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.
The root of the problem lies in the way we deal with change. Most of us feel so insecure that we want to create a structure around us that makes us feel safe, and then we don't want it to change. Any change increases our uncertainty and our confusion and our inadequacy. And it frightens us.
Think of how bizarre that is, because you are a part of nature. Look out there and show me something that isn't changing. The nature of things is that they change, including us. Do you see how you're in a losing strategy if you pit yourself against change? See, it's a losing game.
“In my healing I am also mourning… It is my acknowledgment that there is suffering. It is my honoring of my discomfort as well as the discomfort of everyone else in the world.” – Lama Rod
Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis upon which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62)
The far enemy of appreciative joy is discontent. (Vm 9.100)
Reflection
It is telling that we do not even have a word in English for the Pali word for appreciative joy (mudita). By putting together two words, we only approximate what we are trying to convey. Appreciative joy is the emotion of feeling happy for the other person, not because of them or about them, but celebrating the fact that they are happy and feeling blessed or fortunate in some way. Why don’t we have a word for this?
Daily Practice
Pay close attention to what happens in your own experience when you hear news of some good fortune befalling someone, whether the person is well known to you or not. Do you feel resentment, jealousy, or some other form of discontent? If so, stop right there and intervene. Conjure up goodwill instead and practice feeling happy for the person. These two mind states are opposites: one is unhealthy and the other healthy.
Tomorrow: Refraining from Harsh Speech One week from today: Cultivating Equanimity
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I think having the curiosity of a student forever is something to aspire to, and to see even the most irritating, pesky, awful life events as an occasion for teaching is a good way to go about your day if you can.
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 consciousness as it actually is, then one is not attached to consciousness. 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
Last week we were reminded of the consequences of not knowing and seeing consciousness as it really is, namely attachment, infatuation, and an increase of troubles generally. Here we discover the positive side of the story. We are much better off when we understand that consciousness is a series of momentary phenomena that arise and pass away in rapid succession. Seeing this, we do not get attached to it.
Daily Practice
Become familiar with the habit of regarding your own mind as a series of events rather than as a solid thing with enduring qualities. Little is lost by doing so, and much can be gained. With a process, there is nothing to attach to. It is like watching a game or a performance: you want to stay present and attentive, but you don’t want to inhibit what is happening by trying to hold on to it. Your mind too is like a performance.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
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I honor the light in all of us. The more I love God, the more I love God's forms, which are all forms. Living from the soul is very much a heart-centered journey. I get on a bus, and by the time I get off, I feel like I have met intimately family members I've known all my life. We're all in love with one another. To live in your spiritual heart with the degree of openness it entails, trust in the One. In that loving awareness, you are not as vulnerable as you would be in the ego, where you think you are separate from others.
Ultimately you live simultaneously in all of the planes of consciousness so that in a way, it's like a vertical cut-up—you look at somebody, they're there; they're not there.
There's an interesting series of stages in karma yoga, the yoga of living daily life as an exercise in becoming pungent, where you develop a witness—a place in yourself that watches your whole melodrama, your dance. It doesn't judge you; it doesn't try to change you; it's not trying to become enlightened; it's just watching the whole thing.