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Thursday, September 29, 2022
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Mind, Thought, and Thinking...
What do Buddha quotes teach us about thoughts and thinking? Our thoughts shape us, and the world around us.
“All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?”
— Buddha
“An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.”
— Buddha
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
— Buddha
“He is able who thinks he is able.”
— Buddha
“It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.”
— Buddha
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
— Buddha
“Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.”
— Buddha
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”
If I Could By Wendy Stern...
Be your suffering,Hold it in your hands,Feel it – smooth, clay, porcelain,Feel the enclaveOf its cheek-bones,The protrusion of its lips,Search its detail, its intricacy,With the intentionOf wisdom,Of acceptance,Of acute subtle awareness.
Watch it as it changes,Melts, dissolves,Falls to pieces in your hands,No longer defined, definable.
No longer "me”And “my suffering,”Just suffering,Coming and going,Passing through,Coinciding with the self.
This way and that,Time and time again,Habits,Responses,Expectations,Loss,Nothing unique,Nothing personal,Just the mindClinging to an idea of itself.
Pieces of clay,Pieces of suffering,Fragments of change,Resting in my hands,Ready to become anything...
SOURCE
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Dhammapada #334-#340 & #348- #352...
The craving of one given to heedless living grows like a creeper. Like the monkey seeking fruits in the forest, he leaps from life to life (tasting the fruit of his kamma).
Whoever is overcome by this wretched and sticky craving, his sorrows grow like grass after the rains.
But whoever overcomes this wretched craving, so difficult to overcome, from him sorrows fall away like water from a lotus leaf.
This I say to you: Good luck to all assembled here! Dig up the root of craving, like one in search of the fragrant root of the birana grass. Let not Mara crush you again and again, as a flood crushes a reed.
Just as a tree, though cut down, sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm, even and again.
The misguided man in whom the thirty-six currents of craving strongly rush toward pleasurable objects, is swept away by the flood of his passionate thoughts. [21]
Everywhere these currents flow, and the creeper (of craving) sprouts and grows. Seeing that the creeper has sprung up, cut off its root with wisdom.
Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present, and cross over to the farther shore of existence. With mind wholly liberated, you shall come no more to birth and death.
For a person tormented by evil thoughts, who is passion-dominated and given to the pursuit of pleasure, his craving steadily grows. He makes the fetter strong, indeed.
He who delights in subduing evil thoughts, who meditates on the impurities and is ever mindful — it is he who will make an end of craving and rend asunder Mara's fetter.
He who has reached the goal, is fearless, free from craving, passionless, and has plucked out the thorns of existence — for him this is the last body.
He who is free from craving and attachment, is perfect in uncovering the true meaning of the Teaching, and knows the arrangement of the sacred texts in correct sequence — he, indeed, is the bearer of his final body. He is truly called the profoundly wise one, the great man.
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Bringing Trump Into Perspective... Again
Being an American Buddhist I oppose almost everything Donald J. Trump stands for. Perhaps that's partially because the only thing DJT really stands is himself.
After his rally in Ohio the other day I was in a bit of a funk because what was glaringly obvious to anyone not drinking the Trump Kool-Aid was that fascism is alive and working to fundamentally change America forever.
And apparently the once proud party of Lincoln lacks the wisdom and fortitude to tell their now standard bearer to take a long walk off a very short political pier. Whatever that parties current values or agenda are no one really knows. Beyond trying to undo everything this democratic republic has stood for historically.
So, taking a stroll through the archives of Tricycle magazine I just happened to run across an article, written in 2016 about DJT when he was campaigning against Hillary Rodham Clinton. The actual winner of the popular vote that year. Written by an American Buddhist and psychologist the author identified Trump's character traits to a tee. Of course Trump went on to prove the author exactly right and continues to do so today. In spades. As the Ohio rally complete with the Nazi like salute to the attendees Fuhrer, Donald J. Trump.
The article is so accurate and well written I decided to reprint it in full here. Consider it just a reminder of what this nation will face if DJT is ever anywhere near the power of the presidency ever again. In fact it may very well be what we will face if his party, the Trumpublican party (formerly the GOP) is ever in power again.
