Buddhist discussion
Daily Dharma
12/16/13Zen practice is always about returning to that place where there are no words. Early on, I realized that to use words, you have to live life beyond words, before words, without words. Only then do you have the right to speak.
- Seido Ray Ronci, "No Words"
12/17/13To open to our deepest nature, our buddhanature, is to access a power of loving compassion that has the courage to challenge oneself and others on whatever ways we may hide from our fuller potential.
- John Makransky, “Aren’t We Right to be Angry?”
'Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another'.- H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama
12/18/13It’s imperative for us to understand that spiritual practice is not just something we do when we’re sitting in meditation or when we’re on retreat. Failing to see everything as an opportunity for practice is a setup for frustration and disappointment, keeping us stuck where we are and limiting our possibilities for inner growth. The more we include in our practice, the more satisfying our life can be.
- Ezra Bayda, “Breaking Through”
12/19/13When a candle is lit in a dark room, it illuminates the room to some extent, but its power is limited. But if you use the same candle to light another candle, the total brightness increases. If you continue to do this, you can fill the room with brilliant illumination. The idea of transferring merit to others is like this. If we keep our own light selfishly hidden, it will only provide a limited amount of illumination.
- Master Sheng Yen, “Rich Generosity”
12/19/13Please, I invite to everyone to hear my history. A groovy kind of dharma: https://soundcloud.com/mushotoku/maio...
12/20/13We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop. So we should be very grateful to have them.
- Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Be Grateful to Everyone”
12/23/13If you describe a green willow in the spring rain it will be excellent, but haiku needs more homely images, such as a crow picking snails in a rice paddy.
- Basho (trans. Robert Hass), "Swamp Marigold"
12/24/13The practice of true generosity is rare; it is an exchange in which both giver and receiver are enriched.
- Judy Lief, "The Power of Receiving"
12/30/13Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: the remainderless fading and cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, and letting go of that very craving.
- Gautama Buddha, “The End of Suffering”
1/1/14Through generosity, we cultivate a generous spirit. Generosity of spirit will usually lead to generosity of action, but being a generous person is more important than any particular act of giving. After all, it is possible to give without its being a generous act.
- Gil Fronsdal, “The Joy of Giving”
1/2/14One of the main pursuits of Buddhism is to bridge the gap between the way things appear and the way things are. That approach does not come just from a curiosity to investigate phenomena. It arises from the understanding that an incorrect perception of reality inevitably leads to suffering.
- Matthieu Ricard, "Why Meditate?"
1/3/14The very distinguished abbot of a huge Zen monastery wrote this little article that said, ‘In Zen, there are only three things. First, cleaning. Second, chanting. And third, devotion. That’s all.’ Many Americans go to Zen hoping to get enlightened, but they don’t want to do the cleaning.
- Taitetsu Unno, “Even Dewdrops Fall”
1/6/14We all know that we’re going to die, but we don’t know it in our guts. If we did, we would practice as if our hair were on fire. One way to swallow the bitter truth of mortality and impermanence—and get it into our guts—is to chew on the four reminders.
- Andrew Holecek, “The Supreme Contemplation”
1/7/14Dualistic Divisions
We divide our world into me/you, friend/enemy, desirable/ undesirable, fulfilling/frustrating, and so on. It’s a natural process, but a very arbitrary, utterly subjective one. Somehow we’re able to ignore this last fact. We’re in dualistic division mode, and we act on that; all sorts of emotions come into play, and we act on them. We reinforce the tendencies—Buddhists might say, we create or compound karma—that make the illusion thicker, stickier, more solid. And the further we are from truth, the more elusive happiness becomes.
- Pamela Gayle White, “The Pursuit of Happiness”
1/8/14A SENSE OF POVERTY
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what’s going on, but that there’s something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
-Pema Chodron
1/9/14How Ignorance Causes Suffering
This is what we call ignorance: not recognizing the void nature of phenomena and assuming that phenomena possess the attribute of true existence although in fact they are devoid of it. With ignorance comes attachment to all that is pleasant to the ego as well as hatred and repulsion for all that is unpleasant. In that way the three poisons—ignorance, attachment, and hatred—come into being. Under the influence of these three poisons, the mind becomes like a servant running here and there. This is how the suffering of samsara is built up. It all derives from a lack of discernment and a distorted perception of the nature of phenomena.
