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

 

RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9) When one knows and sees perception as it actually is, then one is not attached to perception. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well-being. (MN 149)

Reflection

Last week the emphasis was on how not knowing and seeing perception accurately can lead to attachment and the difficulties that it brings. Here the focus instead is on the benefits of understanding perception appropriately. Perception, the mental function of interpreting sensory data, is a natural and useful thing for the mind to do. In fact, it is a great ally helping us bring insight and understanding to the world of our experience.

Daily Practice

Practice making the step from mindfulness to insight. That is, when you are mindful of the sensations of the breath, for example, go on to notice that they are constantly changing and that it is the characteristic of all sensations to be impermanent and in flux. When observing the thoughts flowing through the mind, recognize they do not belong to anybody, but are interdependently arisen. This is perception facilitating right view.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

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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 neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling a mental neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling”. . . one is just aware, just mindful: “There is feeling.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Of the three kinds of feeling tone—pleasant, painful, and neither-pleasant-nor-painful—it is the neutral feeling that can be the most difficult to discern. Pleasure and pain are obvious, especially at the extreme ends of the continuum, but as each gets more and more subtle they merge into the middle ground of a feeling tone that is not obviously either. Hold your attention on this neutral zone and simply notice what is there.

Daily Practice

See if you can become aware of the feeling tones that are arising in conjunction with the thoughts and mental images that pass through your mind. Some things feel good to imagine or think about, while some feel really bad. Bring your attention to the middle ground, where your thoughts are present but don’t have a strong feeling tone associated with them. Be content to simply be aware of thoughts coming and going.

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 gladdening the mind;” one practices: “I shall breathe out gladdening the mind.” This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated  so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (A 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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Via Daily Dharma: Love the World

 The deep happiness of well-being comes from caring for yourself and loving the world. It comes from offering what’s good in you to others, giving your gifts to a world that needs it.

- Jack Kornfield, “Finding Freedom Right Here, Right Now”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - July 24, 2022 💌

 
 

This is our problem: The myths in our culture, which are based on individuality, have led us down a path that has isolated us very profoundly from each other.

- Ram Dass -

LGBTQ Baha'i Experience Episode 2: Daniel Clark Orey Story

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Via Tricycle // Four Ideals to Guide Your Practice

 

Four Ideals to Guide Your Practice
By Dale S. Wright

An often-overlooked sutra contains four simple teachings for bodhisattvas that may also serve as a guide for contemporary dharma practitioners.

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

RIGHT EFFORT
Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders unhealthy states, one has abandoned healthy states to cultivate the unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Abandoning sluggishness, one abides free from sluggishness; one purifies the mind of sluggishness. (MN 51) Just as a person who had been gravely ill, suffering, with no appetite and weak in body, would recover from that illness and regain their strength, so would one rejoice and be glad about the abandoning of sluggishness. (DN 2)

Reflection

Some mental and emotional states drag us down into suffering and obstruct our ability to see things clearly, and some states move us away from suffering and enhance our ability to see what is really going on. Sluggishness is unhealthy—not wrong or bad but unhelpful to the project of understanding and diminishing suffering. Whenever it arises, it is worth making an effort to abandon it by stirring up and applying some energy.

Daily Practice

Focus your attention on that moment when you recognize you are sleepy or lazy or otherwise feeling sluggish and counter it with an upsurge of energy, whether physical or mental. There is a transition point at which the mental state of sluggishness is met with the mental state of energy, and your experience is thereby transformed. Learning to be aware of such nuances in experience is the essence of mindfulness practice.

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

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Via Daily Dharma: Letting Go of Resistance to Pain

 If we do experience pain or suffering ourselves, we can use it. We’re conditioned to resist pain. We think of it as a solid block we have to push away, but it’s not. It’s like a melody, and behind the cacophony there is tremendous spaciousness.

-Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “No Excuses”

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ViaDaily Dharma: Meeting Pain with Love

 The Buddha’s injunction that we extend compassion to ourselves requires that after recognizing our suffering, we respond to it with love. This takes courage and commitment. It means not looking away, not seeking distractions when offered the opportunity to be present for our own pain.

-Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: Leaning Into Suffering”

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Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Believe Every Thought

 One of the most life-changing realizations you can have is “I don’t have to believe my thoughts…they are just thoughts!” Any story you have about yourself is not the same as the unfolding reality of what you are: the ongoing life of your senses, the tenderness of your heart, the consciousness that right now is seeing or hearing these words.

-Tara Brach, “A True Taste of Peace”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Malicious Speech

 

RIGHT SPEECH
Refraining from Malicious Speech

Malicious speech is unhealthy. Refraining from malicious speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning malicious speech, one refrains from malicious speech. One does not repeat there what one has heard here to the detriment of these, or repeat here what one has heard there to the detriment of those. One unites those who are divided, is a promoter of friendships, and speaks words that promote concord. (DN 1) One practices thus: “Others may speak maliciously, but I shall abstain from malicious speech.” (MN 8) Disputes occur when a person is deceitful and fraudulent. Such a person dwells disrespectful and undeferential towards others, causing harm and unhappiness for many. If you see any such root of a dispute either in yourself or externally, you should strive to abandon it. And if you do not see any such root of dispute either in yourself or externally, you should practice in such a way that it does not erupt in the future. (MN 104)

Reflection

Arguments and disputes do not come from external circumstances, but from the internal qualities of people’s minds. When there is a competing interest, for example, it might be negotiated peacefully and fairly, or it might escalate into a hateful argument and even become violent. The difference lies in what kind of internal mental and emotional states are brought to the table by both participants. We can influence how this unfolds.

Daily Practice

Take special care to refrain from being deceitful or fraudulent in all of your dealings with other people. And when other people are exhibiting these qualities, try hard not to be provoked into doing the same. These practices in daily life require a regular habit of being tuned in to the workings of your own mind and being sensitive to the extent your own experience is impacted by the mental and emotional qualities of others.

Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Verbal Action
One week from today: Refraining from Harsh Speech

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Via Daily Dharma: The Power of Practice

 Effective practice proceeds slowly and with care. Gradually, our patterns lose their constricting power, and we live more expansively than before.

-Anne C. Klein, “The Four Immeasurables”

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Via Words of Wisdom - July 20, 2022 💌

 

My challenge to you as fellow pilgrims on the journey, is to cultivate the stability of living on two planes of consciousness simultaneously—as Christ said, ‘In the world but not of the world,’ to be fully passionately involved in life and also be totally equanimous and centered. This is not an either/or, it’s a both/and. 

- RAM DASS

 
Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center, February 15-16th 1997

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Compassion

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Compassion

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 compassion, for when you develop meditation on compassion, any cruelty will be abandoned. (MN 62) The near enemy of compassion is ordinary sorrow. (Vm 9.99)

Reflection

Just as physical pleasure and pain are natural and inevitable aspects of human experience, the same is true of mental pleasure and pain. Sorrow can be seen as a form of mental pain, and it is natural to feel such pain, for example, with the death of a loved one. Compassion is also accompanied by sorrow, but it is not ordinary sorrow; it is a higher sorrow, raised beyond the personal to the level of a universal emotion.

Daily Practice

Allow yourself to open to the suffering of another person; there is plenty of opportunity for this these days. See if you can discern a difference between feeling sorry for them and feeling sorrow on account of their pain. See if you can feel the difference between a personal sorrow and a universal sorrow. Practice opening to the suffering of others on this broader, more universal level of experience and meaning.

Tomorrow: Refraining from Malicious Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

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Via Daily Dharma: Simplifying Our Choices

 One of the hardest things to remember about practice is that we’ve truly never before experienced this moment. We repeat the same action over and over and over again. And yet in repeating the act of sitting, we give ourselves a structure in which our strategies become obvious and our choices become simple.

-Alex Tzelnic, “How to Resist the Comfort of Repetition”

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