Enjoy the read.
Before my wife and I went to bed last Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton was set to win an historic election by a landslide. The next morning, when we woke up, the United States had—against all rational expectation—elected a racist, nativist, fear-mongering, misogynistic real-estate-mogul-turned-reality-TV-star to what is still probably the most powerful political office on earth. A man who doesn’t even have the discipline to read a teleprompter will now hold the codes to our nuclear arsenal.
Leaving aside for the moment what could possibly have led to so improbable an event, it is worth asking: how should we, as practitioners of the dharma, think about this new reality?
My answer: nothing has changed.
Of course, everything has changed. Trump’s presidency marks a dramatic shift in American democracy. It is arguably the first time that our nation has elected a man who shows nothing but disdain for truth. His campaign has been a departure from every conceivable form of civility.
But from a dharmic perspective nothing has changed. Because when we practice dharma, we practice the long view. We practice in a tradition that has seen our foremothers and forefathers through war, famine, drought, invasion after invasion, colonization, decolonization, military coups and military dictatorships, sickness and old age and death, and the inevitable ups and downs and horrors and beauties of uncountable lives over years and decades and centuries.
So when we practice dharma we know what we’re about. We don’t take refuge in the political machinations of giant democracies. We don’t take refuge in relationships. We don’t even take refuge in our own bodies. Why? Because these, as the Buddha said again and again, are unreliable refuges. They change. They shift. They tumble. They are, in the end and always, beyond our control.
So what do we take refuge in?
Well, the simple answer is that we take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. We take refuge in the Buddha both as an inspirational figure and as our own awakened potential. We take refuge in the dharma as path to awakening and as reality itself. We take refuge in the sangha as our friends on the path and as all those who have come before us.
More to the point, though, we take refuge in our dharmic intentions. Our intention to wake up. And our unshakeable intention to benefit.
For me, that means I’ll continue. I’ll keep showing up at the inpatient psychiatric unit where I work. I’ll keep leading mindfulness workshops for helping professionals. I’ll keep signing petitions and writing letters and donating money to stop the Trump agenda and everything it stands for. I’ll keep sharing the dharma with those looking for true solace. And I’ll keep hitting the cushion, day after day after day, working with my own mind so I can work with the minds of others.
In short, I’ll do my best to ease suffering—my suffering and everyone’s suffering—one moment at a time, for as long as there is suffering to ease.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Dhammapada Versus 69-72 & Verse 75
As long as the evil deed does not bear fruit, the fool thinks it is sweet like honey; but when his evil deed does bear fruit, the fool suffers for it.
Even though, month after month, the fool (living in austerity) takes his food sparingly with the tip of a grass blade, he is not worth even one-sixteenth part of those who have comprehended the Truth.
An evil deed does not immediately bear fruit, just as the newly-drawn milk does not curdle at once; but it follows the fool burning him like live coal covered with ashes.
The skill of a fool can only harm him; it destroys his merit and his wisdom.
Indeed,
the path that leads to worldly gain is one and the Path that leads to Nibbana
is another. Fully comprehending this, the bhikkhu, the disciple of the Buddha,
should not take delight in worldly gain and honour, but devote himself to
solitude, detachment and the realization of Nibbana.
Cultural Conditioning and the "Self"...
Buddhism teaches that no innate self exists. That we are interconnected, and that the ego self is really an accumulation of our experiences. Which includes the conditioning by parents, teachers, spiritual guides, employers, and all the societal norms of the culture one lives in.
Given all the influences and pressures exerted by those who want to "mold" children into something they themselves are comfortable with and approve of it's easy to lose the sense of who or what they really are. If the conditioning is deep enough it is quite possible, the child never fully realizes the "real" them.
When a child is born, they are like the sponge you wash your dishes with. Bright eyed and non-judgmental (it takes adults to teach children to be judgmental) they look at experience (phenomenon) with wide eyed curiosity and wonder.
