Via Lion's Roar / Finding Wisdom in the Smartphone

FINDING WISDOM IN
THE SMARTPHONE 

I invented a new practice for myself recently. Here’s the instruction: don’t look at your phone.

That’s what I tell myself when I feel myself start to get restless. Waiting for the elevator. Waking up in the morning. Standing alone at a party.

And it doesn’t mean Never look at your phone. There are many moments throughout the day when it’s reasonable to do so. But I often look at my phone by default, even when there’s no reason to. Or, worse, I look at it because I’m avoiding something uncomfortable — like a squishy emotion.

When I try this new practice of not looking at my phone, I discover a lot. Sometimes, choosing not to look at my phone reminds me that there’s something I’m avoiding. Other times, it reminds me to relax and enjoy myself. And other times still, it prompts me to ask: what am I using this phone for?

Most of us have smartphones — literal supercomputers strapped to our hips. How are we using them? How are they using us? I find that when I start asking these questions, this object of distraction starts to become an object of meditation.

—Sam Littlefair, editor, LionsRoar.com

PS: If you want to take your smartphone practice a step further, check out our growing list of Buddhist iPhone apps.

Via Daily Dharma: The Open Arms of Dharma

The dharma, it seems, is big enough not just to endure us, but to embrace us, in all of our muck and glory.

—Anne Cushman, “Under The Lens: An American Zen Community In Crisis”

Via Daily Dharma: A Tender and Forgiving Practice

Maybe the first rule we should begin with, if we want meditation to be in our life for a long time, is: Don’t make a rigid structure and then chastise ourselves when we don’t live up to it. Better to keep a limber mind and develop a tenderness toward existence.

—Natalie Goldberg, “Rules for a Long-Term Relationship”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 7, 2019 💌

The truth is everywhere. Wherever you are, it’s right where you are, when you can see it. And you can see it through whatever vehicle you are working with, you can free yourself from certain attachments that keep you from seeing it. The scientist doesn’t stop being a scientist, nor anybody stop being anything. You find how to do the things to yourself which allow you to find truth where you are at the moment. I’d say we never find out anything new, we just remember it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Finding the Sacred in Change Inbox x

In trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. It’s easy to forget that life and death are part of the natural scheme of things, intrinsic to our lives in an eternally shifting universe.

—Ronna Kabatznick, “Sea of Sorrow”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Be Free

If you can maintain a mind of equanimity, you are free, no matter what the conditions.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “The Wanderer”

Via Daily Dharma: Realizations on the Path

On the absolute level, our nature is buddha, we are the deity. But unaware of this, we’re bound by relative truth. In order to make the leap to the realization of our absolute nature, we have to walk on our relative feet, on a relative path.

—Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer: Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche”

Simon & Garfunkel - American Tune (from The Concert in Central Park)

American Tune

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high…

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

Source: LyricFind

I Won’t Sing Here Anymore

I Won't Sing Here Anymore from Ross Productions on Vimeo.

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing America Through the Dharma’s Lens

America is a nation that is always dynamically evolving—a nation of becoming, its composition and character constantly transformed by migrations from many corners of the world, its promise made manifest not by an assertion of a singular or supremacist racial and religious identity, but by the recognition of the interconnected realities of a complex of peoples, cultures, and religions that enrich everyone.

—Duncan Ryuken Williams, “Thus Have I Heard: An American Sutra”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 3, 2019 💌

When you stand back far enough, all of your life experiences, independent of what they are, are all learning experiences. From a human point of view, you do your best to optimize pleasure, happiness, all the nice things in life. From your soul’s point of view you take what comes down the pike. So from the soul’s perspective, you work to get what you want and then if you don’t ‘ah, so, I’ll work with what I’ve got.’ 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: An Ever-Changing Landscape

Our hearts and minds change from moment to moment, just as the clouds shift in the evening sky as the sun goes down. Who are we to think we have grasped the true nature of our souls?

—Abbess Fushimi, “Shedding Light”

Via Tricycle: Tonglen: Sending out happiness and taking in suffering

Tonglen is a form of Buddhist practice from the “mind-training” (lojong) teachings given by the important 11th-century Indian master Atisha. An essential part of mind training is overcoming what’s referred to as “self-cherishing,” which in this context means clinging to a narrow, egotistical mindset. 

Tonglen is one of the tools mind training offers to weaken our tendency to self-cherish. Literally “sending and taking,” tonglen refers to visualizing oneself breathing in (taking) the suffering of beings, then breathing out (sending) one’s own well-being to alleviate that suffering.  

The simplest version of tonglen consists of first taking a moment to rest in the natural spaciousness of the mind, or to ground and settle yourself. You then picture the suffering in the world—you can also home in on a certain person in need or a certain circumstance—and breathe it into yourself in the form of thick, heavy black smoke that dissolves in your heart. Opening your heart to feelings of compassion, you then breathe out the suffering in the form of “white energy,” bringing goodness to those afflicted. 

You can practice tonglen formally in this way; however, many find tonglen challenging, so it’s best to practice under the guidance of a teacher. You can also, as the American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön suggests, practice “on the spot” when you are confronted with challenges in everyday life or are dealing with strong negative emotions.

Check out Pema Chödrön’s advice for practicing tonglen outside the meditation hall.

Make the jump here to read the original and more

The Long Road To Pride

Via Daily Dharma: All-Pervasive Awakening

[Meditation] has nothing to do with training in some sort of technical skill or gaining crucial esoteric knowledge that cannot be attained any other way. Nor has it anything to do with transcending the human condition. It is about bringing forth positive qualities in us that will see us living meaningful and dignified human lives.

—Winton Higgins, “Treading the Path with Care”

Via Daily Dharma: Staying Anchored in the Wind

Equanimity is said to be an anchor. It protects you against the “worldly winds”—pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, and fame and disrepute—by keeping you anchored so you’re not tossed about by those winds.

—Daisy Hernández, “The Noble Abode of Equanimity”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 30, 2019 💌

One of the big traps we have in the West is our intelligence, because we want to know that we know. Freedom allows you to be wise, but you cannot know wisdom. You must be wisdom.
When my guru wanted to put me down, he called me ‘clever.’ When he wanted to reward me, he would call me ‘simple.’
The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Radiating Love and Acceptance

As we transform our own experience and relationship to our realities, we cannot help but affect those around us in radiating circles into the larger culture. These moments of freedom and transformation begin to change and elevate the consciousness and awareness of the world.

—Interview with Larry Yang, “Meditation Teacher Larry Yang Named Grand Marshal in S.F. Pride”

Via Lions Roar: Buddhism’s Call to Action

Buddhism’s Call to Action

Jack Kornfield on the importance of contributing to activism with Buddhist practice and wisdom.

How can you do this service work in the spirit of practice? As dharma practitioners, the first task is to make your own heart a zone of peace. Instead of becoming entangled in the pain or cynicism that exists externally, you need to face your own fear, your own sufferings, and transform them into compassion. Only then can you offer genuine help to the outside world.   Make the jump here to read the full article and more