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

 

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) Association with the unpleasant is suffering. Whenever one has unwanted, disliked, unpleasant objects of sight, sound, smell, taste, tangibles or mind, or whenever one encounters ill wishers, wishers of harm, of discomfort, of insecurity, with whom they have concourse, intercourse, connection, union—this too is suffering. (MN 9)

Reflection

One obvious form of suffering is having to deal with things that are unpleasant and that we don’t like. This can take the shape of sensual inputs, such as horrible visual images, annoying sounds, foul flavors and odors, and painful physical sensations, and it can include mental images and thoughts that are repugnant. Notice also that the text mentions people who are difficult and even hostile as sources of suffering.

Daily Practice

Just as it is inevitable that you will experience painful sensations in your body from time to time, it is equally inevitable that you will come into contact with people who are unfriendly and even wish you ill. This is an opportunity for practice. It is a chance to respond to such people with caution, yes, but also with equanimity, at least, and perhaps even with kindness. Do not allow the ill will of others to provoke ill will in yourself.

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

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Go Beyond Mindfulness

 Constant observation of the breath can be so potent and effective that many Buddhist traditions understandably focus exclusively on this opening instruction. But this is not where the instructions end.

Will Johnson, “Rising and Falling: From Mindfulness to Bodyfullness”

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Via Daily Dharma: Nurturing Hope

 Hope is a flame that we nurture within our hearts. It may be sparked by someone else—by the encouraging words of a friend, relative, or mentor—but it must be fanned and kept burning through our own determination.

Daisaku Ikeda, “On Hardship & Hope”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects

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 energy-awakening factor is internally present, one is aware: “Energy is present for me.” When energy is not present, one is aware: “Energy is not present for me.” When the arising of unarisen energy occurs, one  is aware of that. And when the development and fulfillment of the arisen energy-awakening factor occurs, one is aware of that . . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is a mental object.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Energy is a mental factor, like so many others, that arises and passes away in the mind from one moment to another. We all know what it feels like to have too little energy and to give it a boost to accomplish a task, and what it feels like to have too much energy and to try to calm down using relaxation exercises. One way of practicing mindfulness of mental objects is to learn to look at and develop this awakening factor.

Daily Practice

See if you can gain an intuitive understanding of what the energy factor feels like in your own direct experience. Do this by noticing when it is present and when it is absent. Like isolating a muscle in the body for strengthening exercises, see if you can identify and strengthen the means of deliberately increasing or decreasing mental energy. This is an awakening factor because it is a crucial tool for developing the mind toward awakening.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Fourth Phase of Absorption (4th Jhāna)

With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, one enters upon and abides in the fourth phase of absorption, which has neither-pain-nor-pleasure and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. The concentrated mind is thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability. (MN 4) One practices: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing mental formations;” one practices: “I shall breathe out tranquilizing mental formations.” 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  Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation -- Words of Wisdom - July 10, 2022 💌

 
 

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 Be Here Now Network

  Mindrolling – Raghu Markus – Ep. 447 – Music & Mindfulness with Richard Wolf
July 08, 2022 Music legend, Richard Wolf, joins Raghu for a discussion on music and mindfulness, silence and listening, John Coltrane and nonduality, and music as self-transcendence....

Listen Now

Via Be Here Now Network

  David Nichtern – Creativity, Spirituality & Making a Buck – Ep. 36 – Applied Dharma w/ Miriam Parker
July 08, 2022 In this episode, David and Miriam have a vulnerable conversation about the nature of practice and how to apply it in our creative lives....

Listen Now

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States

RIGHT EFFORT
Maintaining Arisen Healthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate the healthy state, and then one’s mind inclines to the healthy states. (MN 19) Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to maintain arisen healthy mental states. One maintains the arisen investigation of states-awakening factor. (MN 141)

Reflection

Because the mind is inclined in the direction of whatever you frequently think about and ponder, influencing your own mind becomes the way of changing yourself for better or worse. When healthy states arise, such as kindness or insight or mindfulness, or when the factor of awakening called the investigation of states is present, this is beneficial and needs to be maintained through the deliberate and skillful application of effort.

