A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
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)
Reflection
Equanimity is the fourth of the brahma-viharas, the sublime states of mind, and is the secret ingredient of mindfulness, indeed of the entire Buddhist approach to practice. Like the clutch of a car, which disengages the engine from the wheels, freeing them to revolve independently, equanimity disengages us from the compulsion of the pleasure/pain reflex, freeing us to experience a range of sensations without craving.
Daily Practice
Cultivate the experience of feeling pleasure without getting hooked by it and experiencing displeasure without needing to be rid of it. Notice how pleasure and pain are on one channel, so to speak, and our loving and hating of them are on another. Normally we are forced to respond to pleasure with attachment and to pain with aversion, but equanimity replaces these forms of craving, liberating the mind from them.
Tomorrow: Refraining from Frivolous Speech One week from today: Cultivating Lovingkindness
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The word tradition stems from the Latin word traditio, which translates to “delivery, surrender, a handing down, a giving up.” Maybe it’s time to realize that surrendering, or letting go, is very much a part of tradition.
Lauren Krauze, “Confronting Family Dynamics During the Holidays”