Via Daily Dharma: Challenging Your Ego

When you challenge ego-mind, be firm but gentle, penetrating but never aggressive. Just say to your ego-mind, “Show me your face!” When no mind shows up saying, “Here I am,” ego-mind will begin to lose its hold on you and your struggles will lighten up.

—Dzigar Kongtrul, “Searching for Self”

Those who dance...

Via Daily Dharma: Embracing Difference

Diversity strengthens us. Diversity is not something to be tolerated—it is to be celebrated. We should welcome it with curiosity, delight, and joy. This is what fear fears.

—Gyalwang Drukpa, “How to Combat Fear”

Via Daily Dharma: We're All in the Same Boat

We’re all in the same boat. I don’t know how to save the world, yet I must save the world. I don’t know how to save myself, yet I must save myself. I don’t know where my soul resides, yet I must discover my soul because I live within it.

—Josh Fox, “What Makes Humanity Worth Saving”

Via Ram Dass

When you look at another person, what do you see? Body? That’s desire. What do you see? Personality? …That’s attachment.

Beyond body, beyond personality, way back in here, way back behind all the things you think you are, here we are. That’s the being you serve.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharam / Confidence in Our Basic Nature

Letting go of incessantly measuring and comparing ourselves to others leads to spontaneous acts of courage and compassion. It’s like learning a dance step well enough that we no longer need to keep looking down at our feet.

—Gaylon Ferguson, “Natural Bravery”

Via Daily Dharma / Suffering Makes Way for Joy

Our suffering is not our enemy. It is only through a relationship with my pain, my sadness, that I can truly know and touch the opposite—my pleasure, my joy, and my happiness.

—Claude AnShin Thomas, “Conceptions of Happiness”

Via Daily Dharma / The Best Spiritual Teacher

The best spiritual teacher is to challenge your weaknesses.

—Atisha, “Your Best”

Via Daily Dharma / Telling New Stories

To see stories as the problem is to blame the victim. Instead of getting rid of stories one can liberate them: storying more flexibly, according to the situation.

—David Loy, as quoted in Daisy Hernández' “A Second Arrow Story”

Via Ram Dass

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.

Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma / A Healthy Body Image

The more you can free yourself from your internalization of the gaze of others, the more liberated you feel.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Under Your Skin”

Via Lion's Roar / Healthy Desire: A Buddhist’s View of Mindfulness & Sex

by Ray Buckner| May 13, 2017

Buddhist practitioner Ray Buckner shares how bringing mindfulness into sex helps us develop a healthier relationship with both ourselves and our partner, and deepens our connection between mind and body.

Photo via Queereaster Media Working Group.

Eyes wide, out of breath, I remember my exact words. Spoken slowly and softly, I said, “Wow. That was literally the most amazing experience I have ever had in my entire life.” And I meant it.

My body completely still, struck by the awe of the moment, I looked at her. My eyes met her eyes. My smile met her smile. Our love and care met right there in that moment. It was one of my most present experiences. My mind was nowhere else but in my body with me, and in the room with her. It was, simply, a moment of mindfulness.

We don’t often ponder “mindfulness” and have “sex” arise as the next natural association. And yet, the two go hand in hand.

How so?

Let’s assume we all know what sex is (although it is often differently defined by hetero/cisgender men and women, queers, and trans-folks) and instead move on to some basic aspects of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about bringing a certain quiet attention to your lived experience. It’s about being right there with what you are experiencing, touching your experience as intimately as possible, without judgment or blame.

In a moment of mindfulness, your mind is connected with your body. Your thoughts are not elsewhere but are right there in the present moment. Effectively, mind and body are one.

In many ways, it is only natural for sex and mindfulness to, well, come together. When we are engaging in sex our body is, essentially, awakening to a multitude of arising sensations.

Mindfulness during sex does not always mean experiencing euphoria. Sometimes, it means getting in touch with painful sensations like fear, self-hatred, and confusion.

“Awakening” here does not always refer to sensations. Sometimes, aliveness is in the dullness, the numbness, the lack of feeling arising in one’s body. For example, when my body is touched, it may experience joy and excitement, or a sense of tightness. It may be at ease and wanting more, or it may be numbing, closing down and developing a sense that something is wrong or off. Finally, my mind may be in the present moment, or it may be pulling away to traumatic memories.

So, mindfulness during sex does not always mean experiencing euphoria (as is the case with my experience described above). Sometimes, it means getting in touch with painful sensations like fear, self-hatred, and confusion. This can be difficult, but is important in fostering a healthy relationship with oneself and crucial communication with another.

Why is this so important? Why do we need to pay attention to these inner voices of suffering and joy? The answer lies, in part, in understanding the jewels of impermanence and non-self.

• Impermanence shows us that no two moments are the same; the sensations, emotions, ideas, and relationships that arise and play out are always already in flux. None of these are pre-determined, set, or stable; all are moving and impermanent.
• Non-self teaches us that because all realms and sensations are changing, there is nothing inherent or stable to our very being.

