Monday, May 19, 2025

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and the First Jhāna

 

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RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Body
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 sitting, one is aware: “I am sitting.”. . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is body.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
The Zen meditation practice called zazen means “just sitting.” This is a form of the early Buddhist practice described here. The idea is to always do only one thing at a time. Not sitting and reading, or sitting and watching TV, or sitting at your computer—but just sitting. This is an exercise in being rather than doing. The only activity you are doing while sitting is “being aware.” Aware of what? Aware that you are sitting.
Daily Practice
Spend some time every day, either regularly or adventitiously, just sitting. At first the tendency might be to “sit and think about stuff,” or “sit and remember,” or “sit and plan.” But this is a mindfulness of the body practice, so it involves being aware of all the microsensations of the body as you sit. There is a lot going on when you just sit and take the time to notice. Notice it all without clinging to anything in the world.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Approaching and Abiding in the First Phase of Absorption (1st Jhāna)
Having abandoned the five hindrances, imperfections of the mind that weaken wisdom, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters and abides in the first phase of absorption, which is accompanied by applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of seclusion. (MN 4)

Breathing in long, one is aware: ‘I breathe in long’;
or breathing out long, one is aware: ‘I breathe out long.’
This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated,
so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (A 54.8) 
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering

 

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RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
What is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for nonbeing. (MN 9)

When one does not know and see material form as it actually is, then one is attached to material form. When one is attached, one becomes infatuated, and one’s craving increases. One’s bodily and mental troubles increase, and one experiences bodily and mental suffering. (MN 149)
Reflection
As we proceed with a systematic investigation of the second noble truth—how craving gives rise to suffering—we begin looking at each of the five aggregates in turn: material form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. Material form includes everything constituted of matter, including the sense organs of the body and the substances in the environment giving rise to incoming data of sense experience. 
Daily Practice
Pay attention to the point at which the subjective experience of the body meets resistance. Notice the physical sensations of your feet on the floor, your butt on the chair, your skin against your clothing. This is how we encounter material form in lived experience. Experience each of the four great elements: feel earth as resistance, air as movement, water as wetness, fire as heat. Notice how craving arises from each.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
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Questions?
 Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning.
© 2025 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Empathy for Distant Souls


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Empathy for Distant Souls

Empathy grows from the center outward, as the affection you have for family and friends expands to embrace those many distant souls whom you’ve never met.

Lin Jensen, “Meeting Heartmind”


CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE
The Price of Practice
By Sarah Kokernot
In pursuit of the dharma, a young Buddhist faces questions of sex, money, and power.
Read more »

Via White Crane Institute \\ From Lorraine Hansberry

 

White Crane InstituteExploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989

Today's Gay Wisdom
2007 -

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

From Lorraine Hansberry:

"The oppressed are by their nature ... forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition." Lorraine Hansberry

"I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and—I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations."

"We only revert back to mystical ideas - which includes most contemporary orthodox religious views, in my opinion - because we simply are confronted with some things we don't yet understand."

"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning -- because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. [from Raisin in the Sun]"


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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via White Crane Institute \\ MALCOLM X

 

White Crane InstituteExploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
 
This Day in Gay History

May 19

Born
Malcolm X
1925 -

MALCOLM X; was born on this date. (d:: 1965); Born Malcolm Little (and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz‎), Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; his detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.

Malcolm X was effectively orphaned early in life. His father was killed when he was six and his mother was placed in a mental hospital when he was thirteen, after which he lived in a series of foster homes. In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for larceny and breaking and entering. While in prison he became a member of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952 quickly rose to become one of its most influential leaders. For a dozen years he was the public face of the controversial group; in keeping with the Nation's teachings he espoused black supremacy, advocated the separation of black and white Americans and scoffed at the civil rights movement’s emphasis on integration.

He was arguably seen as the yin to non-violence adherent Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s yang. By March 1964, Malcolm X had grown disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad. He ultimately repudiated the Nation and its teachings and embraced Sunni Islam. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, including completing the Hajj, he returned to the United States to found Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

While continuing to emphasize Pan-Africanism, black self-determination, and black self-defense, he disavowed racism. In February 1965, shortly after repudiating the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three of its members. The Autobiography of Malcolm X published shortly after his death, is considered one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. He was 39 years old.

According to eyewitness testimony and hundreds of different sources, Malcolm X was a bisexual who carried on a sustained affair with a white businessman. It is, of course, not unheard of for poor straight men to make a quick buck as rent boys. But Malcolm X’s involvement seems to have been a little different. Firstly, he liked to boast loudly to whomever would listen that he “serviced queers.” Then there’s the matter of his sustained sexual relationship with a white businessman, not to mention his frequent dalliances with the transvestite Willie Mae. In all, Malcolm X is thought to have spent a decade of his life sleeping almost exclusively with men; usually for money but not always. As Peter Tatchell pointed out in The Guardian, it’s unlikely he could have sustained the practice that long without at least some level of interest.

And interest seems to have always been there in Malcolm’s life. Although there’s no suggestion he slept with men after marrying his wife, old school friends have repeatedly remarked that he used to make local boys jerk him off; boasting if he managed to get them to give him oral sex. Recently, the respected African-American historian Manning Marable repeated the assertion in his hugely scholarly biography of Malcolm X; a book of such incredible erudition that it’s almost impossible to argue with. To sum up then, there seem to be no two ways about this. Malcolm X was almost certainly a member of the LGBT community. And that’s something we should celebrate.


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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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