Via Lion´s Roar / Buddha’s Bicycle

Siddhartha taught that moral responsibility was an important tool for the prevention of dukkha or suffering. But, says Zachary Bremmer, clinging to the five precepts as law can cause more suffering than it prevents. Instead, we should approach the five precepts as training wheels to guide our practice.

The brilliance of the precepts is that they also work on a much more subtle level. The not so obvious benefit is that through our practice we are not only transforming externally by avoiding unskillful ways of acting but simultaneously transforming the internal structure of how we think about and react to certain situations. If I habitually give in to my cravings I will certainly suffer as a result because, as Mick Jagger pointed out, I can’t always get what I want. If I do not allow myself to be pulled around by these insatiable desires, though, I will become awakened to a new way of dealing with these feelings. I will begin to realize that I do not need to act on my lust for food or drink or objects. I will no longer be ruled by an endless cycle of grasping but rather simply take notice that I have certain desires and let them be. The precepts help to accomplish this.

Via Lion’s Roar / The Guidelines of Buddhism

I’m not sure I remember anymore what I was looking for when I first came to Buddhism — some kind of meditative lens, I suppose. But, what did I think that would really be? Whatever it was, I didn’t get it. I do remember, though, that I was not looking for some new set of moral guidelines. I was a fairly uptight kid already, and I think I saw in Buddhism a path toward loosening up a little, trying on a different me. So when I got handed the precepts, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I’m sure I didn’t always interpret them according to their original spirit; honestly, I’ve always held them clumsily, with far more questions than answers. But I’ve never put them down since. The basic five go like this: Do not kill (refrain from destroying living creatures). Do not steal (refrain from taking what is not given). Do not misuse sex (refrain from sexual misconduct). Do not lie (refrain from incorrect speech). Do not indulge in intoxicants (refrain from substances that lead to carelessness). On the surface, these seem impossible to really uphold: the internet keeps telling me that I’m eating pounds of bugs in my sleep, as one example. And in today’s economy, how can we always know what is given or not given? If I click “Like” just to be supportive, is that a lie? At the same time, the precepts are ambiguous enough that we can, if we’re so inclined, weave some convincing stories about how the thing we most want to do is actually the exception to the rule. Eventually, they can become mere background noise. But they can also — if we remain open to what they mean in each new circumstance — provide a framework of questioning that turns the lens of this practice away from ourselves and toward how we can serve others. They can give us, at least in this moment, a place to stand.

—Koun Franz, deputy editor, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly

Via Daily Dharma: An Understanding That Will Change Your Life

Just understand your mind: how it works, how attachment and desire arise, how ignorance arises, where emotions come from... Just that gives so much happiness and peace.

—Lama Thubten Yeshe, “Chocolate Cake”

Pretty Privilege

Via Daily Dharma: A Culinary Delight

With cooking, you can use your awareness to inhabit physical movements that may be new... until, with practice, there is an invigorating flow of energy in those physical experiences, a delight. Such energy, focus, and wholehearted attention nourishes yourself and those you feed.

—Laura Fraser, “The Joy of Mindful Cooking”

Via Daily Dharma: Happiness is Here and Now

Happiness means feeling you are on the right path every moment. You don’t need to arrive at the end of the path in order to be happy.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Heart of the Matter”

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing through the Filter of Perception

Once perception occurs unfiltered, stripped of the habitual veil of automatic preconception, it is inherently fulfilling.

—Henry Shukman, “The Unfamiliar Familiar”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 22, 2018

For every teacher, every life experience, everything we notice in the universe is but a reflection of our attachments. That is just the way it works.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Global Family of Gratitude

Gratitude connects us: it lets us see that we are all connected. Any goodness we encounter in the world is a gift from people now and in the past—a handful of people we know by name, and millions of others whose names we’ll never know.

—Kurt Spellmeyer and Sofia Ali-Khan, “Dialogue Across Difference”

Via Daily Dharma: Leap into Life

We have a choice. We can complacently watch life from the sidelines, or we can risk our pride, our ideas, and whatever else we use to separate ourselves from others and leap fully into our life.

—Michael Wenger, “Entering the Lotus”

Via Daily Dharma: Tap into What’s Truly There

On the long path of practice we move from living from our self-images and our many stories to living more from our deepest values, our most authentic self.

—Ezra Bayda, “No One Special To Be”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 19, 2018

There is a lovely story of a boy who goes to a Zen Master and asks, “Master, I know you have many students, but if I study harder than all the rest of them, how long will it take me to get enlightened?” The master said, “ten years.” The boy said, “well, if I work day and night and double my efforts, how long will it take?” The master said, “twenty years.” Now the boy talked of further achievement and the master said, “thirty years.” The boy replied, “why do you keep adding years?” And the master answered, “since you will have one eye on the goal, there will only be one eye left to have on the work. And it will slow you down immeasurably.”

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Growth Demands Wholehearted Effort

When you admit to yourself, “I must make this change to be more happy”—not because the Buddha said so, but because your heart recognized a deep truth—you must devote all your energy to making the change.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Getting Started”

Via Daily Dharma: Say “Yes!”

Think of equanimity as the ability to quickly and deeply say “Yes!” to each new sensory arising.

—Shinzen Young, “The Power of Gone”

Via Prince Ea / The Simple Secret to Happiness

 

The Buddha was once asked a question by a very frantic disciple.
He asked…

“Buddha! Buddha! Just give me the secret, just please,
just give me the answer; how do I become enlightened?
I gotta go, I just need something quick! Please, can you just
give it to me right now?”

The Buddha replied, “No, no, no. It can’t be done.”

The disciple begged, “I gotta go, I gotta go! Please, please just
tell me. Just tell me, I gotta go, please!”

Then the Buddha said, “Ok, I will give you the secret. Here it is:
When you eat, eat. When you drink, drink.”

That was it. The most powerful practice you can do every day.

To be here now. To only focus on what you’re doing. 

When you walk, walk. When you’re with somebody, be with them.

Don’t be thinking about a million things, don’t be stressing about
the past or the future, just be with them. 

Just be here now.

Love, 

Prince Ea

Via Daily Dharma: Adopt a Sacred Outlook

When we discover the Buddha that we are, we realize that everything and everyone is Buddha... When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that’s how we perceive the universe.

—Pema Chödrön, “Where is Buddha?”

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be] William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 15, 2018

The best preparation for dying is to be here now. Then when this moment is the moment of death, I will be here now, which is the optimum way to be when you’re dying. It’s quiet simple. It really is.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Enlightened Pause

In doing nothing, in simply stopping, we can live freely and true to ourselves and our liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Simply Stop”