Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling

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 feeling a mental painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling a mental painful feeling”. . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is feeling.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Just as physical pleasure and pain are inevitable, so too are mental pleasure and pain. There is no use in trying to avoid mental pain, since it is an integral part of our experience, but it need not inevitably lead to suffering. Just as you might be aware of the pain of a stubbed toe and yet retain your mental and emotional balance, you can also turn toward and experience mental pain and hold it with healthy equanimity.

Daily Practice

Mental pain includes such things as sorrow and unhappiness. When we think about the loss of someone we care about, it hurts. When we open to the suffering of others, it hurts. Such pain is an intrinsic part of the human condition and is not to be avoided. Allow yourself to feel sorrow or even unhappiness and notice that it need not evoke unhealthy emotions such as despair or anguish. This too can just be held in awareness.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)

With the stilling of applied and sustained thought, one enters upon and abides in the second phase of absorption, which has inner clarity and singleness of mind, without applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4) One practices: “I shall breathe in experiencing pleasure"; one practices: “I shall breathe out experiencing pleasure.” This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (SN 54.8)

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via White Crane Institute // Feast Day of SAINTS JOHN AND PAUL

 

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Saints John and Paul

2018 -

It is the Feast Day of SAINTS JOHN AND PAUL, martyred lovers According to their Acts, which are of a legendary character and without recorded historical foundation, the martyrs were eunuchs (Galli) of Constantina daughter of Constantine the Great, and became acquainted with a certain Gallicanus, who built a church in Ostia. At the command of Julian the Apostate, they were beheaded secretly by Terentianus in their house on the Cælian, where their church was subsequently erected, and where they themselves were buried. Galli (singular Gallus) was the Roman name for castrated followers of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, which were regarded as a third gender by contemporary Roman scholars, and are in some ways like transgendered people in the modern world. The chief of these priests was referred to as a battakes, and later as the archigallus.

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via White Crane Institute // Obergefell v Hodges

 

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Jim Obergefell

2015 -

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a landmark 5-4 decision, Obergefell v Hodges, rule that the Constitution of the United States assures the right to MARRIAGE EQUALITY FOR LGBT PEOPLE and that every state in the union must recognize and respect same-sex marriages. Heterosexual marriages begin crumbling…oh wait…that didn’t happen. Nevermind.

 

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 26, 2022 💌

 

"A couple of years ago I stopped lecturing and I just hung out at my house in Boston, taking care of my father. I wasn't full-time doing that. I was just part-time. But I was sort of helping do that. And there were many days each week when I would wake him up, take him to the bathroom, bathe him, toilet him, dress him, feed him, hang out with him. These were extraordinary periods for me, because in my mind somewhere was the idea of, how is this an Upaya, or a spiritual method? I went through so many. I went through so many...

What I did was I kept a diary of what it felt like to do this each day. To see if I could see through the veils that were created. First of all, the relationship between my father and I has changed so much over the years. We never touched each other when we were young. Now I hold him, I massage him, I dress him. When I'm putting on his socks, he pats me on the back and my heart just opens. It's so beautiful..."

Explore a new teaching article + video from Ram Dass: Caring for Family as a Spiritual Practice from a 1985 lecture at the SEVA Foundation Benefit.

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Kamishikimi Kumanoimasu Shrine in Kyushu by Kohei Yamakawa

Mindrolling – Raghu Markus – Ep. 445 – Transcendental Meditation with David Lynch

  Mindrolling – Raghu Markus – Ep. 445 – Transcendental Meditation with David Lynch
June 23, 2022 Legendary filmmaker, David Lynch, joins Raghu for a chat on finding true happiness, creativity and peace through Transcendental Meditation. David Lynch is a filmmaker,...

Listen Now

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT
Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks and ponders upon unhealthy states, one has abandoned healthy states to cultivate unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Abandoning ill will, one abides with a mind free from ill will, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings; one purifies the mind of ill will. (MN 51) Just as a person who had been bound in prison would get free of prison, so would one rejoice and be glad about the abandoning of ill will. (DN 2)

Reflection

Ill will, along with its synonyms hatred and aversion, can be likened to a disease from which we need to recover. It roils the mind like the boiling of water, preventing us from seeing clearly what arises in the mind, unlike water that is calm and therefore reflective of whatever stands before it. Here ill will is compared with being in prison: hatred has a way of trapping the mind and denying it the freedom it is capable of when unbound.

