A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
However the seed is
planted, in that way the fruit is gathered. Good things come from doing
good deeds, bad things come from doing bad deeds. (SN 11.10) What is the
purpose of a mirror? For the purpose of reflection. So too bodily
action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61)
When you wish to do an action with the body, reflect upon that same
bodily action thus: "Would this action I wish to do with the body lead
to the affliction of another?" If, upon reflection, you know that it
would, then do not do it; if you know that it would not, then proceed.
(MN 61)
Reflection
How much of our
bodily action is intentional, done with full awareness, and how much of
what we do is done out of habit? Seeing what you do as you do it, as
when you observe yourself in a mirror, is one of the metaphors used for
mindfulness.
Daily Practice
Practice acting
with full awareness. Even simple tasks like breathing and walking and
eating can be fields for training the capacity for mindfulness. Then the
ability will be available when more ethically challenging situations
arise. It is a matter of becoming more sensitive to the implications of
acting, and being more aware of everything we do. In this way we can
plant healthy fruit, rather than just dealing with whatever arises.
Tomorrow: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings One week from today: Reflecting upon Verbal Action
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
Self-help
might be like writing, or marriage—you might go through long stretches
of not trying, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t learned from your past
efforts and failures.
Mindfulness
is more than just a meditation practice. Mindfulness is life, and life
is love. That’s why it’s the whole path of the bodhisattva, says Zen
teacher Norman Fischer.
False speech is unhealthy.
Refraining from false speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning false speech,
one dwells refraining from false speech, a truth-speaker, one to be
relied on, trustworthy, dependable, not a deceiver of the world. One
does not in full awareness speak falsehood for one’s own ends, or for
another’s ends, or for some trifling worldly end. (DN 1) One practices
thus: "Others may speak falsely, but I shall abstain from false speech."
(MN 8)
Such speech as you know to be true and correct but unbeneficial, and
which is welcome and agreeable to others—do not utter such speech. (MN
58)
Reflection
Speaking
truthfully is a habit that can be learned, even if we have previously
learned the habit of speaking untruthfully. It is a matter of bringing
full awareness to your speech and its consequences. Often there may
appear to be a short-term benefit from speaking falsely, but the Buddha
is pointing out the long-term harm that false speech does to your
character. In the long run the lack of integrity is unhealthy.
Daily Practice
This passage is
urging us to speak only when what we say is likely to have a beneficial
effect on another person or on the situation at hand. It is not enough
to say things that are agreeable to others, even if they are true.
Flattery, for example, might have an unbeneficial effect on someone by
inflating their sense of themselves. Practice speaking only those words
that are going to be helpful.
Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Bodily Action One week from today: Refraining from Malicious Speech
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
When
you encounter a difficulty in your life, an impasse, solve it. If you
can solve it, it’s good. If you can’t solve it, it’s still good, as it’s
no longer your problem if you can’t solve it. It’s only a problem when
you solve it. So when you encounter challenges in life—it’s all good!
Guo Gu, “The Sound of a Bell, the Seven-Piece Robe”
The traditional date for the publication of the GUTENBERG BIBLE,
the first Western book printed from movable type thus transforming what
had been an apocryphal transcription and imprecise oral tradition into
rigid stone.
While the
Gutenberg Bible helped introduce printing to the West, the process was
already well established in other parts of the world. Chinese artisans
were pressing ink onto paper as early as the second century A.D., and by
the 800s, they had produced full-length books using wooden block
printing. Movable type also first surfaced in the Far East. Sometime
around the mid-11th century, a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng
developed a system of individual character types made from a mixture of
baked clay and glue. Metal movable type was later used in Korea to
create the “Jikji,” a collection of Zen Buddhist teachings. The Jikji
was first published in 1377, some 75 years before Johannes Gutenberg
began churning out his Bibles in Mainz, Germany.
