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.
Take the attitude that there is nothing in your experience that you need to control or fix, and you’ll be available to experience the perfection that is always there, the truth that everything you need to awaken is with you right now.
Clarifying Dependent Origination With Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Watch an illuminating teaching from Sri Lankan Theravada monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana on one of the Buddha’s most essential yet lesser-discussed insights into the nature of suffering and liberation.
RIGHT LIVING Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Taking What is Not Given
Taking what is not given is unhealthy. Refraining from taking what is not given is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning the taking of what is not given, one abstains from taking what is not given; one does not take by way of theft the wealth and property of others. (MN 41) One practices thus: “Others may take what is not given, but I will abstain from taking what is not given." (MN 8)
One is to practice thus: “Here, regarding things sensed by you, in the sensed there will be just the sensed." When, firmly mindful, one senses a sensation, one is not inflamed by lust for sensations; one experiences the sensation with a dispassionate mind and does not remain holding it tightly. (SN 35.95)
Reflection
The phrase “what is seen, heard, and sensed” is a shorthand way of referring to the first five of the senses, so the word sensed refers to the sense modalities of smelling, tasting, and touching. It can be challenging to simply be with what is given in direct experience, since we are so easily swept beyond what is given to add layers of judgment and interpretation. Right living involves remaining grounded in experience.
Daily Practice
When you smell, taste, or touch an object of any kind at any moment, see if you can focus just on the sensation, not allowing thoughts to take over and run rampant. Such proliferation is a way of “taking what is not given,” insofar as you are going beyond the information provided by the senses in the immediate experience and turning it into something different. Practice simply being with what is present—no more, no less.
Tomorrow: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures
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