Andrew Furst's Blog, page 59

Mo Udall On Words – Quotes

Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.

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Right Side Down – Verse Us (Poems by Me)

Tenuous at best

This equilibrium I find myself clinging to.

Dangling from the earth by my cranium.

Watching as others, like birds must see fish,

flail about the universe,

feet bound to the firmament above us.

 

For us

it resembles suffocating

or haphazard design.

Unable to fathom the sensation of the skull

flopping about deleteriously.

As though hanging their brains as bait and net

to whatever hazards might glide below.

 

Yet, these impressions

would be invisible to the thinking mind, forgotten.

And ours pondered over as a peculiar mystery

born of some untamed imagination.

Verse Us - Poems I write: haiku, senryu, mesostics, free verse, random word constructions, I might even use rhyme or meter once and a while.

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All You (K)need Is… Say What?

Say What?  is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip. 

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Modern Koans – Why Right Concentration?

The Eightfold Path Series

This is the one of several posts I will be offering titled the Eightfold Path Series. As I've reflected on my experience, I've come to see the Path as both the practice and the fruition. As we inch closer to realization of our true nature, we discover that the wisdom, ethics, and mindfulness prescribed by the Buddha are the most natural expression of our being.

John Daido Loori Roshi's book Invoking Reality was transformational for me. In it Roshi turns the path on it's head in a way that uncovers it's challenge to us. The path and the precepts are not rules and regulations that lead to punishment by the karmic cosmos, but a way for us to see our true selves by looking through the prism of these personal dimensions. I see the path  and the precepts as questions, not rules.  Let's explore them.

Why Right Concentration?

To me, on the surface, concentration and effort have all the appeal of doing your taxes.  If any part of the path is like a checklist, it’s these two.  As I mentioned in the Oxherd Series, there is work to do, but it’s different from the kind of work that we’re accustom to. The context of these prescriptions are important to understand.

The doing that we're doing feels more like undoing. We're not producing anything, we're cleaning house.
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In the Samma Samadhi Sutra, concentration is taught as a series of attainments or Jnanas.  These are insights or knowledge gained from the experience of meditation.

Notably you’ll find the use of the term rapture several times in this translation.  So while there seems to be some bean counting here, it sounds inviting!

The Four Jnanas:

Withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful (mental) qualities — enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation.
With the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations, he enters & remains in the second jhana: rapture & pleasure born of composure, unification of awareness free from directed thought & evaluation — internal assurance.
With the fading of rapture, he remains equanimous, mindful, & alert, and senses pleasure with the body. He enters & remains in the third jhana, of which the Noble Ones declare, ‘Equanimous & mindful, he has a pleasant abiding.’
With the abandoning of pleasure & pain — as with the earlier disappearance of elation & distress — he enters & remains in the fourth jhana: purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain.

This is called right concentration.”

samma samadhi *

Concentration?

When I think of concentration, it brings to mind a dogged attention to a task or a diligent focus of the mind. When we concentrate, we exert control over our mental faculties to achieve an end.  But if we read the qualities of the jnanas, it seems we’re moving in the opposite direction. First we draw inward, letting go of our sensory perceptions and then our thoughts. In the second jnana we let go of introspection and self evaluation.  Then we let go of the obstructions preventing us from experiencing the sensations of the body and finally we let go of pleasure and pain.  Sounds like we’re tossing ballasts off the side of the balloon.

The doing that we’re doing feels more like undoing. We’re not producing anything, we’re cleaning house.

On the surface, right concentration and effort have all the appeal of doing your taxes.
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Isn’t that what we would expect by now on this unusual little trip the Buddha laid out for us. Less is the new more.  Free is the new rich.  Being present is the new present.

The stage of right concentration is never ending.  It nourishes everything else.  I’ve found in my years of meditation, this is where the learning starts and it never ends. Right concentration feeds right view.  It informs right effort. It guides the ethical application of body, speech, and mind. It clarifies intentions and reinforces mindfulness. Right concentration puts us right where we belong, at the feet of the Buddha.

 

“Right Concentration: samma samadhi”, edited by Access to Insight. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013,http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-samadhi/index.html .

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton

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Albert Schweitzer – Wonderful – Quotes

Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.

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Remember – A One Minute Meditation

Winding down into the fullness of spring, today’s meditation is a last memory of the crispness of winter. The video, shot in 2013 from a window a work, captures an early morning snow squall before anyone else was in the office. These are the moments worth getting up for.

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Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation.  Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute.

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These videos are produced for those of us who spend an inordinately large amount of time in the cyber-world.  They are not a substitute for unplugging from your devices and taking a stroll near trees, water, or a patch of unkempt grass.  Getting out into the world - touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing nature is the best way to reconnect with our prime purpose.  

What is our prime purpose? We are feeling and sensing machines.  We are the universe looking back on itself. We are witness to the wonders and dangers of living in this corner of the cosmos.  We are the seekers looking for connection a little further beyond yesterday's borders and boundaries.

But sitting and staring at the screen robs us of the sustenance that we rely upon for wonder and sanity.  These videos are an opportunity to bring the sensations of nature to you, while you're in the cyber-world. Its an opportunity to relax your gaze, resettle your posture,  and regain some depth in your breath.  Listen and watch the video and allow your self to open up and recharge.

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Art – Tiny Drops (Photography)

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Graffitti BWJennifer Caine and Rachel Hellmannlamp foot 3 bw

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All Tiny Drop photos Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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From You Have I Been Absent In The Spring – Compass Songs

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue

Could make me any summer’s story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.

Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

William Shakespeare

 Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.

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What’s The Worst Religion? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s)

 

I would say you could take the list of religions in order of there popularity and membership and you’d have an accurate ranking of the worst religions. A religions popularity and size is a function of how it pacifies and controls its membership.

We can look at the big two – Christianity and Islam. These religions carry with them the doctrine of Apostasy. This is a stranglehold on thinking and creates tribalism and mindlessness. If you are restricted to what the scriptures and church hierarchy tell you to think, you stop thinking for yourself. While Hinduism claims a certain theological flexibility, the latest Hindu Nationalist shenanigans seem to be a strong counterpoint to this perception.

What's the worst religion? The simplest rubric for finding the largest problem is to look at the…
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The other downside to size is the creation of institutions and the power structures needed to sustain them. Where there is a divinely sanctioned hierarchy, there is little room for reform or justice that we have in the secular world. The long string of never ending scandals and cover ups of child abuse by the Catholic Church serves as a a top of mind example.

Every religion suffers from these problems (including my own Buddhism), so in my mind the simplest rubric for finding the largest problem is to look at the largest church.

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio

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Thomas Paine on Trouble – Quotes

Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.

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