Daily Practice

When mindfulness is present enough to give rise to the awakening factor of the investigation of mental and emotional states, do what you can to strengthen and maintain this quality of mind. Investigating your own experience is the primary way of gaining wisdom, but like so many other habits of value in our lives, it does not just happen by itself and requires the application of effort. This is worthwhile to do, so do it.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna
One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

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Via Daily Dharma: Making Friends with Our Ego

 It is possible to take a friendly relationship to our ego natures, it is possible to appreciate the aesthetic play of forms in emptiness, and to exist in this place like majestic kings of our own consciousness.

Allen Ginsberg, “Negative Capability: Kerouac’s Buddhist Ethic”

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Via White Crane Institute // JUNE JORDAN

 

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Poet June Jordan

1936 -

Poet, teacher and community activist JUNE JORDAN was born on this date in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents (d: 2002). Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-1970 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Women’s Foundation in 1994. Jordan attended Barnard College. She was an activist, poet, writer, teacher, and prominent figure in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and LGBTQ movements of the twentieth century. 

Of her career, Toni Morrison wrote, "I am talking about a span of forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art."

 

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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 // MINOR WHITE

 

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Minor White portrait by Imogen Cunningham

1908 -

MINOR WHITE  was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator born on this date (d: 1976). He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies. Starting in Oregon in 1937 and continuing until he died in 1976, White made thousands of black-and-white and color photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter, created with both technical mastery and a strong visual sense of light and shadow. He taught many classes, workshops, and retreats on photography at the California School of Fine Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other schools, and in his own home. He lived much of his life as a closeted gay man, afraid to express himself publicly for fear of loss of his teaching jobs, and some of his most compelling images are figure studies of men whom he taught or with whom he had relationships. He helped start, and for many years was editor of, the photography magazine Aperture. After his death in 1976, White was hailed as one of America's greatest photographers.

White took up photography while very young but set it aside for a number of years to study botany and, later, poetry. He began to photograph seriously in 1937. His early years as a photographer were spent working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Portland, Ore. Many WPA photographers were chiefly concerned with documentation; White, however, preferred a more personal approach. Several of his photographs were included in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1941.

White served in the U.S. Army during WWII, and in 1945 he moved to New York City, where he became part of a circle of friends that included the influential photographers Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz His contact with Stieglitz helped him discover his own distinctive style. From Stieglitz he learned the expressive potential of the sequence, a group of photographs presented as a unit. White would present his work in such units along with text, creating arrangements that he hoped would inspire different moods, emotions, and associations in the viewer, moving beyond the conventional expressive possibilities of still photography. White also learned from Stieglitz the idea of the “equivalent,” or a photographic image intended as a visual metaphor for a state of being. Both in his photographs and in his writing, White became the foremost exponent of the sequence and the equivalent.

White was greatly influenced by Stieglitz's concept of "equivalence," which White interpreted as allowing photographs to represent more than their subject matter. He wrote "when a photograph functions as an Equivalent, the photograph is at once a record of something in front of the camera and simultaneously a spontaneous symbol. (A 'spontaneous symbol' is one which develops automatically to fill the need of the moment. A photograph of the bark of a tree, for example, may suddenly touch off a corresponding feeling of roughness of character within an individual.)"

In his later life he often made photographs of rocks, surf, wood and other natural objects that were isolated from their context, so that they became abstract forms. He intended these to be interpreted by the viewer as something more than what they actually present. According to White, "When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is telling us in effect, 'I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor of that feeling.'...What really happened is that he recognized an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself.

Among his best-known books are two collections, Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations (1969), which features some of his sequences, and Minor White: Rites and Passages (1978), with excerpts from his diaries and letters and a biographical essay by  James Baker Hall.

