Friday, June 14, 2019
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Making Space for Happiness
The joy of letting go comes from insight into what truly brings happiness and suffering, and choosing the lasting happiness. Letting go may take some work but it can be a joyous relief.
—Hai An (Sister Ocean), “The Joy of Letting Go: Spring Cleaning Inside and Out”
—Hai An (Sister Ocean), “The Joy of Letting Go: Spring Cleaning Inside and Out”
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: The Wonder of Not Knowing
The
fact that we don’t know—that nothing is certain and we therefore can’t
hold on to anything—can evoke fear and depression, but it can also evoke
a sense of wonder, curiosity, and freedom. Some of our best moments
come when we haven’t yet decided what will happen next.
—Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, “Open Stillness”
—Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, “Open Stillness”
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 12, 2019 💌
Surrender who you think you are and what you think you are doing into
what is. It is mind boggling to think that spirituality is dying into
yourself.
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Embrace Slowing Down
When
you look at getting stuck in traffic as an opportunity to slow down
(literally!), it can seem like more of a blessing than a nightmare.
Getting stressed out won’t make those cars go any faster. Finding ways
to enjoy it is a lot more rewarding. It makes it feel less like wasting
time.
—Brad Warner, “How to Not Waste Time”
—Brad Warner, “How to Not Waste Time”
Monday, June 10, 2019
Via PsychologyToday: Buddhism and the Blues
Buddhism and the blues
Buddhist psychology’s core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners.By: Hara Estroff Marano
From: Psychology Today
To most people Buddhism is an ancient Eastern religion, although a very special one. It has no god, it has no central creed or dogma and its primary goal is the expansion of consciousness, or awareness.
But to the Dalai Lama, it’s a highly refined tradition, perfected over the course of 2,500 years, of analyzing and investigating the inner world of the mind in order to transform mental states and promote happiness. “Whether you are a believer or not in the faith,” the Dalai Lama told a conference of Buddhists and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can use its time-honored techniques to voluntarily control your emotional state.
Yes, the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of over 300 million Buddhists worldwide. Yes, he is the head of the Tibetan government in exile. But in the spirit of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama has an inquiring mind and wishes to expand human knowledge to improve lives. At its core, Buddhism is a system of inquiry into the nature of what is.
He believes that psychology and neuroscience have gone about as far as they can go in understanding the mind and brain by measuring external reality. Now that inner reality—the nature of consciousness—is the pressing subject du jour, the sciences need to borrow from the knowledge base that Buddhism has long cultivated.
Towards a science of consciousness
A comprehensive science of the mind requires a science of consciousness. Buddhism offers what MIT geneticist Eric Lander, Ph.D., called a “highly refined technology” of introspective practices that provide systematic access to subjective experience. Yet Buddhist psychology offers more than a method of investigation. Its core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners, whose material comforts have not wiped out rampant emotional distress.
The Buddhist view of how the mind works is somewhat different from the traditional Western view. Western psychology pretty much holds to the belief that things like attention and emotion are fixed and immutable. Buddhism sees the components of the mind more as skills that can be trained. This view has increasing support from modern neuroscience, which is almost daily providing new evidence of the brain’s capacity for change and growth.
Buddhism uses intelligence to control the emotions. Through meditative practices, awareness can be trained and focused on the contents of the mind to observe ongoing experience. Such techniques are of growing interest to Western psychologists, who increasingly see depression as a disorder of emotional mismanagement. In this view, attention is hijacked by negative events and then sets off a kind of chain reaction of negative feeling, thinking and behavior that has its own rapidity and inevitability.
Techniques of awareness permit the cultivation of self-control. They allow people to break the negative emotional chain reaction and head off the hopelessness and despair it leads to. By focusing attention, it is possible to monitor your environment, recognize a negative stimulus and act on it the instant it registers on awareness. While attention as traditional psychologists know it can be an exhausting mental activity, as Buddhists practice it it actually becomes a relaxing and effortless enterprise.
One way of meditation is to use breathing techniques in which you focus on the breathing and let any negative stimulus just go by—instead of bringing it into your working memory, where you are likely to sit and ruminate about it and thus amplify its negativity. It’s a way of unlearning the self-defeating ways you somehow acquired of responding catastrophically to negative experiences.
Read the rest of this article
Via Daily Dharma: Listening with an Open Mind
It’s
hard to listen without judgment, to tolerate ambiguity, paradox, and in
some cases, ignorance. But if we are ever to experience any measure of
true peace, this is something we will all need to learn.
—Tina Lear, “Having Real Conversations (Even with My Sister)”
—Tina Lear, “Having Real Conversations (Even with My Sister)”
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: When the Curtain Drops
In
order to open—in meditation and in life in general—we must let go of
our familiar thoughts and emotions, we must step out from behind the
safe curtain of our inner rehearsals and onto the stage of reality, even
if it’s for just a brief moment.