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, “An Investigation of the Mind”
1/10/14Learning to Fall
We all suffer the limitations of our humanness: not just our aches and pains but our fear, our anger, our pettiness, our grief. Fact is, we do practice being human in every waking moment. And the more mindfully we practice, the more often our conflicts dissolve, the more easily we create new possibilities for relationship and community.
- Philip Simmons, “Learning to Fall”
Hello to all,
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto others." (Venerable Wayne Ren-Cheng Shi) This is the Golden Rule for Bodhisattvas in training.
I bow with respect,
Wayne Ren-Cheng
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto others." (Venerable Wayne Ren-Cheng Shi) This is the Golden Rule for Bodhisattvas in training.
I bow with respect,
Wayne Ren-Cheng
1/14/14The Unconditional Love of Bodhisattvas
When we raise a thought for someone’s well-being, and entrust that to our foundation, that underlying mind—Juingong—never disappears and is never used up. This is different from helping people through material things. This is the unconditional love that bodhisattvas have for all beings. This mind is the compassion that rises when all beings and myself are one, when the suffering of others is my suffering. This is the power that leads us to the truth.
- Daehaeng Kun Sunim, "Thinking Big"
1/15/14Right Judgment
Many Western Buddhists believe that judging runs counter to insight and unconditional compassion, that passing judgment automatically implies a troubling duality, a delusional moral hierarchy. The Buddha, however, warned not against judging, but against being judgmental. The former implies clear comprehension of appropriate action and the latter implies bias and misconception.
- Mary Talbot, “No Justice, No Peace
1/17/14Changing Views
For, as the Buddhist view has consistently demonstrated, it is the perspective of the sufferer that determines whether a given experience perpetuates suffering or is a vehicle for awakening. To work something through means to change one's view; if we try instead to change the emotion, we may achieve some short-term success, but we remain bound by forces of attachment and an aversion to the very feelings from which we are struggling to be free.
- Mark Epstein, “Shattering the Ridgepole”
1/20/14Remembering MLK
We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality. . . . Strangely enough I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Sangha by Another Name"
Jean-Michel wrote: "Hey Kristi,Thank you for sharing these. Insightful tidbits that I receive as an amalgamation of your posts at the beginning of my weekend.
Kristi wrote: "1/17/14
Changing Views
For, as the B..."
I'm glad you find them useful! I love seeing them in my inbox everyday too.
1/21/14Clear Thinking
Debating trains you to be clear and gives you an analytical mind. When you study Buddhism you can analyze what really makes sense rather than simply memorizing. And to daily life, you bring skills in analysis and clear thinking.
- Rinchen Khando Choegyal, "Standing as Equals"
1/22/14Imagination and Reality
Imagination draws its energy from a confrontation with desire. It feeds off desire, transmuting and magnifying reality through desire's power. Fantasy does the opposite; it avoids desire by fleeing into a crude sort of wish-fulfillment that seems much safer. Fantasy might be teddy bears, lollipops, sexual delights, or superhero adventures; it also might be voices in one's head urging acts of outrage and mayhem. Or it might be the confused world of separation and fear we routinely live in, a threatening yet seductive world that promises us the happiness we seek when our fantasies finally become real. Imagination confronts desire directly, in all its discomfort and intensity, deepening the world right where we are. Fantasy and reality are opposing forces, but imagination and reality are not in opposition: Imagination goes toward reality, shapes and evokes it.
- Norman Fischer, "Saved from Freezing"
1/23/14Hang On to Your Ego
A person devoid of ego functions would be self-destructive: either a beast with uncontrolled impulses, or a neurotic, repressed automaton with no mind of her own, or an infantile monster thrashing erratically between these two extremes. Anyone who tried to abandon ego functioning would arrest his psychological growth and lose all hope of becoming a mature, responsible, trustworthy adult. And as we know, self-destructive people don’t destroy only themselves. They can pull down many of the people and places around them.
