Via LionsRoar: How to Practice Hugging Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh

In my hermitage I have planted beautiful trees. When I do walking meditation, I often stop and hug one of the trees, breathing in and out. It’s very nourishing. The tree gives me strength, and it always seems to me that the tree responds to my hugging and breathing.

A tree is always available, but I’m not so sure about a person! Often, we’re not really there with the people we love. We get caught up in other things, like our work or the news on TV. Hugging meditation is a practice of awareness. If we’re not available, how can we hug someone? We return to ourselves to become totally present and available for the other person. If hugging isn’t done in this spirit, it’s only a ritual without content. When we’re mindful and present, hugging has a deep power to heal, transform, and bring reconciliation.

When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.

We may practice hugging meditation with a friend, our child, a parent, our partner, or a tree. The hugging can be very deep. Life is there. Happiness is there. 

Sometimes the hugging is not very deep and the hugger only pretends to be there, perhaps by patting you on the back—I have some experience of this! When someone hugs you with all their heart and presence, you feel it. When someone takes your hands in mindfulness, with their presence, their concern, you feel it. So hug like that—make life real and deep. It will heal both of you.

Hugging meditation is something I invented. In 1966, a friend drove me to the Atlanta airport, and when we were saying goodbye, she asked, “Is it all right to hug a Buddhist monk?” In my country, we are not used to expressing ourselves this way in public. But I thought, “I am a Zen teacher. It shouldn’t be a problem for me to do this.” So, I said, “Why not?” and she hugged me, but I was rather stiff. Later, on the plane, I decided that if I wanted to work with friends in the West, I would have to learn the culture of the West. That is why I invented hugging meditation.

Hugging in public is a Western practice. Meditation, conscious breathing, is an Eastern practice. The two come together in hugging meditation. I think it’s a good combination. For Buddhist practice to be rooted in the West, new dharma doors should be opened. I think hugging meditation can be considered one of these doors. The practice of mindful hugging has helped so many people to reconcile with each other. When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.

It’s a pleasure to hug someone we love. But don’t think it’s something easy. 

Maybe we want to hug the other person, but they aren’t available—they’re caught in their anger, worries, or projects. Hugging is a deep practice and both people need to be completely present to do it correctly. That’s why it’s not always easy. So, we have to learn how.

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 14, 2019 💌

In yoga, one of the methods is called 'contentment'. That’s not a goal, that’s a method.
I can be content this moment, and the next moment I’m moving toward something else. When I am here I am content, when I am here I am content, when I am here I am content. So even though you are going to change something the next minute, that doesn’t mean you change it out of discontent. It changes because it changes.
That is the basis that you do everything in yoga.

-  Ram Dass  -

Via Daily Dharma: How We Arrive at Our Views

Once we perceive, we habitually jump to thoughts and feelings about what is being perceived. These thoughts and feelings, rooted in past experiences and conditioning, then influence the mood of our mind. When perception, thoughts, and feelings are repeated or imprinted through experiences, they solidify into view or belief.

—Ruth King, “Mindful of Race”

Via AHHO 333 / FB:

Si te molesta el calor, planta un árbol.
Si te molesta el agua, planta un árbol.
Si te gustan las frutas, planta un árbol.
Si te gustan las aves, planta un árbol.
Y si te gusta la vida, planta muchos árboles.

Via Daily Dharma: Face What’s to Come

We should not be passive about death. We should not just procrastinate or assume that we have time. That will not help. It’s unavoidable, so bring it in front of us and think about it. Doing so can improve our life.

—Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche, “Every Day Is a Bonus”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - August 11, 2019 💌

The three levels of compassionate action that I see are: You do compassionate action as best you can as an exercise on yourself to come closer to God, to spirit, to awareness, to One.
Next is you start to appreciate that you’re a part of something larger than yourself and you are an instrument of God. No longer are you doing it to get there, you’re now doing it as an instrument. 

And third is where you lose self-consciousness and you are God manifest. You’re part of the hand of God. Then you’re not doing anything. It’s just God manifest.
How do you get to that third one? By honoring others and being patient.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Discovering True Clarity

In consistent practice you begin to see that your initial ideas about it were just that: ideas. It can be hard to let go of the dream, of the seductive promise of ease and clarity. But in dropping those ideas, you might find yourself opening to the ease of the breath rising and falling, a clarity felt, not imagined.

—Alex Tzelnic, “Dreaming Up, And Revising, Our Buddhist Practice”

Via Lionsroar: How should Buddhists respond to the gun violence epidemic?

After December, 2015’s mass-shooting in San Bernadino, Zen teacher Lewis Richmond had to wonder: What is an appropriate or effective response as a Buddhist?

 

Since such events evoke strong visceral emotions, including fear, I thought it might be helpful to report some facts about gun violence in America I have gleaned from my recent readings. Some of these are rather counterintuitive. 

For example, in the last 30 years the overall incidence of gun violence has dropped rather dramatically. Yes, it’s true. In fact, serious crime of all types dropped in that period too, perhaps due to the decline in drug related violence. Another fact: since 9/11, there have been about 100 deaths in America from terrorist violence; during that same period, overall deaths from guns (which include many incidents of suicides and domestic violence) exceeds deaths from the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined. Every day, every week, large numbers of Americans are killed by guns, a situation that is unique in the developed world.

