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.
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)
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 all five arisen hindrances. (MN 141)
Reflection
Having worked through all five hindrances one at a time, we now focus on treating sense desire, ill will, restlessness, sluggishness, and doubt as a group. These are the five kinds of mental states that obstruct the ability of the mind to gather strength and become unified. Unhealthy states breed more unhealthy states, and it is helpful to abandon, not suppress or resist, them when you notice them arising in your experience.
Daily Practice
Become familiar with these unhealthy states and notice them at any point during your day when they come up—which is bound to be often. Just notice them one by one, recognize each as being not helpful, and let it go. That’s all. Gently guide your mind away from states that obstruct the mind toward states that are free of these obstacles. You will come to know your own mind better, and the practice will become easier to do.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna One week from today: Developing Unarisen Healthy States
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Wisdom, which helps us make reasonably good life choices, enabling us to live reasonably good lives, can’t be secret or esoteric. It must reside in what is common and ordinary; otherwise, what hope would any of us have of living well?
Love, compassion, care—these things can provide many answers to the problems that pop up in our life. You always need to be kind. You always need to be humble. And, most importantly, remember being humble is not being weak.
Ven. Mahindasiri Thero, “How to Deal with Toxic People”
RIGHT LIVING Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Taking What is Not Given
Taking what is not given is unhealthy. Refraining from taking what is not given is healthy. (MN 9) Abandoning the taking of what is not given, one abstains from taking what is not given; one does not take by way of theft the wealth and property of others. (MN 41) One practices thus: “Others may take what is not given, but I will abstain from taking what is not given.” (MN 8)
One is to practice thus: “Here, regarding things cognized by you, in the cognized there will be just the cognized.“ When, firmly mindful, one cognizes a mental object, one is not inflamed by lust for mental objects; one experiences it with a dispassionate mind and does not remain holding it tightly. (SN 35.95)
Reflection
Five of our sense doors open onto the world, while the sixth, the mind door, opens inwardly to draw on sensory experience and mental objects such as memories, imagination, and thoughts. The mental objects are cognized, or known to us, one after another in a stream of consciousness. Here we are encouraged to encounter our thoughts without elaboration, as phenomena arising and passing away.
Daily Practice
See if you can regard your mental activity—the thoughts and images and words passing through the mind—with equanimity. That is, observe them closely but without becoming entangled in their content and without favoring some and opposing others. Thoughts are merely objects that, like sights and sounds and physical sensations, come and go based on various conditions. See if you can abide without “holding them tightly.”
Tomorrow: Abandoning Arisen Unhealthy States One week from today: Abstaining from Misbehaving Among Sensual Pleasures
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