Revoked: Jul 7, 2024

Sunday, July 7, 2024

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Intoxication

RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication

Intoxication is unhealthy. Refraining from intoxication is healthy. (MN 9) What are the imperfections that defile the mind? Negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Knowing that negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind, a person abandons it. (MN 7) One practices thus: “Others may become negligent by intoxication, but I will abstain from the negligence of intoxication.” (MN 8)

There are these two worldly conditions: fame and shame. These are conditions that people meet—impermanent, transient, and subject to change. A mindful, wise person knows them and sees that they are subject to change. Desirable conditions do not excite one’s mind nor is one resentful of undesirable conditions. (AN 8.6)

Reflection

The “worldly winds” are aspects of life that are as inevitable as the blowing of the wind, and we are better off accepting and adapting to them rather than attempting to avoid them. Among these are fame and shame, meaning sometimes we are a hero and sometimes a chump. In either case, we may not deserve the label placed on us by others, so the advice here is to see both fame and shame as the result of changing circumstances and view them with equanimity.

Daily Practice

One form of intoxication we are susceptible to is being influenced overmuch by what other people think of us. If people raise you up unrealistically or put you down undeservedly, try not to let it sway your own sense of who you are. As the text says, “A mindful, wise person knows them” to be the passing opinions of others, subject to capricious change. Practice remaining balanced, independent of the judgment of others.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

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Via Daily Dharma: Creating a Stronger Sangha

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Creating a Stronger Sangha

We’re all bound to the Buddha’s first noble truth. We all need each other. When we can become a sangha that learns to suffer together and not cause each other to suffer, beautiful things can unfold.

Mary Fuoco, “Facing Transphobia on the Path to Recovery”

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Right Speech, Left Speech
Interview with John Wood Jr. and Mónica Guzmán by Emma Varvaloucas

Two journalists comment on practicing meaningful dialogue in a time of polarization.

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RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects

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 the energy-awakening factor is internally present, one is aware: “Energy is present for me.” When energy is not present, one is aware: “Energy is not present for me.” When the arising of unarisen energy occurs, one is aware of that. And when the development and fulfillment of the arisen energy-awakening factor occurs, one is aware of that . . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is a mental object.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Energy is a mental factor, like so many others, that arises and passes away in the mind from one moment to another. We all know what it feels like to have too little energy and to give it a boost to accomplish a task, and what it feels like to have too much energy and to try to calm down using relaxation exercises. One way of practicing mindfulness of mental objects is to learn to look at and develop this awakening factor.

Daily Practice

See if you can gain an intuitive understanding of what the energy factor feels like in your own direct experience. Do this by noticing when it is present and when it is absent. Like isolating a muscle in the body for strengthening exercises, see if you can identify and strengthen the means of deliberately increasing or decreasing mental energy. This is an awakening factor because it is a crucial tool for developing the mind toward awakening.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Approaching and Abiding in the Fourth Phase of Absorption (4th Jhāna)

With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, one enters upon and abides in the fourth phase of absorption, which has neither-pain-nor-pleasure and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. The concentrated mind is thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability. (MN 4)

One practices: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing mental formations;”
one practices: “I shall breathe out tranquilizing mental formations.”
This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated
so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (SN 54.8)

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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All my training in how to die leads me to understand that what I must do now is to quiet my mind so I can hear most clearly, open my heart deeply so that quality of compassion and feeling is at its optimum, and be fully in the present moment. That’s the best preparation I can do for the moment of death.

- Ram Dass -