From 1965 to 1974 White taught photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. In 1968 he photographed in Maine and Vermont, United States and Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1973-1974 White photographed in Lima, Peru and Europe. He died June 24, 1976.

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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 Towleroad // Without Obergefell, most states would have same-sex marriage bans

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Intoxication

RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication

Intoxication is unhealthy. Refraining from intoxication is healthy. (MN 9) What are the imperfections that defile the mind? Negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Knowing that negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind, a person abandons it. (MN 7) One practices thus: “Others may become negligent by intoxication, but I will abstain from the negligence of intoxication.” (MN 8) There are these two worldly conditions: fame and shame. These are conditions that people meet—impermanent, transient, and subject to change. A mindful, wise person knows them and sees that they are subject to change. Desirable conditions do not excite one’s mind nor is one resentful of undesirable conditions. (AN 8.6)

Reflection

The “worldly winds” are aspects of life that are as inevitable as the blowing of the wind, and we are better off accepting and adapting to them rather than attempting to avoid them. Among these are fame and shame, meaning sometimes we are a hero and sometimes a chump. In either case, we may not deserve the label placed on us by others, so the advice here is to see both fame and shame as the result of changing circumstances and view them with equanimity.

Daily Practice

One form of intoxication we are susceptible to is being influenced overmuch by what other people think of us. If people raise you up unrealistically or put you down undeservedly, try not to let it sway your own sense of who you are. As the text says, “A mindful, wise person knows them” to be the passing opinions of others, subject to capricious change. Practice remaining balanced, independent of the judgment of others.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

 

Via Joe My God // Slovenia Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage And Adoptions

 

Via Daily Dharma: Becoming More Human

We do not become less human by purging toxins from our emotional life but rather more nobly human. Abandoning greed, hatred, and delusion at every opportunity, we are still left with a rich, nuanced, and healthier emotional life.

Andrew Olendzki, “The Buddha’s Smile”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Social Action

 

RIGHT ACTION
Reflecting Upon Social Action

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 social action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61) One reflects thus: “I shall initiate and sustain verbal acts of kindness toward my companions, both publicly and privately.” One lives with companions in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes. One practices thus: “We are different in body but one in mind.” (MN 31)

Reflection

As social beings we speak a lot in the course of our daily lives. Here is an invitation to focus on the quality of our verbal actions in a social setting. The way to live in harmony with others is lubricated, so to speak, by verbal acts of kindness. As the text says, “Good things come from doing good deeds,” and this includes the things we say. The skill of living "without disputing, blending like milk and water," is sorely needed these days.

Daily Practice

Speak with kindly intention to your friends, family members, and colleagues. The quality of mind behind our words is often more important than the words themselves, and here we are invited to emphasize the feeling of caring for others when we speak. When we speak with kindly intention we evoke kindness from others, as well as bring out and strengthen our own capacity for kindness. This contributes to social well-being.

Tomorrow: Abstaining from Intoxication
One week from today: Reflecting upon Bodily Action

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via White Crane Institute // TANABATA

 

Tanabata decorations 2018 - TANABATA, meaning "Evening of the seventh" is a Japanese star festival, derived from the Chinese star festival, Qi Xi "The Night of Sevens.” It celebrates the meeting of Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair). The Milky Way, a river made from stars that crosses the sky, separates these lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the luni-solar calendar. Since the stars come out at night, the celebration is held at night.  The festival originated from The Festival to Plead for Skills. In the Edo period, girls wished for better sewing and craftsmanship, and boys wished for better handwriting by writing wishes on strips of paper. At this time, the custom was to use dew left on taro leaves to create the ink used to write wishes.

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8| 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 |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via Daily Dharma: Trust in the Precious Nature of Every Moment

 No matter how off-kilter you feel, you are standing in a place of perfectly balanced forces. If you feel abandoned by all that might comfort you, you are held in the embrace of what you cannot see.

Kathleen Dean Moore, “We are Held by What We Cannot See”

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