The Path, Simply Put
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Today's Daily Dharma: The Path, Simply Put
Monday, September 28, 2015
Via WGB: Obama: Religious Freedom No Excuse to Deny Rights to Others
Freedom of religion isn't reason enough to deny any American their
constitutional rights, President Barack Obama said Sunday as he
addressed members of the LGBT community, one of his major sources of
political and financial support.Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser, Obama said it's important to recognize that some parts of the country remain uncomfortable with same-sex marriage and that it will take time for them to catch up to the majority of Americans who support such unions.
But while Americans hold dear the constitutional right to practice their religion free from government interference, he said that right can't be used to deny constitutional rights to others. Full story here!
Via Sri Prem Baba: Flor do Dia- Flor del Día - Flower of the Day 28/09/20
“A grande maioria das pessoas escolhe sofrer através do isolamento. Por
isso esse mecanismo de defesa precisa ser melhor compreendido. Você
pode ser uma pessoa absolutamente silenciosa e não estar isolada. O
isolamento é um estado de fechamento interno. São muros que você
constrói a partir de crenças. Sair por ai tentando conversar e agradar o
outro não significa que você está aberto. Enquanto não entra em contato
com aquilo que sustenta esses muros, você segue culpando o outro pelo seu sofrimento e se isolando cada vez mais.”
“La gran mayoría de las personas elige sufrir a través del
aislamiento. Por eso este mecanismo de defensa necesita ser comprendido
mejor. Puedes ser una persona absolutamente silenciosa y no estar
aislada. El aislamiento es un estado de cierre interno. Son muros que
construyes a partir de creencias. Salir por ahí, intentando conversar y
agradar al otro no significa que estás abierto. Mientras no entras en
contacto con aquello que sustenta esos muros, sigues culpando al otro
por tu sufrimiento y aislándote cada vez más.”
“Most people choose isolation as their preferred form of suffering, so this self-defense mechanism really deserves to be better understood. We could be completely silent and yet not be isolated. Isolation happens when we shut down, building walls around us due to our beliefs. Attempting to converse with and please the other doesn’t mean that we are open. Until we are able to get in touch with the beliefs that sustain these walls, we will continue blaming the other for our suffering and isolate ourselves more and more.”
“Most people choose isolation as their preferred form of suffering, so this self-defense mechanism really deserves to be better understood. We could be completely silent and yet not be isolated. Isolation happens when we shut down, building walls around us due to our beliefs. Attempting to converse with and please the other doesn’t mean that we are open. Until we are able to get in touch with the beliefs that sustain these walls, we will continue blaming the other for our suffering and isolate ourselves more and more.”
Today's Daily Dharma: Shining the Light
Shining the Light
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Sunday, September 27, 2015
Via LionsRoar: Shamatha Meditation: Training the Mind
“The process of undoing bewilderment is based on stabilizing and strengthening our mind,” says Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. “Shamatha meditation is how we do that.”
We sometimes forget how the Buddhist teachings came into being. We forget why the Buddha left his father’s palace. Dissatisfied with maintaining an illusion, he wanted to understand his life—and life itself.Just like the Buddha, most of us would like to discover some basic truth about our life. But are we really capable of knowing what’s going on? This is a question that relates to the most profound truth of the Buddhist teachings. The Buddha’s answer is, “Yes, ultimately we are. But we need to go on a journey of meditation to find out, because essentially we are in a state of bewilderment.” Why are we bewildered? Because we don’t understand how our mind works.
The process of undoing bewilderment is based on cultivating the ability to become familiar with, stabilize, and strengthen our mind. Being aware and observant of what’s happening in our mind gives us an opportunity to see a more profound level of truth all the time. In the practice of meditation, we learn to zoom back and get a bigger perspective, rather than always thinking so small.
The Buddha understood that if we want to go on any kind of journey—not just a spiritual one but also a secular one, such as studying or doing business—we need a mind that is workable. We need a mind that we can rely on. That’s the notion of training the mind, of making the mind workable so it can do whatever it needs to do.
Shamatha, or mindfulness, meditation is how we make this mind more stable, more useful. From this point of view, shamatha is not purely a Buddhist practice; it’s a practice that anyone can do. It doesn’t tie in with a particular spiritual tradition. If we want to undo bewilderment, we’re going to have to be responsible for learning what our own mind is and how it works, no matter what beliefs we hold.
The word shamatha in Sanskrit (Tib.: shi-ne) means “peacefully abiding.” Peacefully abiding describes the mind as it naturally is. The word “peace” tells the whole story. The human mind is by nature joyous, calm and very clear. In shamatha meditation we aren’t creating a peaceful state—we’re letting our mind be as it is to begin with. This doesn’t mean that we’re peacefully ignoring things. It means that the mind is able to be with itself without constantly leaving.
In meditation we learn how to calmly abide: we learn how to let ourselves just be here peacefully. If we can remember what the word “shamatha” means, we can always use it as a reference point in our practice. We can say, “What is this meditation that I’m doing? It is shamatha—calmly, peacefully abiding.”
