WITHIN

 WITHIN

The best place to discover Divine Love is within, in the silent echo chambers of the heart.

It would appear that the Creator of the Cosmos loves nothing better than to hang out with us there, in the sacred space of solitude that we call Self.

A place of healing and infused Love, the home that awaits all prodigals.

Dylan Morrison (Irish writer-poet)

Writings ~ https://goo.gl/7BJ8JR

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Lovingkindness

 

RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Lovingkindness

Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on loving kindness, for when you develop meditation on lovingkindness, all ill will will be abandoned. (MN 62)  Lovingkindness is the way to purity for one who has much ill will. (Vm 9.108)

Reflection

Since every hurtful emotion has a corresponding helpful one that acts as a potential antidote, take advantage of this fact when next you are feeling consumed by aversion. In any moment when you feel ill will, you have the option of feeling kindness in its place, and you will be better off replacing the one with the other. You don’t necessarily have to forgive anyone their actions; you need only to feel different inside yourself.

Daily Practice

Feeling grumpy? Annoyed as all get-out with someone? Furious over somebody’s hurtful words or actions and ready to kill them (figuratively speaking, of course)? Take a closer look: Who is getting hurt here? As much as you might wish for the harm of the other person, it is really only you who is being harmed by your ill will. Take a moment to change the script and see if you can develop some lovingkindness instead. It helps.

Tomorrow: Refraining from False Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Compassion

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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) Not to get what one wants is suffering. There comes the wish: “Oh, that we were not subject to birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair! Oh, that birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair would not come to us!” But this is not to be obtained by wishing, and not to obtain what one wants is suffering. (MN 9)

Reflection

What exactly does psychological suffering feel like? It is the raw experience of craving itself, the yearning for something that you cannot have, the desperate need for something to go away that is afflicting you, the primal fear of the existential fragility of the human situation. The noble truth of suffering acknowledges all this, but also recognizes that this suffering can be understood and resolved, and thus holds out hope.

Daily Practice

Allow yourself to feel and explore the psychological pain of not getting what you want. It is not just the yearning for something you feel you need, like thirsting for water, but includes the desperate urge to get free of something afflicting you. Notice also that wishing to get what you want or for what you hate to go away is never effective. There is no escape from suffering except by going directly through the craving that causes it.

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

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Via Daily Dharma: Taking Personal Responsibility

 We need to become newly aware of the love that has infused our lives all along, to turn our attention to it afresh with the eyes of a child. 

Lama John Makransky, “Love Is All Around”

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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 awakening factor of tranquility is internally present, one is aware: “Tranquility is present for me.” When tranquility is not present, one is aware: “Tranquility is not present for me.” When the arising of unarisen tranquility occurs, one is aware of that. And when the development and fulfillment of the arisen awakening factor of tranquility 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

Sometimes the mind is tranquil, and sometimes it is not. One way to practice mindfulness of mental objects is simply to notice when the mental factor of tranquility is present and when it is not. It is okay to be aware of the times the mind is restless or bored or confused. These states are transient, like all others, and they will pass, to be replaced by moments of tranquility from time to time. Simply take note of all this.

Daily Practice

The next time you feel tranquil, attend carefully to what it feels like. This way you will know what to contrast it to when the mental factor of tranquility is gone, which will happen often enough. Observe the interplay of tranquility and lack of tranquility as they come and go. Eventually you will learn how to encourage tranquility to arise and how to sustain it when it has arisen. This is how your mindfulness skills develop.

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 contemplating relinquishment.” One practices: “I shall breathe out contemplating relinquishment.” 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 Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna

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Via Daily Dharma: Self-Appreciation Through Attention

 Giving in to distraction, we give up caring about the activity we are doing. When we do that we also give up caring about our self, about the value of the effort we are making with our life.

Les Kaye, “The Time Is Now”

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Via Ram Dass

 

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 healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to 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 awakening factor of joy. (MN 141)

Reflection

Maintaining healthy mental and emotional states that have arisen in experience sometimes takes effort. It is worthwhile effort, because the mind will incline in the future toward whatever states are most often manifesting in the present. By sustaining healthy states as often as you can for as long as possible, you are not only blocking unhealthy states but creating the conditions for a healthier mind in the future.

Daily Practice

When you are joyful in a healthy way, find ways to sustain that joy. One way to do that, when the joy comes from noticing the good fortune of another, is to remind yourself of it continuously. Repeating to yourself phrases like “May they be happy” and “May their good fortune continue” is a simple way to reinforce the basis upon which the joy is established. Remember, it is good for you to feel joy, so cultivate it as much as you can.

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: Strengthen Your Mind with Generosity

 When you’ve made a practice of generosity and virtue, the mind’s ability to say no to its impulses has been strengthened and given finesse. 

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Dignity of Restraint”

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Via Facebook

 

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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: pleasure and pain. 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

We have within us a natural instinct to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. One of the Buddha’s great insights is that both are hardwired into our minds and bodies and are thus an inevitable aspect of the human condition. Knowing this and accepting it as true allows us to watch the interplay of the two without needing to change what is happening. A wise person is mindful of both pleasure and pain, regarding them evenly.

