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.
If we don’t recognize desire as it is happening, we are ruled by it. If we can recognize our desires in the moment that they occur, there is a possibility of doing something different.
Rob Nairn, Choden, and Heather Regan-Addis, “Overcoming the Vortex of Desire”
Right Relationship as the Ninth Factor of the Path With Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
In this month's Dharma Talk, Zen teacher Vanessa Zuisei Goddard explores Right Relationship in Buddhism and how it supports spiritual practice and everyday life.
Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on equanimity, for when you develop meditation on equanimity, all aversion is abandoned. (MN 62)
The manifestation of equanimity is the subsiding of attraction and aversion. (Vm 9.93) Having smelled an odor with the nose, one is neither glad-minded nor sad-minded but abides with equanimity, mindful and fully aware. (AN 6.1)
Reflection
Equanimity, the fourth brahma-vihara, or sublime way of abiding, is defined here in terms of its manifestation—how it presents itself in experience. Equanimity manifests as the absence of the two extremes of attraction (greed) and aversion (hatred), which so often rule the mind. Equanimity is the still center point on a continuum between the two, where the mind neither draws toward nor tilts away from an object.
Daily Practice
Equanimity can be practiced with any of the sense modalities, and here we are invited to engage with the practice in the sensory realm of smelling odors. Practice lingering in the presence of an obviously pleasant or an intensely unpleasant odor and see if you can manifest the attitude of equanimity. You can experience pleasure and displeasure and not automatically want more or less of it. See what this feels like, and then sustain the non-reactive attitude toward feeling tones.
Tomorrow: Refraining from Frivolous Speech One week from today: Cultivating Lovingkindness
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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)
Having heard the Dhamma and trusting the Buddha, one undertakes a commitment to perfect their ethical behavior. (DN 2)
Reflection
The first step along the path of transformation and healing laid out by the Buddha is not meditation but the cultivation of improved ethical behavior. The practice is to purify your mind of some of the most harmful mental and emotional toxins that obstruct the ability to quiet the mind. This can only be done by making a commitment to a healthier course of action and will in itself greatly contribute to the cessation of suffering.
Daily Practice
Make a commitment to improving or even perfecting your ethical behavior as a living and active practice. Choose to work toward being a better person, toward treating others with greater care and respect, and toward being truthful and trustworthy. Ethical behavior is not only the result of meditation and wisdom but also the cause of them. As wisdom grows it becomes easier to behave ethically, but you need to begin such behavior on day one.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Equanimity One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
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“We can come back to the control we feel with our thinking minds; the problem is we are reinforcing our own sense of separateness.
And in that world of separateness, we're constantly locking doors to protect something, and feeling drier and drier in the process. We're turning off the life juice, the flow of the universe, just in order to protect something...
Once we recognize who we thought we were, we say ‘yeah, there’s my thinking mind,' and it defines all this, but behind it all here I am, I just am.”