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.
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 neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling in the body,
one is aware: “Feeling a bodily neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling …
one is just aware, just mindful: 'There is feeling.'” And one abides not
clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
Of the three kinds of feeling tone—pleasant, painful, and neither-pleasant-nor-painful—it
is this third, neutral feeling that is the most challenging to the
practice of mindfulness. Feeling tones arise in a steady stream, just
like the stream of consciousness; the practice is to pay close enough
attention to the textured sensation of each moment. The object is one
thing (sight, sound, etc.), and the feeling tone that arises with it is
another.
Daily Practice
Sit quietly for
some stretch of time and attend carefully to all the neutral sensations
in the body. You might even scan systematically from head to foot
looking for all the feeling tones that are occurring. Some are obviously
pleasant, some are clearly painful. What about the rest? These are the
neutral sensations—you feel them, but they do not feel good or bad. They
are just there. Feel what it's like to feel what is just there.
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, with joy and the pleasure born of
concentration. (MN 4)
Reflection
The mind is
capable, through training, of becoming more concentrated than is usual
in ordinary daily experience. The Buddha describes this as a natural
process, unfolding as the body and mind become gradually happier and
more tranquil while the mind is focusing upon a single object. In the
second phase of this process, discursive thinking gradually fades away
as the feeling of pleasure and well-being grows stronger and deepens.
Daily Practice
As you sit
quietly and focus on your breathing, the thoughts and memories and plans
that so habitually inhabit the mind begin to settle, and the mind
becomes calmer. At a certain point thoughts may cease altogether.
Awareness of sensory experience remains strong, but it is no longer
mediated by words, images, or concepts. The need to re-engage the mind
with an object and hold it there is no longer needed, so these functions
drop away.
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
The
aim of meditation isn’t to eliminate thought, it’s to free ourselves
from suffering. As Ajahn Chah points out, our aim is “to get peaceful…
The practice … is for developing wisdom and understanding.”
Walking with the Buddha:
A Pilgrimage to India & Nepal With Tricycle & Vishvapani Blomfield February 8–21, 2025
Follow
in the footsteps of the Buddha as we explore the lands that he walked
in his time, from Lumbini to Kushinagar and each important pilgrimage
site in between, on this carbon-negative journey.
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 abandon arisen unhealthy mental states. One
abandons all five arisen hindrances. (MN 141)
Reflection
Having worked
through all five hindrances one at a time, we now focus on treating
sense desire, ill will, restlessness, sluggishness, and doubt as a
group. These are the five kinds of mental states that obstruct the
ability of the mind to gather strength and become unified. Unhealthy
states breed more unhealthy states, and it is helpful to abandon, not
suppress or resist, them when you notice them arising in your
experience.
Daily Practice
Become familiar
with these unhealthy states and notice them at any point during your
day when they come up—which is bound to be often. Just notice them one
by one, recognize each as being not helpful, and let it go. That’s all.
Gently guide your mind away from states that obstruct the mind toward
states that are free of these obstacles. You will come to know your own
mind better, and the practice will become easier to do.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
I was chatting with a couple of fellow students afterwards over tea and they told me about the word bombu. “It means foolish being,” they said. “We are all bombu. And we are all forgiven by Amida Buddha.”
Satya Robyn, “Meeting Shame with Compassion: A Pure Land Antidote”
In
a personal reflection, Dr. Kamilah Majied celebrates the legacy of her
spiritual mentor, Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, and his impact on her life and
Buddhist practice.
BEA ARTHUR,
American actress, dies (b: 1922); A long time ally of the LGBT
community, Bea Arthur, was famous for her title role in the sitcom Maude and later for TheGoldenGirls and many Broadway appearances and film.
She was an early
opponent of Proposition 6 in California that would have forbidden Gay
people and their allies from being teachers. It was called The Briggs
Initiative after the state senator John Briggs who sponsored the ballot
initiative. When this writer approached Arthur to request that she
appear before the Morals and Ethics Committee of the Screen Actor’s
Guild. I asked her if she would help and the first thing she said was "I
will do anything you want me to do." As a result, the SAG union would
be among the first to speak out against the broadly discriminatory
proposition.
In November of
2005, Bea flew to New York City from her home in Los Angeles to give a
special benefit performance of her one-woman show. The performance
raised over $40,000 for the Ali Forney Center. In an interview for Next
Magazine Bea explained her decision to offer her support "I'm very, very
involved in charities involving youth and the plight of foster
children. But these kids at the Ali Forney Center are literally dumped
by their families because of the fact that they are lesbian, gay, or
transgender - this organization really is saving lives."
Bea continued to
offer her support, both as a donor and as an advocate. In one of her
very last interviews, published in the New York Blade in May 2008, Bea
spoke with pride of having done the benefit for AFC, and indicated that
she would do anything to help gay kids disowned by their parents.
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