves, we increase the number of ways we can respond to what arises.

Then we know when we are resisting contact with a poor person because of something that happened in childhood, and we know that now we have nothing to fear either from the homeless person or from the examination of our place in the economic structure. We are here right now, and we are free. We can either walk past the person, talk to her, give her some money, and go on, maybe reflecting on the causes of homelessness and its relation to our hot tub, or we can cross the street because we are still carrying around fear and protection from childhood and don’t want to deal with it today on the way to a meeting.

Whichever we do, with increasing awareness comes an appreciation of our actions as they are, and then they begin to change. Even if we haven’t acted compassionately toward the woman, we haven’t repressed the fact that she exists, and we aren’t judging ourselves; as awareness and acceptance increase, not blocked by our fears, we tend to act more humanely. It happens naturally.

- Ram Dass


Excerpt from Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service