Via Daily Dharma: Why We Need Sangha

 Many have said to me that they do not need Sangha. My response has been, ‘Then where will you go when you begin to experience liberation? Who will know the journey you have taken and your vow to be awake?’

Interview with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel by Tricycle,
“Difference and Harmony: An Interview with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Equanimity

 

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Equanimity

Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis upon which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on equanimity, for when you develop meditation on equanimity, all aversion is abandoned. (MN 62)  Equanimity fails when it produces the ordinary indifference of the uninformed. (Vm 9.96) Having thought a mental object with the mind, one is neither glad-minded nor sad-minded but abides with equanimity, mindful and fully aware. (AN 6.1)

Reflection

Equanimity is often confounded with indifference or detachment, but this is far from accurate. These two are mild forms of aversion in which a person chooses to push their interest away from an object or deliberately remove awareness from attending to what is present. Equanimity is the opposite of these, engaging the object with heightened awareness but without being pulled by attraction or pushed away by aversion.

Daily Practice

See if you can cultivate the attitude of equanimity, so important to the practice of mindfulness, as a refined state of mind. Equanimity is not a lack of interest but a state of heightened curiosity. It does not mean that you don’t care about something but that your caring about it is not driven by likes and dislikes. As you regard the thoughts flowing through your mind, abide with equanimity, mindful and fully aware.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Frivolous Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Lovingkindness

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

And what is the way leading to the cessation of suffering? It is just this noble eightfold path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. (MN 9) One perfects their ethical behavior by abandoning false speech. (DN 2)

Reflection

The traditional path toward the cessation of suffering works on many fronts simultaneously, integrating healthy modes of living with practices for mental development and the slow but steady growth of understanding. In this passage the importance of telling the truth is emphasized as a crucial form of ethical behavior. Developing the wisdom of right view is built on a foundation of truthfulness.

Daily Practice

Practice telling the truth. Refrain from stretching it, bending it, obscuring it, avoiding it, shading it, and all the other ways we have learned to handle the truth that are other than entirely straightforward. You may notice that this is actually quite difficult, since we regularly speak falsely in little ways. Try being absolutely scrupulous about saying what is accurate and not intended to mislead anyone in any way.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Equanimity
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering

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Via Daily Dharma: A Most Essential Journey

 If, like the Buddha, we are to succeed in realizing our full humanity, we have to let go of what lies between us and our authentic selves. Hard as it may be to undertake, this journey is the most essential and human of all, a fulfillment of our story as travelers on this earth.

Ann Tashi Slater, “Leaving the Palace”

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Via Tricycle // Ocean Vuong

Getting Close to the Terror with Ocean Vuong

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Buddhist poet Ocean Vuong to discuss his new collection, Time Is a Mother.

 

May 7, 2022

Writing through Loss

 
Writing is a way of grieving for Ocean Vuong, the 33-year-old poet, best-selling author, and Buddhist practitioner. 

After losing his mother to breast cancer in 2019 and then being forced into pandemic lockdown, he realized, as he says, that he is “always grieving.” Vuong describes his poetry as a form of death meditation, a contemplation of loss reminiscent of the Buddhist rituals he grew up with. 

“It’s a place where death doesn’t even have to be mentioned in order to be felt, which is something that I’m really interested in as an artist: how do I have a felt-absence effect in the work?” he says. “Sometimes you can feel that death and dying haunt the work without it having to be named.”

On the latest episode of our Life As It Is podcast, Vuong joins Sharon Salzberg and Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, for an intimate conversation on loss, creativity, and his latest collection of poetry, Time Is A Mother.
 

Listen to the full episode now »

 

 

LGBTQ Baha'i Experience Episode 1: Dan and Alexis Ware story

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Via Daily Dharma: A Mother’s Love

 Our potential for equanimity can be modeled in and learned from the love parents show children. Listen to the person in traffic, the person who smiles, the person who never glances our way. Listen for the echoes of your crying child. What does she need? Go to her. Pick her up. Wrap her in your acceptance and rock her to sleep.

Sarah Aceto, “As If I Were Your Mother”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and the Third Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Mind

A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: “Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content.” (SN 47.10)   When the mind is devoid of confusion, one is aware: “The mind is devoid of confusion.”… One is just aware, just mindful: “There is mind.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

There are moments in meditation practice when one stumbles upon a “sweet spot” and the mind becomes clear, if only for a moment. When the mind is not too restless and not too sluggish, not drawn toward or away from whatever is happening, for a moment it seems to emerge from confusion. It is good to acknowledge such moments and abide in them "ardent, fully aware, mindful." It is good to feel content.

Daily Practice

As you sit quietly today for ten or twenty or sixty minutes—or maybe, since it’s Sunday, for much longer—notice the flow of events in your field of experience with heightened awareness. Many different factors arise and pass away, all impermanent. We forget sometimes that confusion too is impermanent; we are not always in its thrall. Notice the times when the mind gets free of confusion and knows and sees things as they are.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Third Phase of Absorption (3rd Jhāna)

With the fading away of joy, one abides in equanimity; mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body, one enters upon and abides in the third phase of absorption, on account of which noble ones announce: “One has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful”. (MN 4)

Reflection

Remember that jhāna practice is not something that can be undertaken lightly or sporadically and usually requires the protected conditions of a retreat center and the guidance of an experienced teacher. The jhānas are mentioned a lot in the early texts, and form the core discussion of right concentration. But mostly we just hear the standard formula repeated in various contexts, without much detail on how to practice.

Daily Practice

The transition from the second to the third phase of absorption has to do with the mellowing of joy, which is an almost effervescent energetic upwelling of pleasant bodily sensation into the experience of mental and emotional equanimity. The body still experiences pleasure, but the mind settles into an even and balanced awareness of the pleasant feeling tone that is not attached to it in any way.

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and Abiding in the Fourth Jhāna

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 8, 2022 💌

 
 

“What happens is, when the grief runs its natural course… you come to the point where you realize that you’ve tasted something with that person that was such a living moment that that moment still exists independent of death. There’s a moment when we recognize that love transcends death. And that has to happen experientially, and it has to happen when grief runs its natural course.”

- Ram Dass -

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