A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
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 bodily
action is to be done with repeated reflection. (MN 61)
When you wish to do an action with the body, reflect on that same bodily
action thus: "Would this action I wish to do with the body lead to my
own affliction?" If, on reflection, you know that it would, then do not
do it. If you know that it would not, then proceed. (MN 61)
Reflection
The word for action is kamma in Pali, karma
in Sanskrit, and the quality of our actions is a matter of great
concern in the Buddhist tradition. We act with the body, speech, and
mind, and each of these will be considered in turn. The teaching here is
partly to learn how to pay close attention to what we are doing and
partly to notice the ethical consequences of our actions.
Daily Practice
To reflect on
our actions is to bring conscious awareness to them. Most of what we do
is done unconsciously, so the practice is to become conscious of what we
are doing instead of doing it automatically. Start here with intention.
Pay careful attention to the process of making simple choices, such as
moving your hand or not, and see if you can catch when intention arises.
Also note the ethical quality of your choices: Is a choice healthy or
unhealthy?
Tomorrow: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings One week from today: Reflecting upon Verbal Action
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Although
we are aiming at an all-inclusive lovingkindness unrestricted by the
partiality that divides the world into “mine” and “yours,” it needs to
start with simple, uncontrived loving feelings toward those closest to
us.
False speech is unhealthy.
Refraining from false speech is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning false speech,
one dwells refraining from false speech, a truth-speaker, one to be
relied on, trustworthy, dependable, not a deceiver of the world. One
does not in full awareness speak falsehood for one’s own ends or for
another’s ends or for some trifling worldly end. (DN 1) One practices
thus: "Others may speak falsely, but I shall abstain from false speech."
(MN 8)
Such speech as you know to be untrue, incorrect, and unbeneficial, as
well as unwelcome and disagreeable to others—do not utter such speech.
(MN 58)
Reflection
Integrity is
held to be of great value in Buddhist traditions, and speaking
truthfully at all times is an important practice in itself. Notice how
it is phrased as a naturally healthy thing to do. Notice also how it is
about changing your own behavior rather than trying to change others. We
refrain from false speech by noticing whenever the impulse to be
untruthful arises and simply abandoning it. Just do not say what is
untrue and unbeneficial.
Daily Practice
Working with
right speech can be one of the most challenging practices. The closer
you observe, the more you can notice subtle impulses to exaggerate,
omit, or lead astray when speaking. When you are speaking, bring an
extra measure of attentiveness to the moment just before you utter the
words. The gap between impulse and speech can be widened gradually with
practice, allowing for more conscious communication.
Tomorrow: Reflecting upon Bodily Action One week from today: Refraining from Malicious Speech
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Meditation
is releasing whatever reasons and justifications we might have, and
taking up this moment with no thought that this can or should be
something other than just this.
OSCAR WILDE,
Irish writer, wit and raconteur died (b. 1854); Prison was unkind to
Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his
last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and
artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth,
after the famously "penetrated" Saint Sebastian and the devilish central
character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
Nevertheless,
Wilde lost no time in returning to his previous pleasures. According to
Douglas, Ross "dragged [him] back to homosexual practices" during the
summer of 1897, which they spent together in Berneval.
After his release, he also wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Readying Gaol.
Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L’Hôtel,
in Paris, where he was notorious and uninhibited about enjoying the
pleasures he had been denied in England. Again according to Douglas, "he
was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never
attempted to conceal it." In a letter to Ross, Wilde laments, "Today I
bade good-bye, with tears and one kiss, to the beautiful Greek boy. . .
he is the nicest boy you ever introduced to me." Just a month before his
death he is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel
to the death. One or other of us has got to go."
His moods
fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death,
their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very
depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping
with the dead!" "I am sure," Turner replied, "that you must have been
the life and soul of the party." Reggie Turner was one of the very few
of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at
his bedside when he died. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman
Catholic church for some odd reason. Perhaps he really had lost his
mind. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900.
Wilde was buried
in the Cimitiere de Bagneaux outside Paris but was later moved to Père
Lachaise in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor
Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a
small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were
transferred to the tomb in 1950. The numerous spots on it are lipstick
traces from admirers.
The modernist
angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male
genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a
succession of Père Lachaise cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts
are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson
performed a forty minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalized genitals.
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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)
Birth is suffering. And what is birth? The birth of beings in the
various order of beings, their coming to birth, precipitation in a womb,
generation, manifestation of the aggregates, obtaining the bases for
contact—this is called birth. (MN 9)
Reflection
The path to the
end of suffering begins with right view because it is important to
orient oneself in the right direction before taking any steps. The
emphasis on suffering is not meant to make the broad negative statement
"Life is suffering" but is to direct us to begin with our own lived
experience. Human beings suffer, and the texture of this suffering is
to be examined before taking on the task of understanding its cause and
seeking its solution.
Daily Practice
The process of
birth is difficult for both the mother and the baby. All beginnings
involve some pain, and Buddhist practice involves turning toward pain as
opposed to our natural tendency to avoid or ignore it. Turn toward the
various points of suffering arising in your own moment-to-moment
experience and simply be aware of them—without resistance and without
fear. This is just what is happening right now.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Lovingkindness One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
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As
every moment gives way to the next, we come face-to-face with an
infinite freshness of experience—a freshness that, if we have truly
surrendered to the practice, cannot be solidified into a doctrine.
Most of us primarily have to get our psychological and life games in
order before we are ready for the higher spiritual practices. Often we
want more than we are ready to have. We take on practices that could
bring you to God, or to enlightenment. But because we are so caught in
psychological stuff, in ego trips, we merely take them and convert them
to things around our ego.
Really, there are very few people who have their psychological scene so
cooled out. Who are no longer needing to prove themselves. Who have
eaten their own unworthiness. They can begin to hear these higher
motives for spiritual work.
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)
Reflection
The fourth
foundation of mindfulness involves looking at various aspects of our
experience as episodes of phenomena arising and passing away in the
stream of consciousness. Unhelpful habits of mind, acting as hindrances
to inner clarity, come and go along with helpful mental factors, such as
those guiding us to awakening. We learn to observe these changing
states with calm and focused equanimity, without grasping.
Daily Practice
Sit quietly on a
regular basis and take an interest in watching what goes on in your
mind. The challenge is to observe it all without latching on to the
content of your thoughts but simply noting them as events arising and
passing away. Become mindful of mental objects rather than becoming
entangled in them. If you can do this with ardent energy, fully aware
and mindful, you will likely find yourself very content.
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 as a result of
equanimity. The concentrated mind is thus purified, bright, unblemished,
rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to
imperturbability. (MN 4)
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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