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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy

 

RIGHT INTENTION Cultivating Appreciative Joy Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on appreciative joy, for when you develop meditation on appreciative joy, any discontent will be abandoned. (MN 62)  The characteristic of appreciative joy is gladdening produced by the success of others. (Vm 9.93)

Reflection Appreciative joy is the neglected brahma-vihara, or sublime state of mind, less well known than its siblings lovingkindness, compassion, and equanimity. As we see from this definition, it serves as an antidote to discontent. When feeling good about someone else, you cannot at the same time feel bad about yourself. While feeling joy in appreciation of the good fortune of others might feel forced at first, it can gradually become a habit of mind.  Daily Practice Look for opportunities to notice when good things are happening to other people and extend good wishes to those people rather than jealousy or resentment. Celebrate the good fortune of even strangers and be happy for them. Joy and gladness are both rare and precious, and celebrating others' good fortune is an easy way to access those feelings on a regular basis. Even if things are not going well for you, you can share in the happiness of others. Try it and see for yourself. Tomorrow: Refraining from Harsh Speech One week from today: Cultivating Equanimity Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Daily Dharma: Grief and Gratitude

 We need both the immense beauty and gratitude for blessings in life to keep us afloat, and the deep sadness and grief to urge us to action. 

Oren Jay Sofer, “Why We Need Both Grief and Gratitude”

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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

 

RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9) When one knows and sees sounds as they actually are, then one is not attached to sounds. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well-being. (MN 149)

Reflection Craving is the cause of suffering, and if we crave a hundred things we will experience a hundred episodes of suffering. We are used to this constant thirst to possess things we like and to avoid what we don’t like. But we do not have to follow the dictates of our desires. It is possible to notice the yearning for something and then simply let go of it. This capacity points the way to freedom from compulsion. Daily Practice Using sound as the focus of practice, see if you can begin to notice the minor ways you favor or oppose the sounds you meet in your experience. Step back from being annoyed by a particular sound; step back from the allure another may induce; step back from constantly welcoming what sounds good and resisting what sounds bad. This stepping back is replacing desire with equanimity and can be practiced in small ways. Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Daily Dharma: Letting Our Blind Spots Fall in Love

Maybe, when talking about love, we could say, “Let our blind spots fall in love. Let the I that I’m becoming fall in love with the you I haven’t yet discovered and can’t even imagine.”

Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, “When Our Blind Spots Fall in Love”

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Via White Crane Institute // RICHARD HALLIBURTON

 

January 09

Born

Richard Halliburton, ADVENTURER

1900 - 

RICHARD HALLIBURTON, American adventurer and author, born (d: 1939) If Halliburton was alive today he would be the guy in  "The Most Fascinating Man in the World" ads. Halliburton was the quintessential preppie. And in the Ivy League of yore, preppiness and Gayness often went hand-in-hand. When Halliburton’s Chinese junk, Sea Dragon, was lost in the Pacific in 1939, he still looked very much as he had at Lawrenceville and Princeton – trim, muscular, and innocently handsome.

His athletic prowess and world-wide adventures had titillated a generation of vicarious thrill seekers and had been happily exploited by both the media and Halliburton’s many best-selling books. And it’s easy to see why. He climbed the Matterhorn in 1921; swam the Hellespont in 1925 and the Panama Canal (from the Atlantic to the Pacific) in 1928; and flew over 50,000 miles around the world in his own airplane, The Flying Carpet, between 1928 and 1931, thereby milking the adoration of an aviation-mad public.

Halliburton starred in his own documentary films and lectured, for stiff fees, to large audiences throughout the world. Between times, he managed to find time for men. As Roger Austen writes in Playing the Game, Halliburton “had a special fondness for YMCAs, spend the night with Rod La Roque, went flying with Ramon Navarro, and settled down with another bachelor in Laguna Beach.” And how was his adoring public to know? Hadn’t his books been filled with his appreciation of “Kashmiri maidens, Parisian ballerinas and Castillian countesses”? “Halliburton,” writes John Paul Hudson with acute insight, “certainly did a lot of straight-approved things, though his exploits were self-stretching and not competitive – which is the Gay way.”

Ireland.

|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|

 

Meditation Advice for ‘Doers’
By Leath Tonino

If doing nothing isn’t your absolute favorite pastime, or if you have a hard time sitting still, try this.

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Via Sen McGlinn's blog // Homosexuality and gender identity, January 6, 2021

 

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna

 

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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