Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering

 

RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering What is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that: that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. (MN 9)

Reflection These are the three flavors of craving: strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. Craving can take the form of 1) wanting more of the physical sensations and other sensory inputs that feel good and wanting to avoid those that feel bad. It can also take the form of 2) aching for things that are not happening to happen or 3) yearning for things that are happening to stop. All three forms of craving inevitably give rise to suffering. Daily Practice Look for the truth of this in your own experience. Any time you are suffering, even slightly, look into the causes of it. There will be something that you want to hold on to because it feels good and you are afraid of it slipping away. Or there will be something that you want to have happen or come into being. Or something you wish would just disappear. Suffering is created anew each moment from these forms of craving. Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning. Donate »

© 2022 Tricycle Foundation 89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Enjoy Sitting

Finding a way to enjoy just sitting is key. Sitting meditation is a refuge, not a test.

Narayan Helen Liebenson, “The Refuge of Sitting”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Tumblr

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and the First Jhāna

 

RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Body 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)

Reflection We often forget that the practice of mindfulness meditation is the practice of contentment. We are ardent because we are interested in what is happening, fully aware because we are looking openly at it, and mindful because we are examining our experience with equanimity rather than under the influence of desire. When we no longer desire what is happening to be any different than it is, we are content. Daily Practice Practice mindfulness as an exercise in contentment. Mindfulness begins with bringing deliberate attention to the objects of experience and thereby bringing heightened awareness to the moment. Mindfulness proceeds by disengaging the habit of favoring some things and opposing others, and then regarding all phenomena equally. When desire is replaced by an attitude of equanimity, contentment settles in the mind. RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the First Phase of Absorption (1st Jhāna) Having abandoned the five hindrances, imperfections of the mind that weaken wisdom, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters and abides in the first phase of absorption, which is accompanied by applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of seclusion. (MN 4) Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning. Donate »

© 2022 Tricycle Foundation 89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Unfreezing Our Perceptions

We can have this view of ourselves as frozen—and we can have frozen opinions of others as well—but that’s just based on a misunderstanding.

Pema Chödrön, “What Goes Through the Bardos?”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 6, 2022 💌

 

“Imagine what it would be like to be a wide-open heart who was in the presence of all of the world’s suffering and existence; and at the same moment to have the wisdom and equanimity in which you have full understanding of why it all is the way it is.” 

- Ram Dass -

From Here & Now Podcast - Ep. 179 – Astral Planes, Time, Paradox, and Freedom

Via Daily Dharma: Interdependent Happiness

 In a thoroughly interdependent world, one’s own happiness cannot be built successfully upon the suffering of others. 

Andrew Olendzki, “The Other Dukkha”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Tumblr

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

 

RIGHT EFFORT Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States 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)

Reflection The mind has the capacity to guide how it functions to some extent, and unhealthy states such as fear, anger, and aversion have a harmful effect on our well-being. So it makes sense to use whatever ability you have to inhibit the arising of these mental and emotional states before they flood your mind. Once they arise, unhealthy states take over and inhibit the arising of healthy mind states, so it’s better they don’t occur at all.  Daily Practice Keeping your mind focused on healthy states prevents unhealthy states from arising. Only one state of mind can be present at a time, so if you frequently occupy your mind with healthy states, such as thoughts of kindness or generosity or joy in the well-being of others, then your mind will remain inclined toward similar healthy states. Maintaining positive states of mind is the best way of restraining negative mind states. Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna One week from today: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

Tricycle is a nonprofit and relies on your support to keep its wheels turning. Donate »

© 2022 Tricycle Foundation 89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via White Crane Institute // An excerpt from Mark Thompson’s Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning

Today's Gay Wisdom The First (modern) Faerie Gathering 2017 -  Equinox/Return An excerpt from Mark Thompson’s Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning What Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard and Harry Hay recognized was the “new city of Friends” described by Walt Whitman over a hundred years ago—a sustaining place where “robust love” might thrive, a deep source of empowerment. It has been a dream asserted by a few and glimpsed by others at crucial points in our development. The early 1950s and 1970s were times when our movement howled at the moon, briefly acknowledging that this dream could be a reality. That this rude awakening represented something instinctual, wildly alive, posed problems for our leaders. Here was nature, woolly and cloven-hoofed, taking on unexpected form. Here were luminous faces peering out on the edges of accepted reality. How strangely familiar, too, for others to suppress what they do not comprehend, to fear what they’ve been taught to distrust. Power, status, the hierarchy of who’s on top is the real currency of American culture, and so many of our leaders have been seduced by it all. These are the tactics of assimilation and they smell of panic. Thinking we have gained so much, we have been led to settle for less than we can be. There is a tyranny implicit in any label, and certainly the label of Gay has now been revealed as much for its limitations as for its liberations. Why not consider difference, whatever its reason, in terms of function? The concept of a faerie shaman is just one idea that indicates a purposeful role, beyond that of just political or sexual identity. In times past and in many cultures, we often assumed the tasks of the shamans—wise and creative ones—and were duly honored as such. If we can but take gay beyond society’s definition—which we have internalized—and see ourselves as part of this function, our secret will be out. I failed in my father’s eyes, and he in mind, as, I suppose, it had been fated. More to the point, few gay men ever seem to find complete acceptance from their fathers. (And even tolerance, however honorable, cannot account for true knowing.) Gay men have even less hope of being accepted by the greater father, the world of our daily existence, which, despite tolerant inroads, remains disapproving to its core. But neither can an opposite reality—that is, the matriarchy—hold any more honest place for us. Perhaps at one time, and according to the current feminist myth, the dominant Great Mother societies of agrarian, pre-Judeo-Christian times accepted gay men as welcomed sons. But I suspect, more likely, as subservient sons, in contrast to the outlawed sons of our contemporary age. So gay men remain suspended in a horrible dilemma. Both the matriarchy and the patriarchy have, in effect, played themselves out; and the future, symbolized through an historic union of the two—has yet to fully emerge. Gay male consciousness remains stymied, unable to come of age. This is why so much of recent gay-identified culture appears to lack deeper meaning; however fresh and guileless its messages, empowered as it is by ritual dance and sex and defiance against corrupt authority. At what point do gay boys stop finding favor in their father’s eyes? What stories are withheld, what rites of manhood lost in that uncomprehending gaze? Now, as gay men, we must begin by finding forgiveness in each other’s eyes, seek favor in stories of our own telling — our own fairy tales, the instructional fables we need to assume a mature and ever evolving gay adulthood. And for this we need to reinvest in wonder. By learning more fully to evoke and to balance the powers of (what were once known as) the Earth Mother and Father Sky, we can set into motion our own whiling evolution as gay men beyond definition. We will no longer suffer from the constraints of living on a fraction of a life. We will evidence harmony as men who see clearly within and thus act cleanly without. We can learn to revel in our perspective, as much as our preference, and we don’t need a name. Our freedom is our responsibility. We simply need to do our work. But first we must take the dark fantasies of our suppressed spirits out of their closets into the powerful light of reality. We can have a vision, and, thus, a culture to affirm, until one day perhaps our fathers will knowingly proclaim: “I have one of those.” Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning is now available at www.gaywisdom.org www.whitecranebooks.org

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8| Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! www.whitecraneinstitute.org |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Via RawStory

 

Via NPR // Gay country music icon Patrick Haggerty died Monday at age 78

 

[GBF] new GBF talks // San Francisco

 

New talks have been added to the audio archive at the GBF website:

2022_10_30 Daigan Gaither Buddhist Faith.mp3

2022_10_22 Anjali Sawhney Generic Somatic Practices.mp3

2000_03_06 Jim Wilson First GBF Spring Retreat 3 excerpt Sangha.mp3