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 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 compassion, for when you develop meditation on compassion, any cruelty will be abandoned. (MN 62)
The characteristic of compassion is promoting the allaying of suffering. (Vm 9.93)
Reflection
Compassion is not an innate disposition but a skill to be learned and cultivated. Our capacity for compassion is innate, but whether or not it is expressed has to do with how we train ourselves to behave in the world. Cruelty is as natural as compassion, something demonstrated often in human history. But we, right now, can choose to care about others and to alleviate their suffering. The choosing to care is itself the practice.
Daily Practice
The value of compassion for others is obvious. They are comforted, made to feel safe, and are often given what they need to feel better. The value of compassion for oneself is subtler. It helps mold your personality and character in a healthy way and blocks any chance of its opposite, cruelty, manifesting. Practice caring when you see people or other beings suffering. Then notice how you are changed by this caring.
Tomorrow: Refraining from Malicious Speech One week from today: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
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Pain is an unflagging teacher. And I may have learned, finally, what it teaches. We twist in turbulence on the edges of pain; in the eye of pain is stillness.
RIGHT VIEW Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
What is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. (MN 9)
When one does not know and see sounds as they actually are, then one is attached to sounds. When one is attached, one becomes infatuated, and one’s craving increases. One’s bodily and mental troubles increase, and one experiences bodily and mental suffering. (MN 149)
Reflection
The basic cause of suffering is craving, a thirst or hunger for something other than what is. These texts we are consulting will guide us through how to work with this systematically, using each of the sense modalities in turn. Today the matter at hand is sound. We hear sounds all the time, but we practice with sounds by noticing them with full awareness and then ignoring the impulse to follow or resist the sounds.
Daily Practice
Use sound as a primary object of practice. When sitting quietly, with the back erect, notice the sounds that you experience. They may be relatively loud and distinct, if you are practicing in the city, for example, but even in a silent meditation center there are gentle sounds to be discerned. Practice entails hearing these sounds and then letting them go. The key is not to become infatuated with them but to just let them pass through.
Tomorrow: Cultivating Compassion One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
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You and I don’t manifest in the universe as meaning, we manifest as living human beings. We’re not here to represent something else. We’re here in our own right. A human being, or a garden hoe for that matter, is complete in itself.
We Can’t Always Get What We Want (And That’s All Right) By Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
Why do we suffer? Because we have something we don’t want (avoidance), want something we don’t have (desire), or have something we can’t keep (clinging). Accepting the truth of impermanence makes it easier to work with these states when they come up.
RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Body
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)
Breathing in and out, aware of long and short breaths . . . one is
just aware, just mindful: "There is body." And one abides not clinging
to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
Breathing is
universally recommended as an object of meditation because it is always
present and always changing. Sometimes it is long, sometimes short. This
is not about controlling the breath but following along with it however
it naturally unfolds. We are breathing all the time, but today is a
good time to sit intentionally for some period of time and do nothing
but be aware of breathing in and out, long and short.
Daily Practice
There is a
wealth of guidelines for practice here. What does it feel like to be at
the same time both ardent (intent, energetic) and content, or to be
aware of the breath while not clinging to the object of awareness? These
are questions to be investigated in your own experience. Sit down in an
empty place, establish the presence of mindfulness, and see for
yourself what these words are pointing to.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the First Phase of Absorption (1st Jhāna)
Having abandoned the five
hindrances, imperfections of the mind that weaken wisdom, quite secluded
from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters
and abides in the first phase of absorption, which is accompanied by
applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of
seclusion. (MN 4)
Reflection
Absorption
practice begins by finding the sweet spot in the center of the mind, the
place where there is neither too much energy (restlessness) nor too
little (sluggishness), neither wanting (sense desire) nor not wanting
(ill will) anything. When these hindrances, along with doubt, are
abandoned temporarily, the mind naturally settles down into a state of
tranquil alertness and equanimity.
Daily Practice
Sit quietly and
comfortably in a peaceful place and allow everything swirling around in
your mind and body to gradually settle down. Like dust settling in the
air or particulates settling in water, there is nothing to force or make
happen. Patience will be rewarded by the experience of deeper and
deeper modes of peacefulness, clarity, and stability of mind. Don’t try
to measure anything; just let it all be what it is.
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna
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