—Michael Carroll, “Bringing Spiritual Confidence in the Workplace”
—Michael Carroll, “Bringing Spiritual Confidence in the Workplace”
Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 9, 2019 💌
The first step of karma yoga is to get free of the attachments to your own life, to develop a witness. We have thousands and thousands of me’s and there is one me that watches all the other me’s, right? That’s the only game. It’s not trying to change any of the me’s.
It’s not the evaluator, and it’s not the judge, it’s not the super ego. It doesn’t care about anything. It just notes, ‘hmmm, there he is doing that.’ That witness, that place inside you, is your centering device. And that begins to be the work one does on oneself. Once one understands there is a place in oneself that one is not attached, the first job is to extricate yourself from attachment.
It’s not the evaluator, and it’s not the judge, it’s not the super ego. It doesn’t care about anything. It just notes, ‘hmmm, there he is doing that.’ That witness, that place inside you, is your centering device. And that begins to be the work one does on oneself. Once one understands there is a place in oneself that one is not attached, the first job is to extricate yourself from attachment.
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Beginning with the Present Momen
Even
if you practice meditation to become a paragon of love and wisdom, all
it can do is put you face-to-face with who you are and with what is,
which is where all meditation begins.
—Stephen Schettini, “What to Expect When You’re Reflecting”
—Stephen Schettini, “What to Expect When You’re Reflecting”
Friday, June 7, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Let Self-Centeredness Breeze Through
Greed,
hatred, and ignorance arise in our minds, and if we build a self on
them, we’re trapped. But if we don’t make our nest there, though
self-centered thoughts come, they also go like the wind that shakes the
branches and then disappears.
—Rafe Martin, “The Brave Parrot: Being Small in a Big, Troubled World”
—Rafe Martin, “The Brave Parrot: Being Small in a Big, Troubled World”
Via Tricycle: Five Stories to Mark 50 Years Since Stonewall
2019 marks 50 years since the New York City police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Though police arresting people for expressing a different gender than listed on their driver’s license (or demanding bribes) was not uncommon, rebellion was, and the riots and protests that followed launched the Gay Rights Movement.
For the last 50 years, cities across the globe have held parades and cultural events during Pride Month to celebrate the LGBTQ community and to raise awareness on pressing issues such as AIDS and marriage equality.
In the words of meditation teacher Jay Michaelson: “It’s no secret that many LGBTQ people have found refuge in the dharma, and it’s easy to see why. It helps us with the wounds of homophobia, recognizing internalized self-hatred for the delusion and dukkha [suffering] that it is.” Here are five Tricycle stories to celebrate Buddhism’s inclusivity this Pride Month.
1.Does Buddhism Support Sexual and Gender Minorities?
https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/does-buddhism-support-sexual-and-gender-minorities/
Buddhism for Beginners
2. Having Real Conversations (Even with My Sister)
By Tina Lear
3. We’re Queer and We’ve Been Here
By Dr. Jay Michaelson
4. This Buddhist Life: Kodo Nishimura
By Marie Scarles
5. Becoming Jivaka
By Pagan Kennedy
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Via Daily Dharma: Meeting Emotions as Friends
We
have our mind and our thoughts, and they can rev up emotions. But if we
use our emotions as the object of meditation, as our friend and
support, it’s like standing on the bank of the river and observing.
—Pema Chödrön, “Meditating with Emotions”
—Pema Chödrön, “Meditating with Emotions”
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Via Lion's Roar / Is Buddhism a religion, philosophy, way of life, or science of mind?
Illustration by Nolan Pelletier.
I’m confused. Buddhism is considered one of the world’s five great religions, but some people say it’s not a religion at all, but a philosophy, way of life, or science of mind. Which is it?
The answer is really about how you define religion. On one hand, Buddhism looks a lot like every other religion, with monastics, temples, sacred texts, rituals, congregations, etc. So by the “if it quacks like a duck” sociological definition, it’s a religion. On the other hand, most people define religion as believing in some sort of God or Creator, which Buddhism does not. They consider the concept of “nontheistic religion” a contradiction in terms, so they label Buddhism as a philosophy, way of life, or science of mind (and many Buddhists in the West agree). We would like to offer a third definition: religion is that which posits a nonmaterial spiritual reality (whether God or mind) and asserts we continue in some way after death. By that definition, combined with the sociological and historical realities, we come down on the side that Buddhism is a religion—and all those other things too.
Thank you for reading Lion’s Roar. Now can we ask for your help?
Lion’s Roar is a nonprofit. Our mission
is to share the wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings—to inspire, comfort,
support, and enlighten readers around the world. Our aspiration is to
keep LionsRoar.com available to everyone,
providing a supportive, inspiring Buddhist community that anyone can
access, from curious beginners to committed meditators. Do you share our
aspiration? We can’t do this without your help.
Lion’s Roar reaches more readers like you
than ever before. Unfortunately, advertising and other revenues are
falling for print and online media. We know we have something deeply
precious to share with the world, and we want to continue this important
work. Can you help support our efforts now?
Lion’s Roar is independent, unbiased,
not-for-profit, and supported by readers like you. Please donate today
and help the lion’s roar echo for readers around the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)