Sunday, April 16, 2023

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna

 


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RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects
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 doubt is internally present, one is aware: “Doubt is present for me.” When doubt is not present, one is aware: “Doubt is not present for me.” When the arising of unarisen doubt occurs, one  is aware of that. And when the abandoning of arisen doubt occurs, one is aware of that. One is just aware, just mindful, "there is a mental object.” And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
As we cycle through the five hindrances as arising and passing mental objects, we come to the last one, doubt. Some doubt is healthy, but this is the sort of doubt that prevents you from seeing clearly and is an obstacle to further progress along the path. It may take the form of self-doubt or doubting that you are practicing correctly. In meditation you can just be aware doubt is there, and let it go without buying in to what it is saying.

Daily Practice
The next time you feel the kind of doubt that impedes your ability to function well, take some time to examine it phenomenologically. That is to say, pay careful attention to what it feels like and how it is arising and passing away each moment, and learn to recognize it as just another mental factor that comes and goes. Understanding the transient nature of doubt gives you power to “ride out” its influence on your mind.


RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Approaching and Abiding in the Fourth Phase of Absorption (4th Jhāna)
With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, one enters upon and abides in the fourth phase of absorption, which has neither-pain-nor-pleasure, and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. The concentrated mind is thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability. (MN 4)
Reflection
The four stages of mental absorption described in the system of jhānas culminate with the attainment of a profound and imperturbable equanimity. In this state the mind is free of both craving and aversion, neither favors nor opposes any mental object, and is able to simply regard things as they actually are, undistorted by our projections and fears. Notice also that such equanimity has the effect of purifying mindfulness.

Daily Practice
Sitting quietly and allowing the mind to become more and more peaceful, progressively more unified, and gradually steadier will eventually culminate in the quality of mind described here. This is not a transcendent state but rather a natural, immanent state of mind. See if you can allow your mind to become still like tranquil water and watch the mind reflect whatever comes before it without distortion. 


Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and Abiding in the First Jhāna


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Via Daily Dharma: Speaking Skillfully

 Before you speak, stop, breathe, and consider if what you are about to say will improve upon the silence.

Allan Lokos, “Skillful Speech”


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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - April 16, 2023 💌


 

Death is very much a part of life, and it has cycles like leaves falling in autumn. It has touch, taste, sound, feeling. Think about being in a culture where death is not seen as a failure or an enemy, but as a stage of life. 

- Ram Dass -

Via White Crane Institute // Gay Wisdom - LEO BERSANI

 


1931 -

LEO BERSANI was an American academic, born on this date (d: 2022), known for his contributions to French literary criticism and queer theory. He was known for his 1987 essay "Is the Rectum a Grave?" and his 1995 book Homos.

Bersani was born in the Bronx. He studied at Harvard University, graduating in 1952 with a bachelor’s in Romance languages, and with a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1958. He taught at Wellesley College and Rutgers University before joining University of California, Berkeley in 1972, where he'd remain for the rest of his career, assuming emeritus status in 1996. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. He met Sam Geraci in 1992. They married in 2014. 

Male homosexuality is not the mirror image of heterosexuality, he argued, but something radically different, lacking many of the patriarchal inequalities that he said defined straight life.

“Far from apologizing for their promiscuity as a failure to maintain a loving relationship,” he wrote, “gay men should ceaselessly lament the practical necessity, now, of such relations, should resist being drawn into mimicking the unrelenting warfare between men and women.”

He followed nearly a decade later, with “Homos” (1995), a book-length critique of the emerging field of queer theory, and in particular of its leading figure, Judith Butler.

He taught that the whole point of being a homosexual man is that you disrupted the experience of possession, ownership, fidelity, consistency, safety, and you allowed sexuality to be what it really is, which is disruptive, disorienting, shattering, limit-violating and boundary-breaking.

An early and avid proponent of the post-structuralist theories coming from France in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Dr. Bersani was particularly taken with the work of the philosopher Michel Foucault, who became a close friend, and whom he brought to Berkeley as a visiting professor.

Like Dr. Bersani, Mr. Foucault critiqued what he called “the will to know,” to grasp the interiority of a subject and assert power over it, and instead looked for nonaggressive, noninvasive ways of engaging with other people — akin, he said, to the way one might look at a painting in a gallery.

“Foucault asked the question, ‘Why can’t we live our lives like a work of art?’ and Leo was just fascinated by that,” John Paul Ricco, an art historian at the University of Toronto, said in an interview.

Dr. Bersani’s later work, starting in the late 1990s, was especially taken with this project of showing that we can encounter something — an artwork, another person, the world itself — without dominating it, or even understanding it.

“He was an absolutely brilliant reader at taking what seemed to be the knots, or the impenetrability, or the downright insanity of a piece of writing, and just saying, ‘Hey, guys, that’s the point,’” Dr. Rose said.

Though Dr. Bersani trained as a literary scholar, his last works focused on art and film, from assessments of Assyrian palace reliefs to the work of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. He took emeritus status in 1996 but continued to teach and write; he published his final book, “Receptive Bodies,” in 2018.

