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 VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
And what is the way leading to the cessation of suffering? It is just this noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. (MN 9)
One practices contentment. (DN 2)
Reflection
A simple and elegant instruction: Practice contentment! First, we see that it is something we can attain rather than something that comes to us from outside by chance or grace. Then we find out it is a skill that can be practiced, like playing the piano or learning a language. What does it take to feel content? Appreciating the pleasure instead of the pain, the well-being instead of the illness, the joy instead of the distress.
Daily Practice
Contentment is an experience, not a set of circumstances. You need not wait until you are wealthy to feel content, or even wait for that headache to go away. Contentment is an experience that can be accessed by settling into the moment and finding the goodness in it. Even in the most challenging of conditions there are positive aspects that can be brought forward in your mind. Suffering is real, but it can be put aside, however briefly.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Equanimity One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
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"You can get to the place of being loving-awareness, but before you can love the universe or other people you have to be able to love yourself. That love throws you into the next plane, which I call the soul plane. It is spiritual, but it also deals with separation, because the soul wants to meld with the One. The One is love, light; the One is peace, compassion. The soul wants to meld with that.
The reason we are addicted to power is because of separateness—separate nations, separate states, separate religions, and separate people. When you are separate the whole universe is powerful, and you are so little…When you get into your soul, the whole world is made of love—trees are made of love; beings, in their souls, are made of love. "
Memories say “You’re one thing,” but in reality, we are a bundle of many different things, all in flux, existing not in the past or the future but only in a string of moments.
Dylan Tuccillo, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Phone”
RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Mind
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 the mind is liberated, one is aware: “The mind is liberated.”. . . One is just aware, just mindful: “There is mind.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
We are used to thinking of people as being in bondage to suffering at all times until they suddenly “wake up” and are liberated from suffering once and for all—perhaps while seated under a tree. But we can also take things one moment at a time and see that sometimes our mind is in bondage—to anger, for example—and sometimes it is not. Noticing the moments you are liberated from harmful states is inherently valuable.
Daily Practice
As you practice mindfulness, watching various states come and go in your mind and body, pay close attention to the moments you feel held or restrained by something. Maybe it is a mood of discouragement, or perhaps you feel you are in the grips of an unpleasant story. Watching closely, you may see that later the experience has changed, as all things do. This is a moment in which to relish the fleeting sense of freedom.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Third Phase of Absorption (3rd Jhāna)
With the fading away of joy, one abides in equanimity, mindful and fully aware. Still feeling pleasure with the body, one enters upon and abides in the third phase of absorption, on account of which noble ones announce: “One has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful.” (MN 4)
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna
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Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19)
Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to develop the arising of unarisen healthy mental states. One develops the unarisen awakening factor of equanimity. (MN 141)
Reflection
We all have the capacity for generosity, kindness, and wisdom. Some would even say these are more fundamental to our nature than their harmful opposites: greed, hatred, and delusion. All these mental and emotional traits remain dormant until one or another of them is roused into becoming an active mental or emotional state. Instead of waiting passively to see what emerges, take the lead and call up the good stuff.
Daily Practice
Take a few moments from time to time to “stir up energy” and develop one or more of the healthy states that lie sleeping as healthy traits in your unconscious mind. Make them conscious by deliberately invoking generosity or kindness or equanimity, and see how you can induce these states more or less at will. It is a healthy skill to learn. Arousing equanimity is particularly useful in situations where you are challenged.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
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