The early years, when children are most malleable and easily influenced, are the years that set the child on the path they may very likely tread the rest of their life. When such conditions exist, the person may experience some contentment and happiness, but, it is also very possible they will experience continual reoccurring suffering. Not being, or feeling as though you're not being your authentic true "self" can do that to a person.
I have personally experienced these feelings throughout my life. My first love was history and politics with a dabbling of poetry thrown in. However, due to a combination of external influences as well as internal confusion I opted to put away my first "loves" and went into manufacturing tat ultimately led to a career in manufacturing supervision and management. A life that provided a good living and ample security.
Now semi-retired and 70 years old I have had plenty of time to reflect on, contemplate, and meditate on my experiences, the influences that were brought to bear on me, and the reality that while I may not have acquired as much stuff or had the authority that I once thought I enjoyed, I have come to the realization that my happiness would likely have been 10 fold had I taken the path I once dreamed of taking.
I'm not alone. Many so called "others" are, experiencing the same or similar circumstances. Putting what they love on hold or letting it go completely to pursue a different course. Possibly for something that would provide greater financial stability. This is perhaps understandable, however, at what cost? For me it was constant anxiety and doubt. Probably because of a lack of self-confidence. Whatever it was, it was not enjoyable whenever it raised its doubting head. Which was often.
The Buddha said suffering is caused by attachments and desire. Well, in mediation I eventfully realized it was indeed my attachment to a great salary and the desire to attain more stuff that kept me treading the path that was causing me anxiety, sleepless nights, and an ever-present sense of worry that something would go wrong and upset the life I was working so hard to build. Much like so many so called "others" have experienced.
It is never to late to follow a different path. If one realizes a course correction would lead to liberation and greater happiness (bliss). But change takes real desire, it often take great courage, and the willingness to change must be a total commitment if the effort is to succeed.
With 70 years of experiences, as well as many years of societal/cultural conditioning, I found my way to meditation and a therapist. From that launching pad I engaged with a Buddhist community by enrolling in a two year program that will complete in November 2023. Nearing the completion of the 1st year of the program I now believer that transformational change leading to greater contentment, happiness, and equanimity is possible at any stage of ones life. And the rewards are well worth the investment in time and effort.
Thursday, September 8, 2022
Apparently American Fascists Don't Like Bring Called Fascist...
America's Fascist Movement - Led By One of America's Former Presidents and Reality Show Host -
Donald J. Trump
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Richard Gere With Melvin McLeod of Lion's Roar...
Photo by Sonam Zoksang.
Melvin McLeod: How did you first make your connection to the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet?
Richard Gere: Well, it’s a long story, as most of these are long stories, but I’ll make it as brief as I can. In my early twenties, I was searching to make sense of myself in the world. Zen was what captured my imagination. I was a student of Zen for many years and had a regular practice that came from that.
When I was in my late twenties, I went to Asia for the first time. My first film was at the Cannes Film Festival, and I took the opportunity after Cannes to go to India and Nepal. That was the first time I met Tibetans, in a refugee camp outside of Pokhara in Nepal.
I was struck by the utter normalcy of His Holiness, and how quickly he was able to get past my defenses and my romanticism.
I was kind of floored by the experience. I felt it was otherworldly, but really it’s not otherworldly. It’s the world. We’re the ones who are otherworldly. We live in a hallucinated view of the world, while I saw that these people seem to be completely centered in the world that they inhabit. It was a different feeling than around my Japanese Zen teachers and fellow students, as incredibly profound to me as Zen was. Something else was going on there.
A few years later, I had a strong impulse to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I didn’t know anything about the political situation—I thought you could just go to Tibet and if you were really lucky, you got to meet the Dalai Lama. But my friend John Avedon, who had just finished his book In Exile from the Land of Snows, said, look, if you want to meet the Dalai Lama, he’s not in Tibet anymore. He’s in India.
So I went to Dharamsala. This was in the early eighties. I had met the great Nyingma teacher Dudjom Rinpoche in New York before that, and was profoundly moved by him. I had some letters of introduction, and eventually, after a couple of weeks during the monsoon in Dharamsala, I got to see His Holiness.