Since the subject of gun control has been much in the air and in the news, here is another counterintuitive fact: the ratio of gun-owning households has declined significantly in the last 20 years, while the overall number of guns in America (around 300 million now) has gone up markedly in the same period. This means that people who own guns do not own just one; they own 5, 10, 20, 100—or in one recent case, 5000. There are also differences of geography and ethnicity. Per capita household ownership of guns is highest in the South, lowest in the Pacific seaboard and the Northeast.  Whites own substantially more guns per capita than people of color such as Latinos, Asians and African-Americans. Even if strict gun control laws were passed tomorrow, unless we were actually willing to confiscate most guns (as Australia did after a mass shooting there), those 300 million guns would still be out there. This near-infinite supply of firearms is like a dangerous horse who left the barn a long time ago.  Good luck trying to get the horse back in the barn.

I don’t think this means we should just meditate, say the loving-kindness prayer, and so on. I think our response needs to be more muscular and practical than that. When someone is firing randomly into a crowd with a semi-automatic rifle, the loving-kindness prayer is not going to help.

I regret that I cannot offer citations for all these facts; I did not realize I was going to be writing a piece like this at the time I read them. I know my sources were all reputable news sites, and that their data came largely from the FBI database of crime statistics. I report all of this because, among other things, Buddhism is based on the observation of how things actually are.

So I feel our response as Buddhists should also be based on facts rather than emotion. The first and foremost precept of Buddhism is ahimsa—non-violence, non-harm, no unnecessary harm. This is true of all sects and traditions of Buddhism past and present. I feel strongly that as Buddhists we should represent our non-harm precept in any way we can, and be prepared to stand up for it. I don’t think this means we should just meditate, say the loving-kindness prayer, and so on. I think our response needs to be more muscular and practical than that. When someone is firing randomly into a crowd with a semi-automatic rifle, the loving-kindness prayer is not going to help. We should also remember the first noble truth of Buddhism,  that human existence is marked by suffering. This doesn’t just mean that people suffer now and then, it means that because of our human tendency to yield to the three “poisons” of greed, anger, and confusion, human beings are constantly creating wars, injustice, exploitation, cruelty, and many forms of unimaginable suffering. We always have and to some extent always will. Wars are so terrible that we easily arrange to forget them. But they are horrible—always.  

My teacher Suzuki Roshi lived through the worst of World War II in Japan (he was not drafted into the Army and lived out the war in his home temple, probably performing a lot of funerals for young men). When asked about the war, he just said, “My whole country went crazy.”

It may seem as though we are living in a particularly violent historical time, but the psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker has researched this point exhaustively, and his conclusion is that the incidence of war, violence, and cruelty has been steadily decreasing over the last 1000 years.  Yes, from his point of view we are actually making progress, snail-like though it may seem. That seems to me to be a useful and little-remarked-upon perspective.

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Via Daily Dharma: Self-Care Helps You Help Others

Thinking of yourself first, when your goal is to help others, might seem counterintuitive, but in fact it is the only way it can work. In the end, the notion of putting oneself last is really an inside-out form of self-cherishing. That’s why during pre-flight instructions the flight attendant says to put on your own oxygen mask first.

—Cyndi Lee, “May I Be Happy”

Via Daily Dharma: Mindfully Open Your Heart

With regular mindfulness practice… we witness how we close our hearts to other human beings. Once we see this clearly, we can practice opening our hearts to everyone, including ourselves.

—Ronya Fakhoury Banks, “How Buddhism Helped Me Embrace My Palestinian Heritage”

Via Kick the Ick / FB

"Some words of wisdom for those of us that may be looking at the moment, or even those who have 'given up', 'giving up' doesn't make much sense, the universe is love, go find it rather than hoping it finds you!"

Via Daily Dharma: Permission to Move Forward

May we know we’ve been abandoned by the past, that the past has left us and moved on. So too have previous versions of our bodies left us, so too have previous iterations of the earth and its ecology left us.

—Leora Fridman, “Notes on Abandon”

Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith - "Lotus Born, No Need to Fear"

Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith perform "Lotus Born, No Need to Fear" off 'Songs from the Bardo', available 9/27/2019 and available for pre-order: https://orcd.co/songsfromthebardo

Via LGBTQ Nation: Anti-gay pastor quits Christianity, leaves wife & marches in Pride parade as atonement

Anti-gay pastor quits Christianity, leaves wife & marches in Pride parade as atonement

"I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church. I hope you can forgive me."

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Via ACLU / FB:

Via Via / Words of Wisdom - August 7, 2019 💌

Wisdom and knowledge are two entirely different matters. Knowledge is very finite. The collection of objective knowledge is like a drop in the bucket compared to what it is to be wise.

Being wise is when you get out of the time-space locus that says, ‘I am me who knows.’ And then you merge with that which is around you. You become wisdom.

When you become wisdom, you don’t know you know. You gave that one up. But you are wise. Then whatever response comes out of you is the optimum response. At the same time nothing is happening inside you at all.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Benefits of the Unfamiliar

A sense of defamiliarization is a recurring feature of spiritual life, and it can come to us in many ways—in art, in travel, in practice. However it comes, it offers an opportunity for openness and intimacy, both, if one can allow oneself to fall into them.

—Henry Shukman, “Far from Home”

Via Daily Dharma: The Circle of Attention

What gets our attention in the present is colored by our impulses and innate disposition—our habits of thought developed in the past.

—Sandra Weinberg, “Eating and the Wheel of Life”

Via Daily Dharma: When Transformation Comes

Transformation is not something you do but something that happens when the conditions are right.

—Ken McLeod, “Anger”