Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: 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 sounds as they actually are, then one is not attached to sounds. 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 Craving is the cause of suffering, and if we crave a hundred things we will experience a hundred episodes of suffering. We are used to this constant thirst to possess things we like and to avoid what we don’t like. But we do not have to follow the dictates of our desires. It is possible to notice the yearning for something and then simply let go of it. This capacity points the way to freedom from compulsion. Daily Practice Using sound as the focus of practice, see if you can begin to notice the minor ways you favor or oppose the sounds you meet in your experience. Step back from being annoyed by a particular sound; step back from the allure another may induce; step back from constantly welcoming what sounds good and resisting what sounds bad. This stepping back is replacing desire with equanimity and can be practiced in small ways. 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: Don’t Hold Back

 

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Don’t Hold Back There are no guarantees—except the guarantee that holding back from life is a recipe for anguish. Oliver Burkeman, “It’s Worse than You Think” CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

Power and Patronage By Tracy Stilerman  The story of a Buddhist woman at the head of a Chinese dynasty Read more »

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Via Daily Dharma: Touch Vulnerability

 

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Touch Vulnerability Breathe in for all those who are suffering and allow yourself to be touched by their current vulnerability. Breathe out, letting the heartbeat transform their sorrow: “May all beings be free of suffering.” Devin Berry, “Love in Action” CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

The Oldest Game There Is By Clark Strand This winning poem from the Tricycle Haiku Challenge shows us what it looks like to belong to a planet. Read more » Diversity Plaza Directed by Kesang Tseten Explore the vibrant lives of up to 75,000 Himalayans in Jackson Heights, Queens—the most linguistically diverse zip code in the U.S. Our latest Film Club pick directed by Kesang Tseten reveals how these communities honor their traditions while embracing new lives in America. Watch now »

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and 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 painful feeling, one is aware: "Feeling a painful feeling . .. . one is just aware, just mindful: 'There is feeling.'" And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection The second ground on which mindfulness is established is the realm of feeling tones. This includes both physical and mental feeling tones, and this week the unpleasant or painful feeling tones are singled out. Physical pain is self-evident, but mental pain is often subtler, as is the transition point between an unpleasant feeling tone and an unhealthy emotion.  Daily Practice See if you can break the reflexive bond between feeling pain and immediately resenting it or hating it or wishing it would go away. Try instead to examine with interest and curiosity the texture of the pain: for instance, is it sharp or dull, throbbing or constant? Pain is an inevitable aspect of human experience, and all but the most intense pain is bearable. There is more to learn from facing pain than from attempting to run from it. So let’s look at it and see what we can learn. 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 brings 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 on 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 Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation //Words of Wisdom - January 5, 2025 💠

 

Let’s say I drive to see somebody who’s dying. I’ve been driving on the highway. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, listening to the radio, maybe chanting the Hanuman Chalisa—I’m somewhere else. I walk into the room and suddenly I’m a lifeline. I’m a presence for that person. What I’ve learned to do is just sit down and get there into the situation. I can say, “I’d like to get here for a few minutes. Why don’t we just sit quietly together?” I sit there and just feel my way into what the moment is—the moment is the ticking of the clock or the moment is a hand I’m holding. Your models of how you are suppose to be to be useful for another person could be what’s getting in your way. Trust that you will be open in the way you need to be opened. Maybe not the way you would think of yourself being opened. But how presumptuous of you to know what that person needs. Maybe that person needs you to be a silly toad. So that when you leave he or she can say, “Well, I know more than she did. She was no use to me whatsoever.” The models have to be let go of. You walk into a situation naked, always."

>> Want to dive deeper with Ram Dass? Click Here to Receive a Daily Wisdom Text from Ram Dass & Friends.

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