I saw him for maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes, but it felt simultaneously like it was one minute and ten hours, because it was so, so dense. I was struck by the utter normalcy of His Holiness, and how quickly he was able to get past my defenses and my romanticism. I pretty much changed my life at that point. I left Dharamsala and went right on a long trek through Ladakh and Zanskar. And I’ve been kind of on a trek ever since.
What is it like having the Dalai Lama of Tibet, the world’s best known Buddhist, one of the great spiritual figures of our time, as your personal teacher?
You said you were going to ask me this, and I started thinking about it and how I’ve had to navigate many different relationships with His Holiness. Clearly my favorite relationship is as a student of his, a very humble student. But I’m also an organizer for him. I do political work, I do cultural work with him, we organize teachings, we do a lot of different things. It’s been kind of a challenge to navigate all these different types of relationships with His Holiness and know him from these different angles, and I still stumble once in awhile.
But if anyone goes to a teaching by His Holiness, they’ll also encounter all these different possibilities of how to engage his mind and his heart. He’s definitely involved in the world—he wants the world to be genuine and peaceful and egalitarian and fair. He’s involved with human rights and civil rights and how we behave toward each other.
But equally—I would say even more so—as a Buddhist teacher he’s primarily concered with liberation. That’s the goal. And there are two sides of that. You have relative bodhichitta, compassion, and absolute bodhichitta, wisdom, which you are working on constantly. I’ve never seen anyone on this planet, in this time, who is able to do both so completely as the Dalai Lama—to be involved in the world in a rational, sane way, and also be completely transcendent.
The wonderful irony of the situation is that what we do for others to make them happy is what will make us happy.
Starting with your first experience of the Tibetan people in the refugee camp outside Pokara, and then through your many years knowing the Dalai Lama, what have you seen as the most important value or lesson the rest of the world can learn from His Holiness and Tibetan culture?
That the best way to navigate the world we live in, samsara, is through a sense of universal responsibility. That there’s no one outside of our concern. There’s no thing outside of our concern. To the extent that we are able to develop ourselves, we are responsible for the whole universe. Once, I was really tired from doing a lot of work in Washington and around the world, and I said to His Holiness, “Can I stop now?” He replied: “Yes. When I stop.”
Of course, he’s a bodhisattva, so he’s not going to stop until every being is liberated, and that feeling has completely saturated Tibetan culture. You know, they didn’t have roads in Tibet because they were so careful about the insects in the ground. Digging for the roads took forever because every spoonful of dirt had to be examined to make sure there were no insects who were going to be hurt or killed in the process.
I mean, that’s deep concern. That’s not pretend. You know, we’re basically good people. We call ourselves good people. And we care about each other. But it’s a pretty surface responsibility we have. This deep sense that we are all deeply connected and deeply responsible for each other is something that over the centuries, certainly since the introduction of Buddhism in the seventh century, has saturated Tibetan culture and life. It’s palpable. You feel it.
And according to Buddhist teachers like the Dalai Lama, this universal concern for the well-being of others is not only the key to a happy and sustainable society, it’s actually the secret to our own happiness. Which is not usually the way we think.
Every once in a while I go back to to reread and rethink the basics of Buddhism. I was reading a book recently by one of my teachers, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, on the basic things that we get wrong. One mistake is that what we take to be happiness is really just pleasure. It’s the sugar rush of sensual pleasure, or an imagined sense that if we have more money we’re happier or more secure, whatever those things may be. But these are very surface, short-lived things we are all caught up in. The wonderful irony of the situation is that what we do for others to make them happy is what will make us happy. In the fullness way beyond time, that’s what will make us happy.
Continue reading article BELOW the FOLD.
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
The Man Who Needed to Call Out the MAGA Movement and its Fascist Leader for What They are Just Did... Thank You President Biden...
Well, well, well. Finally, President Biden called out the fascist ideology that has been growing in the GQP (formerly GOP) since Trump put the party on a more authoritarian footing. In fact it was long overdue and absolutely needed. For indeed Both Trump and his supporters are FASCISTS.