Daily Practice

Practice becoming aware of feeling tones, both pleasant and painful, as they arise accompanying all experience. Cultivate a posture of noticing each one, acknowledging how it feels, and letting it change into something else, as it will naturally do. Give up the hopeless task of chasing after pleasure and fleeing pain and simply appreciate, with equanimity rather than excitement or resentment, the changing nature of experience.

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

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Via White Crane Institute

 

This Day in Gay History

September 02 Born Father John M. McNeill 1925 - JOHN M. MCNEILL, Jesuit scholar, psychotherapist, born (d: 2015); For more than twenty-five years John J. McNeill, an ordained priest and psychotherapist, devoted his life to spreading the good news of God's love for Lesbian and Gay Christians. One year after the publication of The Church and the Homosexual (1976), McNeill received an order from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican ordering him to silence in the public media. He observed the silence for nine years while continuing a private ministry to Gays and Lesbians which included psychotherapy, workshops, lectures and retreats. In 1988, he received a further order from Cardinal Ratzinger (soon to become Pope Benedict XVI, the first Pope to resign in a millennium) directing him to give up all ministry to Gay persons which he refused to do in conscience. As a result, he was expelled by the Vatican from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) for challenging the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of homosexuality, and for refusing to give up his ministry and psychotherapy practice to Gay men and Lesbians. McNeill had been a Jesuit for nearly 40 years. After enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II at the age of seventeen, McNeill served in combat in the Third Army under General Patton and was captured in Germany in 1944. McNeill spent six months as a POW (Prisoner of War) until he was liberated in May of 1945. John enrolled in Canisius College in Buffalo after his discharge from the army and, upon graduating, entered the Society of Jesus in 1948. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1959. In 1964, McNeill earned a Doctorate in Philosophy, with highest honors (Plus Grande Distinction), at Louvain University in Belgium. His doctoral thesis on the philosophical and religious thought of Maurice Blondel was published in 1966 as the first volume of the series Studies in the History of Christian Thought edited by Heiko Oberman and published by Brill Press in Leyden, Holland. During his professional career, McNeill taught philosophy at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY, and in the doctorate program at Fordham University in NYC. In 1972, he joined the combined Woodstock Jesuit Seminary and Union Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Christian Ethics, specializing in Sexual Ethics. In 1974, McNeill was co-founder of the New York City chapter of Dignity, a group for Catholic Gays and Lesbians. For over twenty-five years, he has been active in a ministry to Gay Christians through retreats, workshops, lectures, publications, etc. For twenty years John was a leader of semiannual retreats at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in Pennsylvania.   |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: Compassionate Speech

 Practice saying something kind to someone every day. Do this especially with people you don’t like. It gets easier with practice and bears surprisingly good results. 

Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, “The Truth About Gossip and Buddhism”

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Via IMS Sangha News ~ September 2022

 

What Is Mindfulness and Why Is It Essential to Our Liberation? IMS Resident Teacher Chas DiCapua

We hear a lot about mindfulness these days. But what is it and why should we be mindful? And if we're mindful, will it help ensure things turn out okay? In this dharma talk, given as part of a retreat called Stillness & Insight at the IMS Retreat Center, Chas DiCapua explains what mindfulness is, why it’s essential to our liberation, and how we can grow and strengthen our mindfulness practice. “Without mindfulness and without being present and knowing what's happening in our body and mind, knowing our own experience, the habit patterns of our heart and mind are going to be in the driver's seat. Our habit patterns are going to be pulling the levers and switches, in terms of governing what we say, what we do, and even what we think. When we're mindful, we have the choice of whether they'll be in the driver's seat or not."

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Via Frame of Mind Films // The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama In His Own Words

 

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) A person is content with any food they may get, speaks in praise of such contentment, and does not try to obtain things in improper or unsuitable ways. Not getting things one does not worry, and getting them one makes use of them without being greedy, obsessed, or infatuated, observing such potential dangers and wisely being aware of how to escape them. (AN 4.28)

Reflection

Contentment is a healthy character trait, to be cultivated by appreciating what you have at every opportunity. Every moment your mental state plants a seed that becomes rooted in the traits of the unconscious mind, influencing what mind states will arise in the future. Feeling content here and now inclines the mind to feel content in the future, while obsessing over what you do not have only leads to more discontent.

Daily Practice

Practice intentionally being aware of the things you have rather than focusing on what you lack. This will not only lead to greater personal happiness but contribute to social harmony as well. There is always something you can feel content about, even if it is just the fact that you are able to eat a meal every day. Notice when you find yourself wishing for something different regarding food and try to let go of this and be content.

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

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Via Daily Dharma: The Value of Unconditional Love

 If you can develop the capability to remain steadfast in one unconditional relationship, you can remain steadfast with the suffering and joyfulness of life.

Pema Chödrön, “Unconditionally Steadfast”

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