Via Daily Dharma: Staying Curious Through Uncertainty

 Consider the uncertainty, fear, and helplessness seeds that have taken root and sprouted to the surface in yourself. With gentle curiosity, you can ask: What does this seedling look like? How does it move in your body? Can you give it a sound? If you could touch it, how would it feel?

Jessica Angima, “The Not-Knowing of Our Time”

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Via Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember / FB

 

When I am loving awareness I’m aware of everything outside, but pulling into the heart, the spiritual heart brings me to loving awareness. I’m aware of my thoughts, but loving awareness is simply witnessing them. And loving awareness is in the moment. I have thoughts about the past and future, and those are not helpful, so I dive deep into the present and the presence and in this present moment we will find loving awareness.

This moment is love. I am infinite. I am loving awareness.

 

@babaramdass

 

© Original art by AriDesignss (@aridesignss )

Via Relentless Indigenous Woman /FB

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and the First Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Body

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)   Full awareness: When flexing and extending limbs, wearing clothing, carrying food . . . one is just aware, just mindful: “There is a body.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

Mindfulness of the body can be very precise and focused, as when we observe every microsensation of the inbreath and outbreath. It can also be broader and more open, taking in the full sweep of larger activities. The practice of full awareness, a term used together with mindfulness, involves an awareness that draws back, so to speak, to a slightly greater distance, allowing it to encompass the full scope of an activity.

Daily Practice

Practice being aware of your body in motion as it moves the limbs in dance or sport or physical work. Feel the continuity of such movements, and allow your mindfulness to encompass the motion as a whole. Now practice doing all this with full awareness, dialing up your focused attention so it becomes even more acute and precise. This is mindfulness in motion, without clinging.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the First Phase of Absorption (1st Jhāna)

Having abandoned the five hindrances, imperfections of the mind that weaken wisdom, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters and abides in the first phase of absorption, which is accompanied by applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of seclusion. (MN 4) One practices: “I shall breathe in contemplating impermanence”; one practices: “I shall breathe out contemplating impermanence.” 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 Origin of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna

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Via Daily Dharma: Practicing for All

 When you meditate, it is not just for yourself, you do it for the whole society. You seek solutions to your problems not only for yourself, but for all of us. 

Gelek Rinpoche, “A Lama for All Seasons”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - August 14, 2022 💌

 
 

In my aging wisdom, I have a sense of the incredible beauty of the unfolding design of the universe. I treasure the mystery of it. I really delight in the mystery of it.

-Ram Dass -

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

Via FB

 

Via Tricycle /// How Mindfulness Works Even When It Doesn’t

How Mindfulness Works Even When It Doesn’t By Gil Fronsdal

When attention to the breath proves to be no match for our racing thoughts, how can we instead consciously turn our awareness to the tensions that occupy our mind?

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Via Tricycle // Beats and Buddhas

 

“Beats and Buddhas”: A New Exhibit Features Art from Allen Ginsberg and Gonkar Gyatso
By Alison Spiegel

Photographs by the legendary beat poet and colorful collages by Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatsu are drawn together by an unlikely thread of humor and spirituality.

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Via Tricycle /// The Kindness of Joe Pera

 

The Kindness of Joe Pera
By Mike Gillis

This sitcom about a New York comedian challenges us to see everything as being worthy of our attention.

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Via Daily Dharma: Learning When to Pause Practice

 An important part of any practice involves learning when to just stop practicing altogether. Stopping gives you more space, which allows you to accept the ups and downs, the possible turbulence of the experience that may be generated by your practice.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, “The Aim of Attention”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT
Restraining Unarisen 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 unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to restrain the arising of unarisen unhealthy mental states. One restrains the arising of the unarisen hindrance of restlessness. (MN 141)

Reflection

We all have the capacity for restlessness, especially as inhabitants of a culture that seems to thrive on it. We are so often encouraged to multitask, to spread our awareness so widely that, like spilled water, it gets increasingly thin. This tendency can be resisted by exercising some restraint. It requires not giving in to the forces that seek to pull us off center and preserving the experience of inner calm and composure.

Daily Practice

Resist the arising of restlessness by cultivating a more focused and peaceful way of inhabiting your world. Don’t jump at everything that demands your attention, don’t allow your awareness to be hijacked by random events, and protect your mindfulness as a sentry might guard a gate. It takes effort to preserve a sense of inner serenity—not the kind of effort that tries harder but that stays centered and is not pulled off balance.

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna
One week from today: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

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Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

 

RIGHT LIVING Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Harming Living Beings Harming living beings is unhealthy. Refraining from harming living beings is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning the harming of living beings, one abstains from harming living beings; with rod and weapon laid aside, gentle and kindly, one abides compassionate to all living beings. (M 41) One practices thus: “Others may harm living beings, but I will abstain from the harming of living beings.” (MN 8) This is something that leads to the welfare and happiness of a person in this present life: good friendship. Here, one associates with people—whether young but of mature virtue, or old and of mature virtue—who are accomplished in trust, integrity, generosity, and wisdom; one converses with them and engages in discussion with them. Insofar as they are accomplished (in these things), one emulates their accomplishments. (AN 8.54)

Reflection Learning to live in harmony with other people is a tremendously valuable skill, and like any skill it can be learned through practice. What is required is a basic commitment to causing no harm, followed by the regular cultivation of gentle and kindly behavior. One important element emphasized here is to choose carefully those you associate with. Good friends are a precious resource and are to be cultivated as a form of practice. Daily Practice Just as you get better at tennis by playing with people better than you, so also you become a more virtuous person by associating with people of “mature virtue,” regardless of their age. Seek out people of integrity, generosity, and wisdom whom you can trust and allow their noble qualities to rub off on you. Learn from others how to be a better person and thereby also become a teacher to others by example. Tomorrow: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Taking What is Not Given Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Be Kind to Fear

 Perhaps we can’t really be prepared for suffering, but we can approach fear of suffering in a different way. Fear, with its shoulders of stone and pounding heart, deserves to be met with kindness. 

Phoebe Myers, “Living with Bears”

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Via White Crane Institute // PERSEID METEOR SHOWER

 

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2017 -

Today is the peak of the PERSEID METEOR SHOWER. a prolific meteor shower. associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are called so because the point they appear to be coming from, called the radiant, is in the constellation of Perseus. However, they can be spotted all around the sky. Because of the positioning of Swift-Tuttle's orbit, Perseids are mostly visible on the northern hemisphere.

The shower is visible from mid-July each year, but the bulk of its activity falls between August 8 and 14 with a peak on August 12. During the peak, rates of a hundred or more meteors per hour can be registered.

Meteor showers can be seen when Earth moves through a meteor stream. The stream in this case is called the Perseid cloud and it stretches along the orbit of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud is composed of particles ejected by the comet as it passed by the Sun. Most of the dust in the cloud today is approximately a thousand years old.

However, there is also a relatively young filament of dust in the stream that boiled off the comet in 1862. The approximate rate of meteors originating from this filament is much higher than normal. The famous Perseid meteor shower has been observed for about 2000 years, with the first known information on these meteors coming from the far east. In early Europe, the Perseids came to be known as the "tears of St. Lawrence." To experience the Perseid shower in its full, one should observe in the dark of a clear moonless night, from a point far outside any large cities, where stars are not dimmed by light pollution.

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