By studying the
size of Gutenberg’s paper supply, historians have estimated that he
produced around 180 copies of his Bible during the early 1450s. That may
seem miniscule, but at the time there were probably only around 30,000
books in all of Europe. The splash that Gutenberg’s Bibles made is
evident in a letter the future Pope Pius II wrote to Cardinal Carvajal
in Rome. In it, he raves that the Bibles are “exceedingly clean and
correct in their script, and without error, such as Your Excellency
could read effortlessly without glasses.”
Most Gutenberg
Bibles contained 1,286 pages bound in two volumes, yet almost no two are
exactly alike. Of the 180 copies, some 135 were printed on paper, while
the rest were made using vellum, a parchment made from calfskin. Due to
the volumes’ considerable heft, it has been estimated that some 170
calfskins were needed to produce just one Gutenberg Bible from vellum.
Out of some 180
original printed copies of the Gutenberg Bible, 49 still exist in
library, university and museum collections. Less than half are complete,
and some only consist of a single volume or even a few scattered pages.
Germany stakes the claim to the most Gutenberg Bibles with 14, while
the United States has 10, three of which are owned by the Morgan Library
and Museum in Manhattan. The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible
took place in 1978, when a copy went for a cool $2.2 million. A lone
volume later sold for $5.4 million in 1987, and experts now estimate a
complete copy could fetch upwards of $35 million at auction.
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Whatever you intend,
whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will
become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop
meditation on lovingkindness, for when you develop meditation on
lovingkindness, all ill will will be abandoned. (MN 62)
The manifestation of lovingkindness is the removal of annoyance. (Vm 9.93)
Reflection
Only one
experience occurs at a time. Each one replaces the one before it and is
itself replaced by the next. This happens in rapid succession as the
stream of consciousness flows on. It feels like a continuous event, much
as the still images displayed rapidly in a movie theater merge into a
flowing story, but in fact, each mind moment is organized around a
single object, with a single emotional response.
Daily Practice
This means that
when you are feeling kindly or benevolent toward a particular person or
in a particular situation, you cannot at the same time feel ill will or
anger or annoyance. The beauty of lovingkindness is that it replaces
negative emotions in the mind. Next time you feel even slightly annoyed
by someone or something, try conjuring up an attitude of kindness toward
something and watch the annoyance disappear.
Tomorrow: Refraining from False Speech One week from today: Cultivating Compassion
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
You
could describe the whole process [of mindful attention] as love. You
could say, “I’m giving attention to my breath,” or “I’m giving attention
to painting the windows.” But it’s equally, “I’m learning how to love
this in-breath, learning how to love this brushstroke.” The spareness
drops away.
Martin Aylward in conversation with James Shaheen and Sharon Salzberg, “Coming Back to Embodiment”
RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
When people have met with
suffering and become victims of suffering, they come to me and ask me
about the noble truth of suffering. Being asked, I explain to them the
noble truth of suffering. (MN 77) What is suffering? (MN 9)
Death is suffering. The passing away of beings, their dissolution,
disappearance, dying, completion of time, dissolution of aggregates,
laying down of the body. (MN 9)
Reflection
It is natural
that we experience a great deal of mental pain when someone we love
dies. Such pain is an inevitable part of life. The Buddha never said
there is a way to make pain go away. How much suffering it causes,
however, is another matter. Pain is amplified by our resentment of it
and our resistance to it, and by our wishing it would go away. Pain is
diminished by our turning toward it, accepting it, and attempting to
learn from it.
Daily Practice
Reflect on the
poignancy of death, either the death of someone dear to you or your own
inevitable death. Allow yourself to feel the sorrow, which is an
expression of mental pain. This is natural. Also allow yourself to feel
strong, whole, and balanced in the midst of the sorrow. Mental pain,
like physical pain, is something to be examined carefully and with
equanimity. We need not feel overwhelmed by it.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Lovingkindness One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
The
Buddha taught that there is no birth and no death. Our belief that
these ideas about birth and death are real creates a powerful illusion
that causes us a great deal of suffering. When we understand that we
can’t be destroyed, we’re liberated from fear. It’s a huge relief. We
can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.
