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Via Tricycle // Inside the World of Buddhist Medicine

 

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October 1, 2022

Inside the World of Buddhist Medicine
 

The Buddha has often been described as a great healer or physician. Diagnosing the ailment of dukkha (suffering), he offered the eightfold path as his prescription for healing the disease of suffering that is caused by the workings of the mind. 

But what about the body? What does the dharma have to say about the suffering of illness? What can Buddhist knowledge teach us about physical healing? 

Buddhist traditions have sought to address physical illness for centuries, and Buddhist ideas have shaped a robust body of healing knowledge that is practiced around the world to this day.

Dr. Pierce Salguero, Buddhism scholar, historian of medicine, and author of A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine, joins us on October 10 for a virtual conversation on the fascinating world of Buddhist medicine. In this hour-long Zoom event—free for Tricycle Premium subscribers—he’ll discuss how Buddhist medical practices and Buddhist healers have influenced health care globally (including mental health care and Western medical approaches).

Sign up today to join us on October 10 at 4 p.m. ET, and bring your questions! 
 

Sign up now!

 

Also this week:

• Join Stephen Batchelor, Sylvia Boorstein, Kaira Jewel Lingo, and other Buddhist teachers and writers for the Living Well in Difficult Times virtual summit—a conversation series on transforming suffering during times of personal and global crisis. 
• New to the dharma? Start your journey with Buddhism for Beginners, Tricycle’s comprehensive online learning platform.
• Walk in the Buddha’s footsteps across Northern India and Nepal with Buddhist scholar Andrew Olendzki as your guide on this special pilgrimage, December 3-18. Learn more. 
• On the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, scholar and professor of philosophy Allison Aitken discusses why anger is so seductive—and how to transform this destructive emotion into compassion, according to Buddhist texts.

Via Tricycle // The Mountain Path

 

Film Club: The Mountain Path
Now Streaming!

 

One man sets off for China’s Zhongnan Mountains in search of a Buddhist hermit master along the way he meets a series of recluses who teach him about life, death, and the journey within.

Watch 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 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 factors of tranquility and concentration. (MN 141)

Reflection The last two of the seven factors of awakening are tranquility and concentration. These are healthy mental and emotional factors that are to be encouraged to arise and when arisen, to be sustained. While all states of mind are fleeting, arising and passing away in a moment, when we are able to string together moments of tranquility one after another, the mind naturally becomes concentrated and focused on a single object.  Daily Practice Focused awareness, otherwise known as concentration practice, is something to undertake in a sustained and continuous manner. Put aside some time at the end of the day or before your day begins and allow yourself to really settle in to some uninterrupted practice. It takes some effort, but that effort becomes easier as tranquility deepens. By cultivating these states, you give your mind a break from restlessness. Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via L. A. Times

 

Via GQ // Billy Eichner Believes a Funny Gay Comedy Is the Best Activism

 

Via White Crane Institute // Lakenheath

 

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Anglo-Saxon besties

2008 -

Construction of the Royal Airforce Base at Lakenheath was held up in 2008 when relics of this base’s ancient inhabitants were unearthed during a routine construction project. The base must work with British archaeology officials for every base construction because of the area’s dense concentration of buried artifacts.

Before the Air Force set up shop at Lakenheath more than 60 years ago, it was home to the Anglo-Saxons — ancient peoples who inhabited the south and east of the country from the early fifth century through the Norman conquest of 1066.

Toiling alongside a construction crew that rebuilt the traffic circle on the northside of the base in August, a team of British archaeologists dug up three Anglo-Saxon graves dating to between 450 and 650.

They found two unusually large bodies dating from before the Norman Invasion of 1066 that appeared at first glance to be a husband and wife. The bodies were buried embracing each other, but genetic testing revealed both were men. It remains unknown if they were lovers, relatives, warrior companions, or just good friends…but I think we know.

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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 // The world's first legal, modern same-sex civil union

 

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1989 -

DENMARK: The world's first legal, modern same-sex civil union are sanctioned and called "registered partnership."

 

 

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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 Daily Dharma: Love Comes from Attention

 Attention is the start of love. There can be no love without attention. In cultivating attention, we’re cultivating a possibility for intention and a possibility for connection.

Anne C. Klein, “Ritual as an Opening to Love”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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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) When I strive with determination, some particular sources of suffering fade away in me because of that determined striving; in this way suffering is exhausted. (MN 101)

Reflection

Any source of gratification, if indulged to an extreme, will transform into something that causes harm to you or others or both.  Some of these impulses can be managed gently and naturally, but others may require determined effort. Striving with diligence can be seen as a defense mechanism, a way of keeping yourself safe from overindulgence. Sometimes you just have to tell yourself to stop.

Daily Practice

Identify the behaviors in your life that have the potential to escalate to a point of intoxication and negligence, in the broadest sense of these terms. Make a commitment to avoid allowing this to happen; sometimes that takes determination and making a deliberate effort. If the application of energy is grounded in the wise understanding of cause and effect, self-control can be seen as a gift to yourself.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Via Daily Dharma: Use Doubt as Fuel

 If those doubts come up, fine. Don’t deny that they are there. Throw those into your practice. Let that be the fuel to nourish doing. 

