Revoked: Feb 7, 2025

Friday, February 7, 2025

Via Bodhipaksa @ Wildmind // A new "mythbusting" article

Mythbusting the Buddha’s “four sights”

Just as everyone "knows" that the Buddha was a prince, everyone "knows" that he left home in the middle of the night because on trips out of the palace he'd seen, for the first time, an old man, a sick man, a human corpse, and a holy wanderer.

But is there any evidence any of this actually happened?

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures

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RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures

Sensual misconduct is unhealthy. Refraining from sensual misconduct is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning sensual misconduct, one abstains from misbehaving among sensual pleasures. (MN 41) One practices thus: "Others may engage in sensual misconduct, but I will abstain from sensual misconduct." (MN 8)

Sensual conduct is of two kinds: to be cultivated and not to be cultivated. Such sensual conduct as causes, in one who cultivates it, unhealthy states to increase and healthy states to diminish, such sensual conduct is not to be cultivated. But such sensual conduct as causes, in one who cultivates it, unhealthy states to diminish and healthy states to increase, such sensual conduct is to be cultivated. (MN 114)

Reflection

Misbehaving among sensual pleasures can include various forms of harmful sexuality, such as exploitation, causing humiliation, or sexual predation. It can also include all sorts of activities that are not sexual but involve sensual gratification. Our ability to inhabit a sensory and sensual world is not in itself a problem. The problem is that our senses can so easily lead us into attachments and aversions that cause difficulties.

Daily Practice

This practice is about the skillful use of the sense apparatus. Notice when sensory stimulation leads to craving and thus to grasping behavior. This is the path to suffering, as our senses lead us to wanting things we cannot have or hating things that are unpleasant. Notice also that there are ways to engage the senses that do not automatically lead to craving and grasping, and thus do not lead to suffering. Explore this.

Tomorrow: Developing Unarisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Intoxication

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Via Daily Dharma: Touching Love

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Touching Love

Although we may not always live in a steady state of loving feeling, through practice we can learn to touch it many times a day.

Joseph Goldstein, “Triumph of the Heart”

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