Refining Disenchantment

     A recent post concluded with: "We can prevent a great deal of unnecessary suffering by carefully observing how craving & aversion operate in our daily life, recognizing their arising early, ... and shifting attention from these towards matters that will actually benefit us." http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/07/14/Advertising
     Easy to say, but how can we actually put this into practice? First of all, we need to become disenchanted with life as it is. For some, especially those who've had a challenging childhood, and are reasonably in touch with what's going on internally & around them, disenchantment can start early in life. For many, disenchantment hits like a sledgehammer on their deathbed. For others, disenchantment ensues from major trauma, shattering their illusion of control, self-concept & worldview all at once ("shipwreck"). 
     "Disenchanted" is an interesting word, implying that our default tendency is sleep- or trance-like. So wisdom traditions, especially Buddhism, teach that we need to wake up or else continue suffering needlessly over & over again. So like a gardener, if we don't like the crops we're producing, we have to re-assess & optimize our gardening procedures. As in gardening, we are to minimize & finally eliminate all that impedes healthy crop growth - in our case, evolution of consciousness.

      “In practical terms, cultivating (the perception of not delighting in the whole world) can be implemented through a willingness to let go and relinquish whatever one is accustomed to clinging to, in particular one’s opinions and preferences, judgments and views. In this way a refinement takes place compared to ... freedom from sensual desire through dispassion and freedom from ill will and harming through cessation. At the present juncture even the more subtle traces of unwholesomeness in the form of any type of clinging are being relinquished.” 
     Analayo. "Mindfully Facing Disease & Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts.” Wisdom, 2016.

Morning Sea Fog at Conrad Beach, Nova Scotia

Bringing Enthusiasm, Energized Engagement - & WISDOM - back into Academia

“I’m struck by how suppressed the life energy of many students in my current undergraduate class seems to be. … I keep sensing something is somewhat missing: perhaps the ‘primordial confidence’ …

Students are not given much opportunity to attend to their inner lives, to explore their unfathomable riches, to plummet the depth, and to be nourished deeply by such engagements. Yet, it is only through such engagements that energetically charged awareness deepens and expands, connecting self with cosmos, and fully reconciling us with life and universe.

The self is unable to nourish itself with awareness and energy when its attention is continuously siphoned out: attention is needed to access awareness and embedded and embodied energy. The result of the continual drain of attention while knowledge is being accumulated is that we may be knowledgeable but are not intelligent, in the sense of being wise. Jiddu Krishnamurti also talks about our capacity to be aware as intelligence and points to the relationship between that and knowledge. He writes, ‘Intelligence uses knowledge. Intelligence is a state in which there are no personal [conditioned] emotions involved, no personal opinion, prejudice or inclination. Intelligence is the capacity for direct understanding’. For Krishnamurti, intelligence is not an intellectual realization or a constructed assimilation of thoughts and ideas, conventionally known as knowledge, but is a capacity to be aware, sensitive, and clear; is a capacity to love, to act, and to be present to transformation of life from moment to moment.

Similarly, David Geoffrey Smith distinguishes wisdom from knowledge, showing that the former requires, as its precondition, the ‘essential unity between thought and emotion,’ and points out that such unity requires the discipline of mindfulness or contemplation. (The Chinese character usually translated as ‘mind,’ ideographically shows this unity, and should be translated as ‘heart-mind.’) Smith further illuminates the aims of education in various Eastern wisdom traditions:
'In Taoism it involves finding ‘the stillpoint’; in Buddhism, returning to your ‘original face.’ The practice of Way – and here the key word is practice, as one never quite reaches the goal completely, finally – leads to an awareness of how the smallest details of life play into the largest consequences and effects, and that it is therefore highly important to maintain vigilance over the details of one’s conduct, because how we get to her, today, depends on what happened yesterday, or indeed the moment just passed.'


The greatest educational challenge today is not downloading more, better, sophisticated knowledge and skills into students but helping them to cultivate the unity of heart and mind (and let’s not forget the embodied nature of this cultivation) through the work of awareness, and bring this unity fully into all contexts of their personal, communal, academic, and professional lives. The challenge is to infuse knowledge with awareness or mindfulness of which love and sensitivity are a part, and the result is, in short, wisdom. Can our schools, from kindergarten to university, be institutions of wisdom?”       Bai H, Cohen A, Culham T, et al. “A Call for Wisdom in Higher Education. Contemplative Voices from the Dao-Field.” in:
       Gunnlaugson O, Sarath EW, Scott C. eds. “Contemplative Learning and Inquiry Across Disciplines.” State Univ of New York Press 2014.

 

rwstanley   www.dpreview.com

Mind-Body Stillness

     "If movement (during sitting meditation) becomes a habit, you will lose the chance to deepen your meditation practice. Calmness & tranquility of mind have their foundation in stillness of the body."

       Sayadaw U Pandita. "In This Very Life. The Liberation Teachings of the Buddha." Wisdom Publications, Boston, MA, 1992.

The Corner Garage, Venice, Italy

Kindness - Heart-Mindfulness - Nurturing

     "Mindfulness is being in wise relationship with everything."

     "What are we doing with the gardens entrusted to us?"           Jon Kabat-Zinn
 

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.                 Naomi Shihab Nye (1953-) 

Common Steps toward Wisdom

     "six common elements constitute the heart of the art of transcendence:
1) ethical training;
2) development of concentration;
3) emotional transformation;
4) a redirection of motivation from egocentric, deficiency-based needs to higher motives, such as self-transcendence;
5) refinement of awareness; and
6) the cultivation of wisdom."

       Walsh R, Vaughan F eds. Paths beyond ego. The transpersonal vision. Penguin Putnam Inc, NY, 1993.

 

vasilpro   www.dpreview.com

Heart Can & Should be Cultivated

     "The only way an individual can be secure in knowing he or she has heart is to have determination, fortitude, perseverance, persistence, stamina, tenacity, and conviction successfully tested. Once beyond this critical test, that person will have self-confidence based on knowing he or she has internal power.
     It is the authors' hypothesis that heart can be cultivated and fortified. ... Developing heart is a gradual process that involves practicing 'going the extra mile' and rehearsing this skill during small, predictable, controlled experiences. Unfortunately, because long-term benefits of cultivating heart have not been clearly understood, many scoff at this practice. As a result, far too many people do not foster the development of 'heart' in themselves or their children. The consequence of this shortcoming is that when the need for heart presents itself, individuals lack an internal toughness that allows them to respond adequately. Preparing one's fighting spirit is vital in the struggle of life, because negative aftermaths can happen to all of us. It is not what happens to us that matters most, however; it is how we respond and how we overcome adversity that defines us."

       Bell CC, Suggs H. Using sports to strengthen resiliency in children. Training heart. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am 1998; 7(4): 859-65.

 

Loren Klein   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/