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.
Another way of asking is, who was I before I took on the layers of identities, tendencies, and memories I carry today? Notice how the simple sense of being stays even when roles, preferences, or memories momentarily drop away.
If something is still present when identity is not held, what is that? Can it be grasped or named? And if it becomes something you can describe, isn’t it simply another identity? What is this aware presence that does not rely on identity, habit, or memory to exist?
Read about British philosopher Douglas Harding’s “Headless Way” method, which offers another exercise for looking for the self, to find it isn’t there.
Your values are the heartbeat of meaningful work. Values not only drive what you put your energy into but are also the engine for why you’ve chosen that work in the first place and how you show up.
Diana Hill, PhD, “The Heartbeat of Right Livelihood”
This month's Film Club pick traces the transmission of Zen meditation through the life’s work of 90-year-old Irish-American Jesuit Zen Master Robert Kennedy, highlighting key historical moments in the ever-evolving story of the coming of Zen to the West.
RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9)
When one knows and sees sounds as they actually are, then one is not attached to sounds. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well-being. (MN 149)
Reflection
Craving is the cause of suffering, and if we crave a hundred things we will experience a hundred episodes of suffering. We are used to this constant thirst to possess things we like and to avoid what we don’t like. But we do not have to follow the dictates of our desires. It is possible to notice the yearning for something and then simply let go of it. This capacity points the way to freedom from compulsion.
Daily Practice
Using sound as the focus of practice, see if you can begin to notice the minor ways you favor or oppose the sounds you meet in your experience. Step back from being annoyed by a particular sound; step back from the allure another may induce; step back from constantly welcoming what sounds good and resisting what sounds bad. This stepping back is replacing desire with equanimity and can be practiced in small ways.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
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