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Via Daily Dharma: Oneness and Multiplicity

 Oneness and multiplicity live together... This is one of the essential points of dharma practice. How can we perceive and express the oneness of everything within the myriad things we encounter?

Shohaku Okumura, “Dogen’s Freeing Verse”

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Via Tricycle // 5 Timeless Teachings on Extending Forgiveness to Ourselves and Others

 

5 Timeless Teachings on Extending Forgiveness to Ourselves and Others By The Editors

How can we forgive those who have wronged us—including ourselves? Allow these timeless Buddhist teachings to offer guidance and support on the path to cultivating a merciful heart.

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT
Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders unhealthy states, one has abandoned healthy states to cultivate unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to restrain the arising of unarisen unhealthy mental states. One restrains the arising of the unarisen hindrance of doubt. (MN 141)

Reflection

The fifth of the five hindrances is doubt. This is not the healthy skepticism that encourages us to think for ourselves and not take anything on hearsay. It is the debilitating doubt wherein we are unsure of ourselves and unclear about whether the practice we are doing is well taught or we are practicing it correctly. These sorts of doubts hinder our progress and are better replaced by their opposite, trust and confidence.

Daily Practice

See if you can give some attention to the quality of mind that presents itself when you are doubtful about something and, alternatively, when you are trusting of something. The point is not so much whether the doubt or trust is justified or not, or right or wrong, but rather the effect such attitudes have on the workings of consciousness. Self-doubt in particular undermines the mind, while confidence promotes energy.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna
One week from today: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Walk With Me // The Art of Grieving Inbox

 

'You Have Enough'

"I have gone to Deer Park every two years that Thay was visiting and during my last visit I asked one of the monks if I could get a personal message from Thay. They asked me what it would be. I said I wanted it to say, 'You Are Enough' in English and Chinese characters as I have an adopted daughter from China and want her to have this one day. He was so kind and said he would ask Thay. I was so hoping to have this piece for my home altar, where I meditate daily. Two days later the monk approached me and said that Thay would get it done by the end of the retreat. We spoke a bit, sharing our background and love for Engaged Buddhism - my heart sang. 

"The day before the retreat concluded the monk said he had my piece, that it was packaged for travel, and I could open it safely once I got home. I was so delighted and excited to see this piece of art and spirit from my teacher of decades. Well, when I got home it was the first thing I attended.

   

"I remember feeling overwhelmed by the sounds around me; adjusting to the lack of silence and calm from the retreat. Even the paper that protected the artwork crinkled in a way that was different, speaking to me in a way I'd not recognized before. When I opened the package I saw Chinese characters and English words. Thay had written, 'You Have Enough' instead of 'You Are Enough'. In my mind's eye, I saw Thay with his impish grin, reminding me of my gifts."

- Lisa Klein

Via White Crane Institute // A.E. HOUSMAN

 This Day in Gay History

March 26

Born

A.E. Housman

1859 -

A.E. HOUSMAN English scholar/poet, born, (d: 1936); Alfred Edward Housman was a classical scholar and poet of note. He was once viewed as a "great grey presence," divorced from the flesh and married to the mind. Young men read A Shropshire Lad and wondered. Was he or wasn’t he? There was no way to find out.

Later, he was painted as a sad recluse, sighing quiet sighs over a straight friend, Moses Jackson, and jerking off the Muse in unrequited love. In this view, Houseman was “in the grip of the ‘cursed trouble’ that soured the wells of his life, produced his poetry, and urged him to the topmost heights of scholarly renown.

Now we learn that the scholarly Cambridge don, far from being “cursed” used to make merry with a string of Venetian gondoliers supplied by his friend Horatio Brown, and was as well a regular patron of the male brothels in Paris. Can it be that the myth of the scholar virgin is just that, a myth?

Because I Liked You

Because I liked you better

     Than suits a man to say,

It irked you, and I promised

     To throw the thought away.

 

To put the world between us

     We parted, stiff and dry;

'Good-bye,' said you, 'forget me.'

     'I will, no fear', said I.

 

If here, where clover whitens

     The dead man's knoll, you pass,

And no tall flower to meet you

     Starts in the trefoiled grass,

 

Halt by the headstone naming

     The heart no longer stirred,

And say the lad that loved you

     Was one that kept his word.

 

A.E. Housman

 

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

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