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."

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Via Daily Dharma: Everything Is Essential

 

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Everything Is Essential A famous Buddhist sutra says that if one mote of dust were removed from the universe, the entire thing would collapse. That is the dharma attitude. Absolutely everything is essential. Larry Rosenberg, “Intimacy with the Present Moment” CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

‘Refuge’ By Quan Barry Quan Barry’s poetry reckons with our simultaneous capacities for violence and transcendence—and what it means to find refuge in a world seemingly defined by war. 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 »

Vis Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States

 

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RIGHT EFFORT Abandoning Arisen 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 toward unhealthy states. (MN 19) Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to abandon arisen unhealthy mental states. One abandons the arisen hindrance of ill will. (MN 141)

Reflection Unhealthy mental states arise all the time. The causes and conditions for their arising have been forged in previous mind moments, and we have no direct conscious control over whether or not they arise. The practice of right effort has to do entirely with how we handle them once they have come up. In other words, we have no control over what hand we are dealt in each moment, but we have the power to play that hand more or less skillfully. Daily Practice The conscious mind cannot control what emerges from the unconscious, but it can exercise some influence over how we respond. Take, for example, ill will, which can manifest as annoyance, resentment, or hatred; practice the art of acknowledging it but choosing not to feed it. To abandon ill will is not to suppress it or block it but rather to see it, know it to be harmful, and abandon it—to let it pass through and wave farewell.  Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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