Saturday, August 30, 2025

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Consolation

 

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Finding Consolation

Spiritual life is about finding consolation. It’s about finding that steady place where we can be soothed and where we feel like we’re accepted in order to go forth and do the things we need to do in the world and face the things we need to face. 

Satya Robyn, “On Wanting to Sound Good”

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Come and See
By Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
A Sri Lankan Theravada monk invokes a core Buddhist principle in a teaching on impermanence.
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States

 

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RIGHT EFFORT
Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19)

Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to maintain arisen healthy mental states. One maintains the arisen awakening factor of joy. (MN 141)
Reflection
Maintaining healthy mental and emotional states that have arisen in experience sometimes takes effort. It is worthwhile effort, because the mind will incline in the future toward whatever states are most often manifesting in the present. By sustaining healthy states as often as you can for as long as possible, you are not only blocking unhealthy states but creating the conditions for a healthier mind in the future.
Daily Practice
When you are joyful in a healthy way, find ways to sustain that joy. One way to do that, when the joy comes from noticing the good fortune of another, is to remind yourself of it continuously. Repeating to yourself phrases like “May they be happy” and “May their good fortune continue” is a simple way to reinforce the basis upon which the joy is established. Remember, it is good for you to feel joy, so cultivate it as much as you can. 
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna
One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

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Friday, August 29, 2025

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Via FB - Buddhist Wisdom \\ The Skillful Teachings of Thanissaro Bhikkhu ·

The Skillful Teachings of Thanissaro Bhikkhu 
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Bhikku Thanissaro: "Vipassana is not a meditation technique. It's a quality of mind — the ability to see events clearly in the present moment. Although mindfulness is helpful in fostering vipassana, it's not enough for developing vipassana to the point of total release. Other techniques and approaches are needed as well.
In particular, vipassana needs to be teamed with samatha — the ability to settle the mind comfortably in the present — so as to master the attainment of strong states of absorption, or jhana.
Based on this mastery, samatha and vipassana are then applied to a skillful program of questioning, called appropriate attention, directed at all experience: exploring events not in terms of me/not me, or being/not being, but in terms of the four noble truths.
The meditator pursues this program until it leads to a fivefold understanding of all events: in terms of their arising, their passing away, their drawbacks, their allure, and the escape from them. Only then can the mind taste release."
-Bhikku Thanissaro
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