When our “self” makes contact with another’s, this contact will have an impact—on us and the people we’re with. The two forms of contact are intrinsically connected. Contact between our own mind and body are connected as well: the body cannot function without the mind and the mind cannot function without the body. The two inter-are, actively affecting and changing one another. My body tenses during sex, and so does my mind. My mind feels fear during sex, and so does my body. Such is dependent arising: “this is because that is.” To try to separate the sensations of the mind and body leads to suffering and ultimately disconnection from the knowing wisdom of this interconnected self.

And yet, during sex—a time when you really want to be in touch with what arising in the mind and body—an unfortunate and dangerous disconnection can take place. The mind tries to disconnect from the body and the body loses its crucial connection with the mind.

This disconnection may be partly, if not largely, due to societal norms about sex and gender. Society has taught us (particularly women and queers) that we need to act and perform in particular ways during sex. While the pleasure of one partner may be deemed important, the pleasure of another may be silenced or ignored. In my own life, when feelings of fear or confusion have arisen, people have sometimes used these moments to ridicule or shame me. My reservations were “difficult,” “a pain,” or the workings of someone too young to know what they wanted or needed. We learn to silence negative sensations in order to avoid shame and physical and sexual violence toward our bodies and minds. In addition, we fear that to speak could mean touching the reality that our bodily and spiritual desires will be ignored, demeaned, or used against us in the face of our expressed yearning.

We need to find a way to return to our body and mind, to softly touch our experience and allow communication to blossom again.

While sex should be a space of impermanence that allows (and encourages!) the infinite arising of sensations, we instead are forced to function in a limited space in which our bodies and our minds perform happily and simply without sadness, or fear, or confusion. Though a sense of permanence during sex is limiting, it can take hold and imprison our mind and body.

We need to find a way to return to our body and mind, to softly touch our experience and allow communication to blossom again.

The key is to listen closely to whatever arises, and meet these sensations with kindness. If we can take the time to listen, openness and clarity will soon arise, leading to greater joy and happiness.
I have practiced this myself. A previous partner and I were having sex. We were both very turned on and I said something seductive. She said something back to the effect of, “Stop speaking.”

Immediately something shifted. I went from aroused to turned off, scared, and upset. I felt like I did something wrong, that my voice was ugly, that I ruined the moment, and that I was unwanted. But applying mindfulness helped me recognize the anxiety in my chest, the deep sensation that something was wrong, and that I was distraught.

Bringing mindfulness to sex is a brilliant way to deepen the connections between mind and body, self and other.

I also could quickly recognize where these sensations hailed from. I’d once had an abusive partner who shushed me or scolded me, or ordered me not to speak, if I made sounds during sex. No wonder, then, that sensations of fear and shame arose with my more recent partner.

Seeing clearly the origins of my troubled feelings, I was now able to stop and articulate my experience of panic to my partner in the moment. She apologized and clarified what she meant by her words — simply, that my voice turned her on and she playfully could not handle any more of that! We were back to feeling excited, present, and in touch with one another.

Bringing mindfulness to sex is a brilliant way to deepen the connections between mind and body, self and other, and to transform moments of pain and trauma into experiences of understanding, kindness, and connection.

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Via Daily Dharma / Making Amends after Mistakes

To repent is not to feel remorse, but to face one’s faults, realizing they are faults, and try one’s best not to make the same mistake again. If one does that, one is already making amends.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “How To Be Faultless”

Via Daily Dharma / A Buddhist Teaching in a Cup of Tea

In a way, a perfect cup of tea is a miracle of causes and conditions, and when one meets our lips, we should give praise.

—Noa Jones, “A Perfect Cup of Tea”

Via Daily Dharma / Life Is an Awkward Struggle

I suspect there will never be answers. Instead, there will be only the awkwardness of the struggle—and perhaps the struggle is a sublime kind of grace in itself, which merely disguises itself as awkwardness.

—Rick Bass, “Bonfire”

Via Ram Dass

I’m allowing myself more and more to trust my intuitive wisdom rather than my analytic mind as to how I should proceed. Because the more analytical mind can’t really handle the complexity of the situation so you go from moment to moment just listening...

 

- Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma / Honoring Your Mother(s)

All sentient beings have at one time been your mother—birthing you, nursing you, caring for you through a helpless stage of life. Imagine this and generate appreciation and goodwill for all sentient beings, whether they cut you off in traffic, compliment your smile, or walk past you without a glance.

—A Tibetan teaching recounted in Sarah Aceto’s, “As If I Were Your Mother”

Via Daily Dharma / What You Can Learn from a Toothache

When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. That is peace. I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that not having one is wonderful.

—Thich Nhat Hanh in Pamela Gayle White’s, “Skunked by Gratitude”

Via Daily Dharma / Learning to See Clearly

The practice of bearing witness is to see all of the aspects of a situation including your attachments and judgments...  When you bear witness you open to the uniqueness of whatever is arising and meet it just as it is.

—Wendy Egyoku Nakao Roshi, “Hold to the Center!”