What Do I Stand For - No Matter What?

    We live in wildly tumultuous, perilous times, even the very fortunate living in the relative safety & sanity of Canada. The war in Palestine / Israel, like all conflicts, demands infinitely more than knowing how to defeat 'the enemy.' The level of thinking which builds & sustains colonial empires, multi-national corporations, & billionaires; also estroys the air, water, land, plant & animal species, human relationships, quality of life; & promotes conflict & war. This reptilian 'rape, pillage & plunder' mentality favors only the short-sighted ultra-rich & puppet politicians. Jem Bendell PhD https://batgap.com/jem-bendell/
    Sadly, we've been conditioned to at least partially believe the 'American dream' sales pitch: owning stuff IS happiness. Otherwise, we're repeatedly told that life is supposed to be meaningless. Immediately after 9/11, then US President George W. Bush told New Yorkers, "go show those terrorists what we're made of - and shop!"
    But Einstein suggested we NEED a qualitatively higher level of intelligence THAN the one that got us into this mess. 

     The current Palestinian / Israeli war provides a pressing opportunity to decide WHICH MENTALITY we take - the old reptilian 'eye for an eye' reaction - OR - our evolved wise loving nurturing intelligence. 

    "The personal experience of suffering unites us with other people: it is the dynamo that generates compassion, which, by its nature, is transpersonal." Dean Rolston

    Below Jack Kornfield - former Buddhist monk, beloved meditation teacher, retired clinical psychologist, parent, husband & senior citizen - reminding us of our true nature & what we stand for (transcribed from his EXCELLENT 61min YouTube video bottom of page) :

    “From Yuval Harari, one of our great thinkers & historians,
    ‘For right now, most Israelis are psychologically incapable, at this moment, of empathizing with the Palestinians. The mind is filled to the brim with our own pain, and no space is left to even acknowledge the pain of others. And most Palestinians are in a similar situation. Their minds too are so filled with pain and loss that they cannot see our pain. But outsiders like you, who are not themselves immersed in pain, should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only one side of this terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace. We here in Israel and Palestine deposit this peaceful space with you, because we cannot hold it right now. Take good care of it, for us, so that one day, when the pains begin to heal, Israelis and Palestinians and you too might inhabit the space of peace together.'

    If you go into certain Zen temples in Japan or elsewhere, there’s this weird thing, they have little, low doors. We find them in Tibetan temples too, & other places. You have to bow to go into the temple. You can’t stride in. You actually have to lower yourself, with a certain sense of reverence & humility. And often by the gates of the temple are (statues of) the demons, that represent all that keep us from that place of peace & stillness. And you have to pass through them & acknowledge them. You can’t just ignore them. They’re part of the price of admission: to face the demons, to bow low. And then when you enter, you’re invited into a timeless reality. In Zen they say, ‘This is the reality of who you were, before your parents were born.’ That’s one of the great koans: ‘Show me, tell me, who were you before your parents were born?’
    There’s a liberation amidst birth & death, joy & sorrow, war & peace, that is beyond it all. And this is the sacred openness of love & awareness itself. And you know this. You know this as sure as you know your own name – even if you forget it – you do know that there is something bigger & majestic & timeless. And this is the opening to the cosmic dance.
    Remember the famous poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘Call Me by My True Names’?

'I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.'

    I am them all. I am the joys & the sorrows. I am born again & again. This is the cosmic dance. And from this perspective, fear & ignorance & hate are seen in the vast ocean of love & understanding because we are part of creation unfolding itself. And if you take a Bodhisattva vow, as I’ve done, ‘O nobly born,’ it reminds you, ‘may you remember this freedom, and may you commit yourself, o nobly born, to alleviate the ignorance and suffering and fear in beings, the suffering of beings wherever you are.’ And then you say, ‘How long?’ As long as it takes.

    So this is a shift of consciousness for refuge. This is the timeless refuge. ‘Who is your enemy?’ it says in the Buddhist texts. ‘Mind is your enemy. No one can harm you more than your own mind untamed, filled with greed, fear, confusion & ignorance. Who is your friend? Mind is your friend. No one can help you. Even the most loving parents & friends, as much as your own mind, tamed & trained & filled with goodness.’ So then you sense the outer refuge and the sacred refuge and it becomes your refuge inside.

