Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: Find Your Buddhanature Every Day

We are indeed connected to all things, but we should feel free to move about, free to join others, free to examine preconceptions and misinterpretations, and free to find our buddhanature as we engage in the day’s most common actions and events.

—Gary Thorp, “The Dust Beyond the Cushion”

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Via Lion’s Roar newsletter // Pema Chödrön offers a method for generating love and compassion for all human beings.

Be Free of Suffering
Pema Chödrön offers a method for generating love and compassion for all human beings.

 

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 14, 2021 💌

 
 

When you can learn to accept love, you can give love. You can give love to all you perceive, all the time. I am loving awareness. You can be aware of your eyes seeing, your ears hearing, your skin feeling, and your mind producing thoughts, thought after thought after thought.

Thoughts are seductive, but you don’t have to identify with them. You identify not with the thoughts, but with the awareness of the thoughts. To bring loving awareness to everything you turn your awareness to is to be love.

This moment is love.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Create with Your Attention

Through the direction and nature of our attention, we prove ourselves to be partners in creation, both of the world and of ourselves.

—Iain McGilchrist, “Examining Attention”

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Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: Embrace the Groundlessness

 When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.

—Pema Chödrön, “The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human”

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Sunday, April 11, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: Cut Through Your Mind’s Clinging

 To cut through the mind’s clinging, it is important to understand that all appearances are void, like the appearance of water in a mirage. Beautiful forms are of no benefit to the mind, nor can ugly forms harm it in any way.

—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, “Teachings on the Nature of Mind and Practice”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 11, 2021 💌

 

The practice of repeating the phrase "I am loving awareness" turns you inward toward the soul. If you dive deep enough into your soul, you will come to God. In Greek it’s called 'agape', God love. Martin Luther King, Jr. said about this agape, this higher love:

“It’s an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative … the love of God operating in the human heart.”

When you can accept that kind of love, you can give that love.

- Ram Dass -

Saturday, April 10, 2021

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Via Daily Dharma: Start with a Clean Slate

 Unlike a painting, our minds are not fixed. It is like the image is wiped clean and a new one is created every moment. While the next image will often be very similar to the previous one, it is never exactly the same.

—Khentrul Rinpoche, “A New Mind Each Moment”

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Via Tricycle // Engaging with the Truths of Suffering

 

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April 10, 2021

Engaging with the Truths of Suffering
 
 
 
The four noble truths are the very essence of the Buddha’s teachings. Beginning with the radical declaration of the first truth—that everything in our lives is qualified by suffering—they lay out the existence of suffering, its causes, the possibility of its cessation, and the means of its cessation (the eightfold path).

At a time of widespread global suffering, these truths matter more than ever. But their value goes beyond their ability to help us to understand the nature of suffering. They also provide us with a practical set of principles for actively engaging with the reality of suffering in our world.

Soto Zen priest Rev. Keiryu Liên Shutt, a former social worker who spent 10 years working with homeless seniors, has devoted her life to putting the four truths into action. She reminds us that these are truths to be lived by, not just learned or memorized. We can apply and embody them in our everyday lives to actively engage with hardship and injustice.

Watch this new four-part Dharma Talk series to discover Shutt’s reframing of the four noble truths as the four engaged noble truths and to learn how they can enliven us, reconnect us with a sense of wholeness, and inspire real-world engagement.

 

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Via Lion's Roar // Ram Dass: To Love & Serve

 

Ram Dass: To Love & Serve

Sara Davidson remembers the American spiritual icon Ram Dass, born 90 years ago today. 
 

Via Lion's Roar // The Sunlight of Awareness

 

The Sunlight of Awareness

Shine the warm light of awareness on your thoughts and feelings, says Thich Nhat Hanh.

Thich Nhat Hanh Sunlight of Awareness Practice

Observe the changes that take place in your mind under the light of awareness. Even your breathing has changed and become “not-two” (I don’t want to say “one”) with your observing self. This is true of all your thoughts, feelings and habits, which, together with their effects, are suddenly transformed.

From time to time you may become restless, and the restlessness will not go away. At such times, just sit quietly, follow your breathing, smile a half-smile, and shine your awareness on the restlessness. Don’t judge it or try to destroy it, because this restlessness is you yourself. It is born, has some period of existence, and fades away, quite naturally. Don’t be in too big a hurry to find its source. Don’t try too hard to make it disappear. Just illuminate it. You will see that little by little it will change, merge, become connected with you, the observer. Any psychological state that you subject to this illumination will eventually soften and acquire the same nature as the observing mind.

Throughout your meditation, keep the sun of your awareness shining. Like the physical sun, which lights every leaf and every blade of grass, our awareness lights our every thought and feeling, allowing us to recognize them, be aware of their birth, duration, and dissolution, without judging or evaluating, welcoming or banishing them.

It is important that you do not consider awareness to be your “ally,” called on to suppress the “enemies” that are your unruly thoughts. Do not turn your mind into a battlefield. Opposition between good and bad is often compared to light and dark, but if we look at it in a different way, we will see that when light shines, darkness does not disappear. It doesn’t leave; it merges with the light. It becomes the light.

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem. To meditate means to observe. Your smile proves it. It proves that you are being gentle with yourself, that the sun of awareness is shining in you, that you have control of your situation. You are yourself, and you have acquired some peace. It is this peace that makes a child love to be near you.

Adapted from “The Sun, My Heart: Reflections on Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight,” published by Parallax Press.

 

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Friday, April 9, 2021

Via Daily Dharma: Walk in Mindfulness

 When the Buddha walked, he walked without effort. He just enjoyed walking. He didn’t have to strain, because when you walk in mindfulness, you are in touch with all the wonders of life within you and around you.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Walk Like a Buddha”

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