Despite the apparent disjunction between Dr. Bersani’s literary criticism and his work on gay identity, there are themes running through both. He found in gay life a living instance of the sort of “swerve” and aesthetic frivolity that he called for in art and literature; for example, he praised gay bath houses for the casual sexual encounters they encouraged.

“He was interested in sort of lighter ways of sharing the world,” Dr. Tuhkanen said. “Just moving along and sharing rhythms and having anonymous sex where we don’t need to have knowledge of the other person, but we can share a kind of bodily moment and a pleasurable moment. And maybe have a chat afterward.”


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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

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Saturday, April 15, 2023

Via NYTimes

 

 Article Image

Randy Harris for The New York Times

How Do You Fit 250 Plants in 350 Square Feet?

 


Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States


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RIGHT EFFORT
Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate the healthy state, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19)

Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to maintain arisen healthy mental states. One maintains the arisen tranquility and concentration awakening factors. (MN 141)
Reflection
Healthy and positive mental states arise all the time. The idea is to learn how to notice them, recognize their value, and make some effort to sustain them when they arise. This means developing habits that will reinforce qualities like kindness, generosity, compassion, and truthfulness. Slowing down, becoming peaceful, and allowing the mind to unify through focusing is particularly valuable.

Daily Practice
The two factors of awakening, tranquility and concentration, are considered together here because of their natural affinity with each other. Finding time to slow down, stop doing things, and simply allow the mind to become peaceful and focused is a healthy thing to do. It is not that settling the mind takes effort, but it takes effort to disengage from normal business to give the mind time to focus naturally. Once you do it, you'll see that it’s worth it.  

Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna
One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
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Questions?
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© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

 

Via Daily Dharma: Getting From Here to There

 Our destination is our vow to do good, to do no harm, and to seek awakening for ourselves and others. Our starting point is accepting and embracing all of our qualities, good, bad, and neutral.

Mark Herrick, “You Can Get There from Here”


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Via Tricycle // You Can Get There from Here

 


You Can Get There from Here
By Mark Herrick
Awakening is not the triumph over our mental disturbances but a state in which we are fully aware of all aspects of our lives, good and bad.

Via Gay White Crane Institute // Gay Wisdom

White Crane Institute Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989
 

This Day in Gay History

April 15

Born
Leonardo Da Vinci
1452 -

LEONARDO DA VINCI, Italian Renaissance polymath was born (d. 1519); How much of what is known about the sexuality of this greatest of history’s geniuses is fact and how much is speculation? Here's what we know:

(1) When he was 23 and working in Verocchio’s workshop, Leonardo was accused of having committed homosexual acts with one Jacopo Saltarelli, aged seventeen, and described as “a boy of ill-repute.”

(2) He complained in his notebooks of his attachment to his student Andrea Salaino, whom he nicknamed “Salai” “(“little devil”). Calling Salai a liar and a thief, he was nonetheless obsessed with the handsome young man to have left him a good portion of his estate.

(3) Francesco Melzi, Salai’s replacement as Leonardo’s assistant, was left the larger part of the master’s estate.

These are the known facts. That Leonardo chose his students for their looks is contemporary gossip. That all his female subjects were painted from young male models is speculation. That the Mona Lisa is actually a man is a pretty giggly idea.

Thirty years ago, the then-daring Sexology magazine attempted to prove this assertion by dressing up the famous painting with a boy’s haircut and clothing. Without knowing it, Sexology actually came up with definite proof that the Mona Lisa is really Julie Andrews.

 

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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

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Friday, April 14, 2023

Namasté

 


Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Living: Abstaining from Intoxication

 


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RIGHT LIVING
Undertaking the Commitment to Abstain from Intoxication
Intoxication is unhealthy. Refraining from intoxication is healthy. (MN 9) What are the imperfections that defile the mind? Negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Knowing that negligence is an imperfection that defiles the mind, a person abandons it. (MN 7) One practices thus: “Others may become negligent by intoxication, but I will abstain from the negligence of intoxication." (MN 8)

One of the dangers attached to addiction to intoxicants is indecent exposure of one's person. (DN 31)
Reflection
The arguments put forward in the early Buddhist texts against intoxication were mostly practical ones. In this case there is the recognition that when you lose control of yourself through some form of intoxication, the chances increase that you will do something foolish or embarrassing that you will regret later. Better to undertake the commitment to abstain from the kind of negligence that leads to such behaviors.

Daily Practice
See if, through introspection, you can discern the point at which intoxication begins to show up in your experience. If you are a drinker, investigate the moment between the first and second swig, or the first and second glass, or whatever point you can notice when the mind begins to get a little sluggish. If you don’t drink, try the same experiment with some other form of intoxication. There are many to choose from.

Tomorrow: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
One week from today: Abstaining from Harming Living Beings

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.



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© 2023 Tricycle Foundation
89 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing Nonself

Nonself only begins to be clear when the illusion of seamlessness disappears and we experience the gaps in the continuity, when we actually see the mind and its object arising and dying together from instant to instant.

Cynthia Thatcher, “Disconnect the Dots”


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Thursday, April 13, 2023

Via Daily Dharma: Seeking Well-Being Within

We are always seeking something from the outside and forgetting that our fundamental well-being and strength depend on how we relate to our own minds.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Old Relationships, New Possibilities”


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