    What else is a refuge for us in these times? Ethics, virtue, whatever language you want to give it, morality. Here from a Buddhist text that I love:

    ‘Others will be cruel. We shall not be cruel. Thus we shall incline our hearts. Others will kill beings. We shall not kill beings. Thus we shall incline our hearts. Others will be violent. We shall not be violent. Thus we shall incline our hearts. Others will take what is not given and steal. We will abstain from taking what is not ours. Thus we shall incline our hearts. Others will speak falsely. We will abstain from false speech and speak that which is true. Thus we will train our hearts. Others will be envious. We shall not be envious but respectful of all others. Thus we shall incline our hearts. Others will be fraudulent. We will be honest. Thus we will train our hearts. Others will be arrogant. We shall be open-minded with humility. Thus we will train our hearts. Others will be harsh without compassion. We will be established in compassion. Thus should we incline our hearts.’

    That’s a really powerful call isn’t it? To say no matter what happens, what is your refuge? What do you stand for, no matter what? Integrity, honesty, non-harming, respect, and in it there’s so much truth & mercy, because it knows that ‘hatred never ends by hatred, but by love alone is healed.’
    And you look at Palestine and Israel, and it’s one traumatized people traumatizing another traumatized people from the displacement of the Palestinians and the Holocaust. And we may weep, and stand with others, and understand the cycles of trauma, and see with the eyes of wisdom, tenderness, and tears, and courage.
    Like Longfellow who says,
    ‘If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would see sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.’
    A deep forgiveness, allowing the heart to break, and opening to this dance of joy & sorrow that is given to you, it is who you are, is who we are. 

    And I think of these lines from Ellen Bass in her poem, ‘If You Knew,’
‘What would people look like
if we could see them as they really are
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?’
    How could we not see, with the eyes of love, everybody?

    So what supports you in living your values? Reflect for a moment, and sense what it feels like to stand up for what matters. Others will do other things, we shall not.”

Jack Kornfield on the Heart of Refuge - Heart Wisdom Ep. 211
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EUrmcffnYg&t=19s

 

What is Dependability?

     “The central fallacy of modern life is the belief that (materialistic / self-centered) accomplishments … can produce deep satisfaction.” 
                                                                                                                    David Brooks

     The vast majority of our precious time & energy is spent chasing after these accomplishments.
     Exponential year-over-year increases in corporate profits fail to deliver the deep happiness we hope for. Despite being (financially) richer than ever, we in 'developed' countries experience progressively rising rates of anxiety, depression, burnout, bullying, partisanship, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, hoarding, every imaginable addiction, mass shootings, suicides, destruction of the air / soil / water, and mass extinction of plant & animal species.
     Our exclusive focus on personal material gain appears to be a serious mistake.
     Can we take a close look at 'character'?

     “People with character ... tend to have a certain level of self-respect. Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. 
     It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones. It can only be earned by a person who has endured some internal temptation, who has confronted their own weaknesses and who knows, ‘Well, if worse comes to worst, I can endure that. I can overcome that.’
     My general belief is that we’ve accidentally left this moral tradition behind. Over the last several decades, we’ve lost the language, this way of organizing our life. We’re not bad. But we are morally inarticulate. We’re not more selfish or venal than people in other times, but we’ve lost the understanding of how character is built. … Without it, there is a certain superficiality to modern culture, especially in the moral sphere.” 
       David Brooks "The Road to Character." Random House, 2015.

     May this Covid 19 pandemic help lift us out of "the shallows" and re-establish the centrality of depth of character. 

     Below, a poem from a time of great hardship, which forged the character of our grandparents & parents to not only survive, but thrive, despite two World Wars, the Great Depression, and countless profound personal existential challenges ...

And People Stayed Home

Kathleen O'Meara's poem, written in 1869, after the famine

And people stayed home
and read books and listened
and rested and exercised
and made art and played
and learned new ways of being
and stopped
and listened deeper
someone meditated
someone prayed
someone danced
someone met their shadow
and people began to think differently
and people healed
and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,
dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
even the earth began to heal
and when the danger ended
and people found each other
grieved for the dead people
and they made new choices
and dreamed of new visions
and created new ways of life
and healed the earth completely
just as they were healed themselves.

www.etsy.com

Protection on the Path

     Practicing morality & generosity is traditionally required in preparation, before learning meditation.

     We used to refer to such personal reserves of non-material wealth as "character." If we had earned a lot of it, we knew that we were "rock solid" ie stable & dependable, no matter how rough & chaotic things got.
     Today, morality & generosity are rarely even mentioned before or during secular meditation courses such as MBSR, even though they facilitate meditation practice and serve important protective functions. 
 
"The perfume of sandalwood,

the scent of rosebay and jasmine,

travel only as far as the wind.

But the fragrance of goodness

travels with us

through all the worlds.

Like garlands woven from a heap

of flowers,

fashion your life

as a garland of beautiful deeds."          Buddha 

     In addition to morality & generosity, years of dedicated meditation practice provide even more stability that further protects us from becoming lost within some of the challenging realms that we may encounter in meditation. We thus have a much better chance (*** see Treleaven's book below ***) of remaining absolutely clear about what’s happening, so that the ultimate dimension of our consciousness is never pulled into & gets lost in a chaotic realm, even when we may be right in the middle of it. 