Daily Practice

When ill will comes up in your mind, abandon it. Just let it go. Anger and hatred are only sustained if we feed them. Since all mental and emotional states are transient, we need simply to allow them to pass through the mind unhindered. Normally we ruminate on what someone said or did and thereby sustain and amplify our ill will. Instead, watch ill will come up, notice that it is unhelpful and unhealthy, and let it go.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna
One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

NO KINK AT PRIDE!

LONESOME International Trailer

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Via Daily Dharma: A Welcome Detour

 What we call self-awareness comes via the detour we take when we encounter others, who show us to ourselves from a new angle. The differences we find in our world, then, offer us the priceless opportunity to become something more than we are now.

Kurt Spellmeyer, “Globalism 3.0” 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Lama Rod Owens

 

One of the things that drove me into activism and service in my teens was realizing that I was born into a culture that was trying to annihilate my body, spirit, and mind. I was pissed and heartbroken over this and I learned to channel this intense energy into spiritual practice and deeper activism. 

 

Right now I am remembering and calling on all the great beings who came before me and who are still with us now to remember my sacred commitment to never allow the darkness of hate, violence, state and systematic suppression to consume me. I will survive peoples’ weaponizing of their insecurity, narcissism, and trauma against me and my communities. I will not be quiet nor will I disappear. 

 

I am urging all you spiritual leaders, healers, mystics, intuitives, magik practitioners, and yogis to remember your power and confirm your allegiance to light, love, compassion, and community and disrupt this darkness and start acting up. Now is not the time to get more holy. Now is the time to get clear about protecting everyone’s right to be safe, happy, and resourced.

 

- Lama Rod Owens

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Via Lama Rod

 

 

Authentic Voices of Pride I Presented by Chevrolet at NewFest Pride.

Via Daily Dharma: Connect with the Resource of Pleasure

 Underneath our neuroses and all our pushing and pulling, most deeply, we’re glad to be here. Connect to the pleasure of relaxation, the pleasure of the fact that you’re able to breathe.

Martin Aylward, “Coming Back to Embodiment”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Taking What is Not Given

 

RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Taking What is Not Given  

Taking what is not given is unhealthy. Refraining from taking what is not given is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning the taking of what is not given, one abstains from taking what is not given; one does not take by way of theft the wealth and property of others. (MN 41) One practices thus: “Others may take what is not given, but I will abstain from taking what is not given.” (MN 8) On hearing a sound with the ear, one does not grasp at its signs and features. Since if one left the ear faculty unguarded, unwholesome states of covetousness and grief might intrude, one practices the way of its restraint, one guards the ear faculty, one undertakes the restraint of the ear faculty. (MN 51)

Reflection

This is another encouragement to be with what is happening without going beyond the experience and taking more than is given in the moment. The image of guarding the sense doors, as a watchman might guard the gate to a city, suggests the ability to choose what gets into the mind and what is turned away. It is a way of gaining some power and claiming some freedom over what happens to you.

Daily Practice

Practice along these lines: “In what is heard, there will be only what is heard.” As we work with each of the sense modalities in turn, we learn to be fully present with what is occurring without embellishing it or projecting our desires onto it. Can we hear without grasping? What does this feel like? Mindfulness practice involves being fully aware of what is presenting at the sense doors without getting swept away by it or swept beyond it.

Tomorrow: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via White Crane Institute // ELIZABETH EDWARDS

 

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The late Elizabeth Edwards

2004 -

"I don't know why somebody else's marriage has anything to do with me. I'm completely comfortable with Gay marriage. If he's pleasant to me on the street, if his children don't throw things in my yard, then I'm happy. It seems to me we're making issues of things that honestly don't matter." – The late ELIZABETH EDWARDS, ex-wife of Democratic presidential candidate (and narcissistic cad) John Edwards, speaking to reporters after her keynote speech to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. Her philandering husband responded by saying that he loves the way his wife always speaks her mind, but that he continued to only support civil unions for Gay couples all while having a child with another woman outside of his marriage and while his wife was fighting the cancer that would eventually take her life. Yeah...bye Felicia. Elizabeth Edwards deserved so much better.

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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