Anicca, Anatta

     To leave no footprints, like a bird in flight - what does that actually mean?

TX Photo Doc   www.dpreview.com

Intention

     Lovingly welcoming everything that enters my life. All events & emotions are transient and nourishing. Without preferences, there's no inner friction, no wasted time & energy externalizing, no unnecessary suffering. Releasing illusory craving, realizing love.

     (I admire and respect Tina Turner and find her song powerful & inspiring. The dancers send a mixed message.)

Agenda?

     When we wonder about a person or organization's "agenda", we're wondering about the self-serving motive that's hidden behind what they pretend is for our benefit.  Assuming that ulterior motives hide beneath apparent beneficent acts is increasingly common. To the extent that people lead "divided lives" ie their thoughts, speech & behavior are fear-driven, egocentric, in adversarial relationship with their own & society's beliefs, their deceitfulness will be proportionate. This includes "faking" honesty, professionalism, compassion, kindness, cleanliness, ... - "whatever sells."

     However, mindfulness practice is about transcending self-centeredness, and becoming fully engaged with a life of morality, integrity & wisdom ie being congruent - no ulterior motives. Mindfulness practice allows people of different or no religion to open to their personal depths, together in a safe space. The best in each of us is the same. If we see this & meet each other there, we can pull together for the common good - for each other - as mature, civilized adults.

     "... our agenda is for our intentions to be kind and compassionate, for our minds to be aware of what we are thinking, saying, and doing, and for our experience to tell us as best it can how to craft our life to reflect our intentions."

       Ingram DM. "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book." Aeon Books, London, 2008. 

 

Jelle Ziilstra   www.dpreview.com

Basic Principle

     "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's wet and round and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "

       Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater"

bcys1961   www.dpreview.com

Rolling Through

     "And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man; emotion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things."                                              William Wordsworth                       www.wisdomatwork.com

Bess

Enlightenment?

     "... enlightenment is an attainable goal, once our fanciful notions of it are stripped away, and we have learned to use meditation as a method for examining reality rather than an opportunity to wallow in 'self-absorbed mind-noise'."

       Ingram DM. "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book." Aeon Books, London, 2008. 

Meditation & Agency

     "What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind - no parent, no relative, no friend, no one. A well-disciplined mind brings happiness."                Dhammapada

Bess

Self-concern = Suffering

     “I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”           Christopher Hitchens

      "It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open."               Toni Packer 

 

canonvet70   www.dpreview.com

The Basic Problem Each of Us MUST Address

     Each one of us needs to stop obsessing about "me, myself & I" and start caring for everyone & everything else. It's called growing up! It IS that simple.

     "Our current crisis originates between our (own) ears: in our outdated paradigms of economic thought. It originates in the disconnect between our dominant models of economic thought (which gravitate around ego-system awareness, in which stakeholders maximize benefit only for themselves) and the collaboration imperatives of our global eco-system economy (in which stakeholders seek to improve the well-being of all, including themselves). We have an enormous disconnect between egosystem thinking and the eco-system reality."  Otto Scharmer                     www.wisdomatwork.com

karamanda13   www.dpreview.com

Beginnings and Endings and Beginnings and

     Silent (not noisy) night,
     Holy (not distracted) night ...

     “…how we have filled our world with a multiplicity of noises, a symphony of forgetfulness that keeps our own thoughts and realizations, feelings and intuitions out of audible range. Perhaps we fear that with silence we might hear the cries of our own suffering and the suffering in the world.”
        Halifax J. “Fruitful darkness. Reconnecting with the body of the earth.” HarperSanFrancisco, NY, 1993.

One Light

     "... one light 
               though the lamps are many."


       Preece R. "The Wisdom of Imperfection. The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life." Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca NY, 2006.

Authentic Beauty in Self- and World-Creation

         “Any work of art that deepens our understanding of anguish, moves us to relax the constrictions of self-centered craving, reveals the dynamic play of emptiness and form, and inspires a way of life conducive to such ends bears the hallmarks of authentic beauty. …

         The same aesthetic vision inspires the imaginative tasks of self- and world-creation. The ennobling truths are not just challenges to act with wisdom and compassion but challenges to act with creativity and aesthetic awareness. Our words, our deeds, our very presence in the world, create and leave impressions in the minds of others just as a writer makes impressions with his pen on paper, the painter with his brush on canvas, the potter with his fingers in clay. The human world is like a vast musical instrument on which we simultaneously play our part while listening to the compositions of others. The creation of ourself in the image of awakening in not a subjective but an intersubjective process. We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to. Our life is a story being continuously related to others through every detail of our being: facial expressions, body language, clothes, inflections of speech – whether we like it or not.”

       Batchelor S. “Buddhism without beliefs. A contemporary guide to awakening.” Riverhead Books, NY, 1997.

 

Aspirations

"The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances."                            Atisha

Julie DuBose   www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205141453319375.1073741828.1335888565&type=1&l=e38e547509