     One of the most important things about our practice is that we start to discover inside ourselves a resource of stability - and that’s really important. That’s part of what meditation is about.         Adyashanti

     If you're a meditator, whether or not you're aware of ever having had significant trauma, whether or not you teach meditation, I highly recommend this new, well-written, important book:

David A. Treleaven. “Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.” W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

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

Ideology, Identity & Science

     From outside the US, it's hard to understand how a majority of American politicians, and those who elected them, could care more about partisanship (group egoism) than the welfare of their fellow human beings & the environment. 

     Katharine Hayhoe (KH): “We as people have become increasingly polarized over the past two decades - not as much in Canada as in the United States... We’re becoming increasingly polarized, and climate change is one of the biggest casualties of that political polarization because one party has decided – and these are in the words of Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma, who is famous for writing a book about how climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on mankind, in his own words in 2012 he said, ‘I used to agree with you that this was real when I headed the Senate Environment Committee, until I found out how much it would cost to fix it.’ 

     … arguing over the science (only) deepens the divide between people who are convinced that this isn’t real, not because of any scientific arguments they’ve been presented with, nor even because of any pseudo-scientific arguments they’re bringing to the table. They’ve been convinced because they can’t be who they are and agree that climate change is real. It’s an identity issue. 
     Social science has actually shown that arguing the science like that does end up with people who are more firmly convinced. In ‘The Years of Living Dangerously’, an excellent series on Netflix or Amazon, one of the episodes is about my friend Anna-Jean, whose father is a conservative pastor in the South-East United States, who is quite convinced that climate change isn’t real. The episode was about Anna-Jean trying to convince her father, marshalling all the evidence to convince him that yes, this is real and that as Christians we should care about it even more because it effects the poor and the vulnerable. That episode is a fantastic example of ‘the backfire effect,’ because he ended up more convinced that he was right at the end, than he was at the beginning. It’s a textbook case."
     Michael Enright (ME): "Then we’re all doomed aren’t we? I mean, if you can’t present empirical data and facts and so on to someone and get them to change their minds, where do you go from there? What’s the endpoint of that?" 
     KH: "We’re not doomed. And that’s what I’ve spent the last ten years trying to figure out. … What I’ve learned is, talking science, science, science, isn’t what changes peoples’ minds. But what does is, first of all genuinely connecting and bonding over shared values, or shared concerns, or shared loves. So understanding whomever it is we’re talking to enough to where we can say ‘Yah, let’s talk about this thing that we both really care about, whether it’s our family, our faith, fishing, water, farming, the economy, national security, skiing … And then, sharing from the heart here’s why I’m concerned about climate change is because it effects this thing that we both agree on. 
     And it’s really fascinating because my friend Anna-Jean who I mentioned before with the father who’s very convinced that this isn’t real, she recently told me that they actually had a great conversation the other day where they got to the level where they were talking about their genuine fears and concerns. And she realized that on their fears and concerns, she and her Dad weren’t hardly that far apart at all. In fact they were very close. It was just where they went from those fears and concerns that ended up in completely different places. 
     So if we can connect on that level, which is hard to do to be honest, then at that point we can share from the heart why we are concerned, but then always, always, always bring that to solutions.
     Because if we feel that there’s nothing we can do, to fix this massive global problem, our defense mechanisms psychologically is just to shut down, dissociate, disengage and deny. 
     Whereas if we feel like ‘Hey, did you know that in Texas so far this year we already got almost a quarter of our energy from wind? Isn’t that amazing?’ Next time I turn on my lights, I realize that’s a quarter wind, we’re doing great, let’s do more. 
     So there are different ways we can engage. And by talking solutions that are already in place, solutions that we can be part of, solutions that we can engage in in our daily lives ourselves – one of those big solutions just being simply talking about this issue – because hardly anybody ever does, we feel like we’re part of the solution. And that actually changes our perspective on the issue too."

       The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright “Donald Trump versus the climate: a conversation with Katharine Hayhoe.” Sunday April 30, 2017

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/april-30-2017-the-sunday-edition-with-michael-enright-1.4087030/donald-trump-versus-the-climate-a-conversation-with-katharine-hayhoe-1.4087037

Freedom to Choose One's State of Being

     “A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment – he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
     Viktor E. Frankl. “Man’s Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy.” ed 3, Simon & Schuster, 1984.

     "Moral transgression," above and beyond all other dangers & hardships, is considered by another psychiatrist to be the most important cause of combat PTSD.
       Jonathan Shay. “Achilles in Vietnam. Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.” Scribner, 1994.

