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About GBF

 

Inclusivity

As practicing Buddhists, we cherish the unique potential of each individual, and each individual’s unique mission in the world that only they can accomplish. We believe that each person has the ability to contribute positive value to society in their own unique way.  

GBF welcomes people of all races, backgrounds, and gender and sexual identities: BIPOC, men, women, LGB, Trans People, differing educational and economic backgrounds, and differently abled.  

 

“Do the best you can until you know better. 

Then when you know better, do better.”

– Maya Angelou

 

Our Practice

As a Buddhist organization, GBF undertakes the study and practice of living with mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom toward all beings, including those with whom we don’t agree. We do not experience this as being weak or passive. On the contrary, Buddhism is a path of courage, discipline, and deep commitment to truth and right action. Living with mindful awareness requires we first examine our own hearts and minds to become aware of unconscious internal biases and assumptions; in order to avoid the very dynamics of division and objectification which we strive to end. 

Courage, compassion, and a commitment to truth are required to acknowledge our thoughts and feelings, and self-discipline is required to change, regardless of the guilt and shame we may feel in identifying our own prejudices against others, based on race, gender, social class, etc. This is a practice of turning toward greed, hatred, and ignorance, in order to end the unnecessary suffering that they cause to ourselves and others. It is a path based on the disciplined application of moral principles of non-harm, development of community, and liberation for all beings – not just those who are privileged.

 

Via LGBTQ Nation // Same-sex marriages have happened on every continent now after Antarctic ceremony

 

The two men were the first same-sex couple to marry in Antarctica.

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling

A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: “Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content.” (SN 47.10)   When feeling a neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling in the body, one is aware: “Feeling a bodily neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling … one is just aware, just mindful: 'There is feeling.'” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Of the three kinds of feeling tone—pleasant, painful, and neither-pleasant-nor-painful—it is this third, neutral feeling that is the most challenging to the practice of mindfulness. Feeling tones arise in a steady stream, just like the stream of consciousness; the practice is to pay close enough attention to the textured sensation of each moment. The object is one thing (sight, sound, etc.), and the feeling tone that arises with it is another.

Daily Practice

Sit quietly for some stretch of time and attend carefully to all the neutral sensations in the body. You might even scan systematically from head to foot looking for all the feeling tones that are occurring. Some are obviously pleasant, some are clearly painful. What about the rest? These are the neutral sensations—you feel them, but they do not feel good or bad. They are just there. Feel what it's like to feel what is just there.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)

With the stilling of applied and sustained thought, one enters upon and abides in the second phase of absorption, which has inner clarity and singleness of mind, without applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4)

Reflection

The mind is capable, through training, of becoming more concentrated than is usual in ordinary daily experience. The Buddha describes this as a natural process, unfolding as the body and mind become gradually happier and more tranquil while the mind is focusing upon a single object. In the second phase of this process, discursive thinking gradually fades away as the feeling of pleasure and well-being grows stronger and deepens.

Daily Practice

As you sit quietly and focus on your breathing, the thoughts and memories and plans that so habitually inhabit the mind begin to settle, and the mind becomes calmer. At a certain point thoughts may cease altogether. Awareness of sensory experience remains strong, but it is no longer mediated by words, images, or concepts. The need to re-engage the mind with an object and hold it there is no longer needed, so these functions drop away.

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Let the Winds Blow

Desirable things do not have to beguile the mind, and undesirable ones do not have to bring endless resistance. We can let the winds blow through us instead of letting them buffet us about. 

Mark Epstein, “How Meditation Failed Me”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 1, 2022 💌

 
 

You are listening as well as you can to the universe, and often you will see that when things start to happen a certain way, your mind will focus in on that because you’re looking for patterns, which we call ‘synchronicity’.

Often you will just get caught in your desire to find a pattern that will give you an external validation for what you’re doing. You just end up using the universe again to do it to yourself.

So stay with your truth from moment to moment, and get the clues wherever you can. I mean, I’ll open up the Chuang-tzu and read something when I have a question, and if it doesn’t feel good, I say, “Well, that was interesting,” and I close it. If it feels like what I wanted to do anyway, I say, “Ohhh, wow, synchronicity!” And I do it, so I’ve learned that I’m a complete phony anyway, so I might as well just honor it and get on with it.

- Ram Dass -