Elihu Genmyo Smith, “Do Your Best”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

[GBF] Sunday's talk with Sean Feit Oakes

 Don’t let the wind blow you over

The Buddha described eight “worldly winds” that come and go throughout our lives: gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, pleasure and pain. They are the source of all our drama, anxiety, and confusion because we cling to them, craving some and fearing others. We’ll explore how to practice with these inevitable weather patterns and what becomes possible when we can be more resilient around the changing winds of the world.

Attached are two readings from the Anguttara Nikaya (Numbered Discourses) of the Pali Canon:

• Numbered Discourses 8.5
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• 1. Love

Worldly Conditions (1st)

“Mendicants, the eight worldly conditions revolve around the world, and the world revolves around the eight worldly conditions. What eight? Gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, pleasure and pain. These eight worldly conditions revolve around the world, and the world revolves around these eight worldly conditions.

Gain and loss, fame and disgrace,blame and praise, and pleasure and pain.These qualities among people are impermanent,transient, and perishable.

A clever and mindful person knows these things,seeing that they’re perishable.Desirable things don’t disturb their mind,nor are they repelled by the undesirable.

Both favoring and opposingare cleared and ended, they are no more.Knowing the stainless, sorrowless state,they who have gone beyond rebirth understand rightly.”

• Numbered Discourses 8.6
• 1. Love

Worldly Conditions (2nd)

“Mendicants, the eight worldly conditions revolve around the world, and the world revolves around the eight worldly conditions. What eight? Gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, pleasure and pain. These eight worldly conditions revolve around the world, and the world revolves around these eight worldly conditions.

An uneducated ordinary person encounters gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, and pleasure and pain. And so does an educated noble disciple. What, then, is the difference between an ordinary uneducated person and an educated noble disciple?”

“Our teachings are rooted in the Buddha. He is our guide and our refuge. Sir, may the Buddha himself please clarify the meaning of this. The mendicants will listen and remember it.”

“Well then, mendicants, listen and pay close attention, I will speak.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“Mendicants, an uneducated ordinary person encounters gain. They don’t reflect: ‘I’ve encountered this gain. It’s impermanent, suffering, and perishable.’ They don’t truly understand it. They encounter loss … fame … disgrace … blame … praise … pleasure … pain. They don’t reflect: ‘I’ve encountered this pain. It’s impermanent, suffering, and perishable.’ They don’t truly understand it.

So gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, and pleasure and pain occupy their mind. They favor gain and oppose loss. They favor fame and oppose disgrace. They favor praise and oppose blame. They favor pleasure and oppose pain. Being so full of favoring and opposing, they’re not freed from rebirth, old age, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. They’re not freed from suffering, I say.

An educated noble disciple encounters gain. They reflect: ‘I’ve encountered this gain. It’s impermanent, suffering, and perishable.’ They truly understand it. They encounter loss … fame … disgrace … blame … praise … pleasure … pain. They reflect: ‘I’ve encountered this pain. It’s impermanent, suffering, and perishable.’ They truly understand it.

So gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, and pleasure and pain don’t occupy their mind. They don’t favor gain or oppose loss. They don’t favor fame or oppose disgrace. They don’t favor praise or oppose blame. They don’t favor pleasure or oppose pain. Having given up favoring and opposing, they’re freed from rebirth, old age, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. They’re freed from suffering, I say. This is the difference between an educated noble disciple and an uneducated ordinary person.

Gain and loss, fame and disgrace,blame and praise, and pleasure and pain.These qualities among people are impermanent,transient, and perishable.

A clever and mindful person knows these things,seeing that they’re perishable.Desirable things don’t disturb their mind,nor are they repelled by the undesirable.

Both favoring and opposingare cleared and ended, they are no more.Knowing the stainless, sorrowless state,they who have gone beyond rebirth understand rightly

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Enjoy 700+ free recorded dharma talks at www.gaybuddhist.org

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 clothing they may get, speaks in praise of such contentment, and does not try to obtain these things in improper or unsuitable ways. Not getting these 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 aware of how to escape them. (AN 4.28)

Reflection

Just as we practiced cultivating contentment in regard to food last month, today we are invited to work with our relationship to clothing. Discontent is a persistent cause of social discord, and contentment contributes to people getting along with one another. If we envy what other people have or yearn for something we don’t have, the seeds of unhappiness are sown and watered. Such suffering is unnecessary.

Daily Practice

We are not being asked here to have disdain for fashion, or taste, and it is not suggested that what we wear does not matter at all. As with so many other aspects of our lives, we are being invited here to examine the relationship we have with ordinary things such as the clothing we wear. It is healthy and helpful to focus more on what we have than on what we want and to avoid the pitfalls of becoming greedy, obsessed, or infatuated.

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

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

Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

 

Via Daily Dharma: Expanding Our Identity

 Recognizing that we are not separate from the rest of the biosphere brings a deep sense that the whole earth is our body and an aspiration to live out the implications of such realization.

David Loy, “In Search of the Sacred”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE