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

 

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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 formations as they actually are, then one is not attached to formations. 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 The aggregate of formations includes all our habitual volitional and emotional responses to whatever information the senses are presenting to consciousness. This is where we love or hate what is happening, where we yearn for something different or accept peacefully what occurs. This is where suffering either is born or dies, depending on whether we respond in the moment with craving or with mindful equanimity. Daily Practice Suffering is not built into any given situation but is optional. Stress is not caused by external stressors but is an internal reaction to circumstances. See if you can bring the profound wisdom of this insight into your lived experience by bringing the cessation of suffering to every moment. Find what it is that you are yearning for, turn that craving into mindful observation, and watch the suffering attached to that moment disappear. Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Daily Dharma: The Nobility of the Path

 

Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity.

—Sallie Tisdale, dharma teacher and author

Via Daily Dharma: Social Mindfulness

Social Mindfulness

What is required of us in the social world is nothing less than vigilant mindfulness.    Charles Johnson, “The Dharma of Social Transformation”  CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna

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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 common painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling a common painful feeling.” When feeling an uncommon painful feeling, one is aware: “Feeling an uncommon painful feeling”. . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is feeling.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection Common feelings are those that come with ordinary experience, while uncommon feelings are connected with more subtle psychological and meditative experience. Remember, feelings in this context are not what we commonly think of as emotions; rather feelings refer to physical and mental sensations of pleasure and pain. Here we are directed to take note of the painful sensations with the equanimity of mindfulness. Daily Practice Pay close attention to what it feels like when something is painful, both physically and mentally, as a way of practicing the second foundation of mindfulness. This means you are not resenting or resisting the pain but merely taking an interest in it and investigating its nuances with a balanced mind. Pain need not be seen as “bad,” but rather can be explored as a different texture on the continuum of lived experience.  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 but with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4) Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Mushim Patricia Ikeda // FB: October 7-8, 2023, a hybrid conference, "Mindfulness: What's Next?"

 

  · October 7-8, 2023, a hybrid conference, "Mindfulness: What's Next?" from the Mangalam Research Center in Berkeley. For info and registration see https://www.mangalamresearch.org/special-events/

Presenters include Alan Senauke, Eli Brown-Stevenson, Mushim Patricia Ikeda, Jack Petranker, and more.

Via GBF: From the Archive: Weaving a Path Home - Alzak Amlani

[GBF] From the Archive: Weaving a Path Home - Alzak Amlani

We hope you will enjoy this new dharma talk that has surfaced from the archive, featuring our very own sangha member Alzak Amlani:

Weaving a Path Home, From India to Africa to Buddha 

Alzak Amlani has been practicing Buddhism for 20 years and in the last ten years has been a student of the Diamond Approach. He is a practicing psychologist and teaches in the Integral Counseling Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where his work focuses on integrating spiritual approaches and multiculturalism into psychotherapy.
He is of Indian origin and grew up in Uganda, East Africa.

 

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Enjoy 800+ free recorded dharma talks at www.gaybuddhist.org/podcast/

Via White Crane Institute

 

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Perry Brass Photo credit: Jack Slomowitz

1947 -

American author, poet and activist, PERRY BRASS was born today Brass grew up in Savannah, Georgia grew up in the 1950s and 60s in equal parts Southern, Jewish, economically impoverished, and very much gay. To escape the South’s violent homophobia, he hitchhiked at age 17 from Savannah to San Francisco — an adventure, he recalls, that was “like Mark Twain with drag queens.” He has published fourteen books and been a finalist six times in three categories (poetry; gay science fiction and fantasy; spirituality and religion) for national Lambda Literary Awards.

One of the main themes in his writing has been the integration of sexuality and the religious or spiritual impulse, as exemplified in his novels Albert: or, The Book of Man, Angel Lust, and Substance of God. His writings have attempted to answer questions such as: Why are so many gay men religious and political conservatives? Why is the need for God so important to us? What is our own place in nature and the world?

Among the early anthologies that included Brass's work were The Male Muse, the first anthology of openly gay poetry ever published, edited by Ian Young; The Gay Liberation Book from Rolling Stone Press, including work by John Lennon; The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse; and Gay Roots from Gay Sunshine Press. His work can be found in over 20 anthologies of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs, and other writings. A poetry cycle called "Five Gay Jewish Prayers" was used as part of the high holiday service at New York's Beth Simchat Torah congregation. The text of this poem was accepted (in 1985) as one of the first gay Jewish documents in the YIVO Archives of Jewish history. This poem was set to choral music by Chris De Blasio, as "Five Prayers," which has been sung by several gay choruses.

In 1984, his play Night Chills, an early play dealing with the AIDS crisis, won a Jane Chambers International Gay Playwriting Award. Brass’s collaborations with composers include the words for "All the Way Through Evening," a five-song cycle set by DeBlasio, which was featured on the AIDS Quilt Songbook CD from Harmonia Mundi, France, and Heartbeats from Minnesota Public Radio; "The Angel Voices of Men" set by Ricky Ian Gordon and commissioned by the Dick Cable Musical Trust for the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, which has featured it on its CD Gay Century Songbook; "Three Brass Songs" with Grammy-nominated composer Fred Hersch; and "Waltzes for Men" also commissioned by the DCMT for the NYC Gay Men’s Chorus and set by Craig Carnahan.

Brass's non-fiction book, How to Survive Your Own Gay Life (Belhue Press, 1999) deals with the psychic and physical survival of gay men, with their spiritual and psychological growth, and with achieving happiness and maturity. It was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in religion and spirituality, and has been the basis for many LGBT discussion and support groups, classes, and workshops.

Noteworthy

The European Parliament

1996 -

The EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT calls for an end to "all discrimination against homosexuals."

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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: Real Recognizes Real

Real Recognizes Real

Just as it is only the real Self that can see the real world behind appearances, so it may be that it is only the real seeker who can recognize a genuine man or woman of wisdom. Jason Needleman, “Bread and Stone” CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

 

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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 unhealthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to unhealthy states. (MN 19) Abandoning doubt, one abides having gone beyond doubt; unperplexed about healthy states, one purifies the mind of doubt. (MN 51) Just as a person, laden with goods and wealth, who undertakes a long journey across a dangerous wilderness, would make it safely through with their goods to safety, so would one rejoice and be glad about the abandoning of doubt. (DN 2)

Reflection Our text likens doubt to the insecurities felt while undertaking a dangerous journey, something that would have been commonplace to the merchants of ancient India. It is a sense of uneasiness around vague but real threats, and the image describes very well what today we might call anxiety. Might anxieties be regarded as unhealthy states, and might it be possible to simply abandon them, as described here? Daily Practice Notice when you feel anxious about or wary of little things in your daily experience, and see if you can just abandon them. I'm not referring to a diagnosed anxiety disorder here but to the many small worries we have that might respond to this sort of approach. Ask yourself if these doubts are helpful, and when you realize they are not, see if you can let go of them simply by deciding "not to go there” just now.  Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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