At the same time we begin to see that our mind isn’t always abiding calmly or peacefully. Perhaps it’s abiding irritatingly, angrily, jealously. Seeing all of this is how we begin to untangle our bewilderment.
Meditation is a very personal practice. Just like the Buddha, we can approach it by way of valid cognition: “What is truly valid? What is the truth of my experience?” We begin to realize what we don’t know, and we become curious.
In doing so we leapfrog from question to answer, with each new answer leading to a new question. And if we persist we begin to experience another truth that the Buddha also discovered: in every situation there is the continuum of the truth. Each answer is followed naturally by the next question.
It’s seamless.
With this kind of practice and inquisitiveness, the Buddha learned to look at the landscape of life in a clear, unbiased way. When he began to teach, he was just reporting his observations: “This is what I see. This is the truth about how things are.” He wasn’t presenting any particular viewpoint. He wasn’t preaching dogma; he was pointing out reality. We forget this. For example, most people would say that one of the key teachings in Buddhism is karma. But the Buddha did not create karma; the Buddha just saw it and acknowledged it. Saying that karma is a Buddhist belief is like saying that Buddhists believe water is wet. And if you’re a Buddhist, you must also believe that fire is hot!
In meditation, what we’re doing is looking at our experience and at the world intelligently. The Buddha said that this is how we learn to look at any situation and understand its truth, its true message, its reality. This is what a Buddha does—and we are all capable of being Buddhas, whether or not we are Buddhists. We all have the ability to realize our naturally peaceful minds where there is no confusion. We can use the natural clarity of our mind to focus on anything we want. But first we have to tame our minds through shamatha meditation.
Perhaps we associate meditation with spirituality because when we experience a moment of peacefully abiding, it seems so far-out. Our mind is no longer drifting, thinking about a million things. The sun comes up or a beautiful breeze comes along—and all of a sudden we feel the breeze and we are completely in tune. We think, “That’s a very spiritual experience! It’s a religious experience! At least worth a poem, or a letter home.” Yet all that’s happening is that for a moment we are in tune with our mind. Our mind is present and harmonious. Before, we were so busy and bewildered that we didn’t even notice the breeze. Our mind couldn’t even stay put long enough to watch the sun to come up, which takes two-and-a-half minutes. Now we can keep it in one place long enough to acknowledge and appreciate our surroundings. Now we are really here. In fact, this is ordinary. We can bring the mind under our own power. We can train it to be useful and workable.
This is the not just the point of being Buddhist, it’s the point of being human.
Make the jump here to read the original and more here
Via my amigo Joseph on FB: Yesterday in a discussion on friendship
I said that I base my friendship philosophy on this passage:
' To make the most of yourself is to live so that your inner life will rejoice.
It is to live so that you will receive the feeling, at the very depth of your soul, that it is wonderful to be alive."
The answer is to help others.
Your life expands to embrace others.
You are able to rejoice because your life grows.
The people around us are mirrors on which we can look at our lives.
To help others - that is how man has been created"
Seicho no ie Book of Daily Life... so on a personal level - I treasure my friends who are so generous and kind to others - always trying to add beauty and joy to another persons life... Those are my friends
So I guess that's why
when I find out someone is a narcissist- only thinkkng about themselves ... I slowly but surely stop sharing energy and they surely but slowly go away.
Quite simple really .... " as the cliche goes " birds of a feather flock together."
Yeah to all my friends!!!!!!!!!!
Via Sri Prem Baba: Flor do Dia- Flor del Día - Flower of the Day 27/09/20
“Uma das crenças que permeiam a mente condicionada e que é um grande
obstáculo para a liberdade, é acreditar que a felicidade vem de fora de
nós. E essa crença alimenta outra crença: a de que somos vítimas
indefesas da maldade do mundo. Vemos a maldade somente no outro, o que
gera separação e isolamento, e ainda por cima acreditamos que somos
colocados nesse lugar por ele.”
“Una de las creencias que permean la mente condicionada y que es un gran obstáculo para la libertad, es creer que la felicidad viene de afuera nuestro. Y esa creencia alimenta otra creencia: que somos víctimas indefensas de la maldad del mundo. Vemos la maldad solamente en el otro, lo que genera separación y aislamiento, y aún por encima creemos que somos colocados en ese lugar por él.”
“Una de las creencias que permean la mente condicionada y que es un gran obstáculo para la libertad, es creer que la felicidad viene de afuera nuestro. Y esa creencia alimenta otra creencia: que somos víctimas indefensas de la maldad del mundo. Vemos la maldad solamente en el otro, lo que genera separación y aislamiento, y aún por encima creemos que somos colocados en ese lugar por él.”
“The belief that happiness comes from the outside is a core tenet of
the conditioned mind and a great obstacle towards freedom. This belief
in turn feeds another: that we are helpless victims of all the evil in
the world. We only see evil in the other, and this generates separation
and isolation. Worse yet, we then believe that we are in this painful
state all because of what the other did to us.”
Today's Daily Dharma: Generosity Produces Peace
Generosity Produces Peace
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