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Hang On to Your Ego”
1/24/14The Price of Dignity
Poverty still persists today because we have lost the moral perspective as the polestar of public policy. Instead we follow the law of the jungle, content to abandon the poor to their own devices, demanding that they marshal resources they simply do not possess. And the reason we have moved in this direction, drifting away from the high ideals of the Great Society era, is because the vision and values of corporate capitalism have gained ascendency over those of human solidarity and mutual responsibility. To eliminate poverty, this trend must be reversed. The individualistic vision must give way to one that stresses our essential unity; competition must be balanced by mutual assistance and respect.
- Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, "The Price of Dignity"
This one really spoke to me today.
1/27/14The Three Marks
Rather than seeking a sense of peaceful satisfaction with the unfolding of experience, the goal of [preliminary] practice is to produce a state of mind that is highly judgmental, indeed judging this world to be like a prison. This sense of dissatisfaction is regarded as an essential prerequisite for progress on the Buddhist path. Far from seeking to become somehow 'nonjudgmental,' the meditator is instructed to judge all the objects of ordinary experience as scarred by three marks: impermanence, suffering, and no self.
- Donald S. Lopez, "The Scientific Buddha"
1/28/14Attention.
The Zen master Ikkyu was once asked to write a distillation of the highest wisdom. He wrote only one word: Attention. The visitor was displeased. “Is that all?” So Ikkyu obliged him. Two words now. Attention. Attention.
- Jenny Offill, "Bit of Poetry that Stick Like Burrs"
1/29/14Imagination
I don’t think we have an imagination apart from the environment . . . . And I don’t think we have an existence apart from the environment either. And if the imagination isn’t about our existence, I don’t know what it’s about.
- W. S. Merwin, "The Garden & The Sword"
Wednesday Bonus DharmaTAKING YOUR ARMOR OFF
Taking refuge in the Buddha means that we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake. Every time we feel like taking refuge in a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality. We’re not trying to be something we aren’t; rather, we’re reconnecting with who we are. So when we say, “I take refuge in the Buddha,” that means I take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine. I am awake; I will spend my life taking this armor off. Nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it’s sewed up tight, where it’s going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied. You have to do it alone.
-Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
1/30/14Eight Steps
Each step along the Buddha’s path to happiness requires practicing mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life. Mindfulness is a way of training yourself to become aware of things as they really are. With mindfulness as your watchword, you progress through the eight steps laid down by the Buddha more than twenty-five hundred years ago—a gentle, gradual training in how to end dissatisfaction.
- Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Getting Started”
1/31/14Right Understanding
According to Buddha's teachings on the Four Noble Truths, all life is dukkha, suffering or unsatisfactoriness; suffering is caused by desire; desire can be dissolved; and the means to achieve this is the Noble Eightfold Path. Furthermore it's essential to note that the first step on the Path is right understanding. In order to attain liberation from suffering, we need to understand the nature of that suffering. We need to have knowledge of the world—including ourselves—as it really is.
- Jeffery Zaleski, "The Science of Compassion"
2/3/14The Bodhisattva's Edge
Whatever you feel is right at the edge of your familiar world, that's the edge of your bodhisattva vow, the edge of your deep intention to wake up with what is.
- Myogen Steve Stücky, "The Three Friends of Winter"
2/4/14Suffering as Proof
Our suffering is proof not of who we are—violent because of “human nature”—but of the fact that we are deluded, that we don’t know ourselves, and that if we are to end suffering we must, as Nietzsche says, become who we really are.
- Curtis White, "The Science Delusion"
2/5/14No Mean Preacher
Unpack karma and you get cause and effect. Unpack cause and effect and you get affinity. Unpack affinity and you get the tendency to coalesce. Unpack the tendency to coalesce and you get intimacy. Unpack intimacy and you will find that you contain all beings. Unpack containment and there is the goddess of mercy herself.
- Robert Aitken Roshi, “No Mean Preacher”
Bonus Wednesday Dharma:STUDYING OURSELVES
Listening to talks about the dharma, or the teachings of Buddha, or practicing meditation is nothing other than studying ourselves. Whether we’re eating or working or meditating or listening or talking, the reason that we’re here in this world at all is to study ourselves. In fact, it has been said that studying ourselves provides all the books we need.
Maybe the reason there are dharma talks and books is just to encourage us to understand this simple teaching: all the wisdom about how we cause ourselves to suffer and all the wisdom about how joyful and vast and uncomplicated our minds are—these two things, the understanding of what we might call neurosis and the wisdom of unconditioned, unbiased truth—can only be found in our own experience.
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
2/7/14The Dawn of Virtue
We all enter the spiritual path as ego-based beings, and as such we have ego-based hopes and fears. Practice is virtually never what we expect. We feel like we’ve got it all wrong, thinking, 'The more I meditate, the worse I become.' My teacher, Gendun Rinpoche, always responded to this by saying, 'When you see your own shortcomings, it’s the dawn of qualities. If you only see your qualities, there’s a problem.'
- Lama Tsony, "Facing Fear"
2/10/14Pleasure and Pain
The goal of practice is not to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, but rather to experience both with full awareness, neither favoring one nor opposing the other. It is thus possible to experience mental pleasure or happiness while experiencing a certain amount of physical discomfort.
- Andrew Olendzki, “Pleasure and Pain”
2/11/14Mindfulness of Breathing
As we begin to practice mindfulness of breathing, we often see ourselves, initially, as the breather, apart and separate from the breath itself. The direction and development of the practice is eventually to bridge this separation until our attention is absorbed fully into the breath. The breath breathes itself, and we experience a place of deep calmness, concentration, and ease. When we breathe, we just breathe.
- Christina Feldman, “Receiving the Breath”
2/12/14Advice from an Experienced Meditator
We're swamped with therapies, self-help books, and techniques—what musician and activist Bob Geldof called ‘the thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions, and spiritual boutiques’—which treat our lives as projects to be tweaked and fixed. Isn't meditation (if it's anything at all) a relief from all this? Isn't it the opposite of repairing and adjusting and striving and perpetually wanting things to be different?
- Barry Evans, “The Myth of the Experienced Meditator”
2/13/14Meditation, Simply Defined
Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the heart; it moves us beyond mere concepts to allow for a direct experience of reality.
- Lama Surya Das, “The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation”
2/14/14On Love
If we want to be loved, we are looking for a support system. If we want to love, we are looking for spiritual growth.
- Ayya Khema, "What Love Is"
2/17/14The Skill of Intention
It’s through our intentions that we shape the world we experience, along with the amount of pleasure or pain we take out of that experience. To formulate intentions that really do lead to happiness is a skill. And because it’s a skill, nobody else can master the skill for you; you can’t master the skill for anyone else.
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Less is More”
2/18/14The Refuge of Sitting
When we read or hear about the benefits of meditation, it is tempting to dwell on the stories of wonderful outcomes instead of doing the work of actualizing these possibilities ourselves. There can be a big gap between what we have read about and what is actually happening. Sitting is a way of putting our bodies behind our aspirations.
- Narayan Liebenson Grady, “The Refuge of Sitting”
2/19/14Abandoning the Transactional Mindset
Even in close relationships, spending time with a friend, even while helping others or doing other good works, if your attention is on what you are feeling, on what you are getting out of it, then you see these relationships as transactions. Because your focus is on how you are feeling, consciously or unconsciously you are putting yourself first and others second. This approach disconnects you from life, from the totality of your world.
- Ken McLeod, "Forget Happiness"
Bonus Wednesday Dharma:NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO
When we talk about resting in prajnaparamita, in unconditional bodhichitta, what are we asking of ourselves? We are being encouraged to remain open to the present groundless moment, to a direct, unarmored participation with our experience. We are certainly not being asked to trust that everything is going to be all right. Moving in the direction of nothing to hold on to is daring. We will not initially experience it as a thrilling, alive, wonderful way to be. How many of us feel ready to interrupt our habitual patterns, our almost instinctual ways of getting comfortable?
~Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
2/20/14Facing Yourself
Spiritual change is precisely a process that is bigger than you. You don’t control it. You surrender to it. You don’t reinvent yourself through spiritual work. You face yourself, and then you must let go of all the ghastly things you find. But there is no end to these ghastly things. They keep coming. The ego is a bottomless pit of suckiness. And so you finally let go of the self that clings to itself (one definition of ego). True freedom comes when ego goes.
- Shozan Jack Haubner, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Enlightenment"
Books mentioned in this topic
In Paradise (other topics)The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (other topics)
These are from many different lineages and vary daily, so if the quote isn't from you lineage, I'm sure there will be one soon.
Please feel free to discuss in this thread too!