President Biden was absolutely spot on with his remarks calling out Trump and the 35% of Americans who continue to support him. For indeed they are the biggest domestic threats to our republic since the Civil War. J6 2021 should be all anyone needs to realize this.
GIZMODO - President Joe Biden delivered an important speech in Philadelphia on Thursday night about the threat that Donald Trump and his followers pose to the future of American democracy. It was fiery and blunt by Biden standards. And there’s probably no better proof that Biden’s speech was desperately needed than the reaction it received online. Trump’s army of whiners and assholes absolutely lost their shit.
Trump supporters were simply aghast that a president of the United States would deliver such a divisive speech. Can you even imagine if Trump had ever said anything so polarizing? Biden said he was going to bring the country together, they whined, not speak frankly about the neo-fascist ideology of Trumpism. How dare Biden be so callous and mean?
What did Biden actually say? He spoke honestly about what will happen if Trump and his acolytes are allowed to retake power.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said, insisting that he wasn’t talking about “mainstream Republicans.”
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy. No right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” Biden said, hinting at efforts to overturn marriage equality at the Supreme Court.
“They promote authoritarian leaders. They fanned the flames of political violence,” Biden said in a reference to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn the 2020 election.
It was all objectively true. But it was way too much for many Trump supporters to hear.
Georgia radio host Erick Erickson, who has previously tweeted approvingly of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s use of helicopters to kill dissidents and who once shot bullet holes through a New York Times article he didn’t like, sent dozens of tweets and retweets Thursday night, absolutely disgusted that President Biden could be so mean to Trump supporters.
Continue reading BELOW the FOLD
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Democrats, Consider the Content of the Video and then Manifest a November Victory Taking Both the House and Senate Under Democrat Control...
Democratic Party... We hope you receive the memo. The opportunity to issue a knockout blow to the Trumpublican party is nigh this coming November. Organize the party's efforts and give the people a clear and powerful message with a clear and doable vision. A vison of America that 65% of Americans actually want.
Mitch McConnell Glides into His Season of Discontent...
Nothing is permanent. As Mitch McConnell may be finding out this glorious summer & autumn to be. Karma has a way of exacting accountability and justice. As McConnell and his party of no and division is finding out as polls trend pro democratic at this juncture.
The negative karma (actions) generated by Trump and his party appears to be slowing working its way towards exacting a just price. We pray the negative karma of the republican party in general, and Trump specifically, comes home to roost this coming November 2022.
Now for the featured article:
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had a disastrous summer as President Joe Biden racked up wins and will be facing an "autumn of discontent" as Congress returns to D.C. after Labor Day weekend, according to a new report in The New York Times.
The newspaper reported McConnell's "party’s crop of candidate recruits has struggled to gain traction, threatening his chances of reclaiming the Senate majority. And this week, his dispute with the leader of the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm escalated into a public war."
On Thursday, Donald Trump said, "we'll have to do something" with McConnell.
"As the Senate prepares to return to Washington next week for a final stint before the midterm congressional elections, Mr. McConnell is entering an autumn of discontent, a reality that looks far different from where he was expecting to be at the start of President Biden’s term," The Times reported. "Back then, the top Senate Republican spoke of dedicating himself full time to 'stopping this new administration' and predicted that Democrats would struggle to wield their razor-thin majorities, giving Republicans an upper hand to win back both the House and the Senate. Instead, the man known best for his ability to block and kill legislation — he once proclaimed himself the 'grim reaper' — has felt the political ground shift under his feet.
Democrats have also been energized after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.
"Anti-Trump conservatives argue that Mr. McConnell put himself in an untenable position by failing to fully repudiate Mr. Trump after the assault on the Capitol, when the Kentucky Republican could have engineered a conviction at Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, removing him and barring him from holding office again," the newspaper reported. "Still, the troubles come at what was supposed to be a celebratory moment for Mr. McConnell, who has been in legacy-building mode, talking about eclipsing former Senator Mike Mansfield, Democrat of Montana, as history’s longest-serving leader of either party and participating in an authorized biography for which he has opened up his archives."
Republicans are struggling with Trump-anointed nominees Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance in Ohio, and Herschel Walker in Georgia.
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