Spirituality & Social Activism

     “In this era, to become a spiritual inquirer without social consciousness is a luxury that we can ill afford, and to be a social activist without a scientific understanding of the inner workings of the mind is the worst folly. Neither approach in isolation has had any significant success. There is no question now that an inquirer will have to make an effort to be socially conscious or that an activist will have to be persuaded of the moral crisis in the human psyche, the significance of being attentive to the inner life. The challenge awaiting us is to go much deeper as human beings, to abandon superficial prejudices and preferences, to expand understanding to a global scale, integrating the totality of living, and to become aware of the wholeness of which we are a manifestation.”

       Vimala Thakar (1921-2009) Indian social activist and spiritual teacher
       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimala_Thakar

Self-reflection, Distraction & Quality of Life

     “Awareness reflects how things are, how you’re acting in the world, how you’re living in the world. So not only do I have the capacity to engage with life, I also have the capacity to reflect and notice how I’m engaging with life. Just as the mirror reflects my physical posture, awareness reflects the mental-emotional attitude I am coming from in any kind of encounter in life. 
     That’s really the secret of Buddhism – it’s this capacity to reflect. Because without that, without using that reflective capacity, you tend to be very much just involved with life. You try to do it well, keep the precepts and so on, but we don’t really understand life. We come from a kind of attitude of ‘I should be this’ and ‘I shouldn’t be that’, ‘I should do this’ and ‘I shouldn’t do that’, and we have our responsibilities. But we don’t really understand life.
     Where we begin to understand life is where we have this kind of mirroring going on called reflection. And Buddhism is about understanding life. It’s not about just being moral. But morality and generosity are a basis for a reflective capacity actually being stronger. When I live in a way that’s morally impeccable, when I live in a way that has a generous heart in it, it’s much more easy to be reflective, to be aware. If someone is living in a way that’s exploitative of other beings, the environment or hurtful to others, it’s very hard to be reflective, because one doesn’t want to look at the results of that. I don’t want to look at my mind if I’ve been hurting people. I just want to keep it distracted. 
     We see that in people who are dying. If they’ve lived wholesome, meaningful lives, and then as death comes … the person who has lived a good life, they have no problem with awareness. ‘Oh yah, I remember that, I did that well.’ Whereas a person who has lived a poor life, a divisive life, it’s very hard to be aware - and they need distractions. That’s quite a strong lesson. 
     So we all have the capacity to reflect. We all can do that whether our karmic formations are very depressed or difficult, or very bright and lucid, we all have this capacity to reflect. And the Buddha’s teachings on awareness are really encouraging. Just begin by awakening to what’s going on in your life. Begin by really just noticing how you live your life, how you speak with people, how you do what you do.”

Ajahn Viradhammo 

http://tisarana.ca/self-reflection/

What Do I Really Trust?

     What do you ultimately trust? What do you truly believe in? In what do you take refuge from life's craziness?

     You probably didn't immediately come up with things like: eating, coffee, texting, gossiping, ethanol, wealth, fame, sex, shopping, working compulsively, etc. Whatever we immediately turn to for comfort is our refuge - what we actually trust.
     Our choices may embarrass us, even privately. We may vehemently deny our addictive relationship with the "substances" we abuse. But what happens if we try to end these relationships - either suddenly or by tapering off? 

     Ultimately, this is not a matter of morals - we're not "bad" or "sinners." The problem is one of frustration. We're "looking for love in all the wrong places." We exhaust ourselves sucking on pebbles, while starving for profound nourishment. Hitting rock bottom is finally realizing, not just intellectually, but ACTUALLY GETTING THE FACT that what we need is not in the pebbles.

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/11/self-defeating-behaviours-repression.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2014/11/fear-based-rigidity-wisdom-paths-to.html
 

Rutger Bus   www.dpreview.com

Morality First, in the Middle, & Last

     "We awaken out of ourselves and our self-centered position, but awakening is often incomplete. The awakened state offers such power of position and mind that if it is incomplete any residual ego will be forced to the surface. Then, all hell may break loose. If the ego refuses to acknowledge the tension that remains, it can rationalize everything it does as 'crazy wisdom,' a very dangerous term. If, however, ethical behavior has been a central theme throughout our spiritual journey, we will continue to reference our conduct during the uprooting of the sense-of-self. The egoic state is a conditioned state, which means it draws from its storehouse of responses. When not harming ourselves and others becomes the conditioned way we live, then this theme will also be played out as our conditioning is being surmounted. As our conditioning decreases and wakefulness increases our innate response not to harm begins to take over. When our spiritual journey is tied tightly to nonharm, we are less likely to harm in the beginning, middle, and the end. 
     Another component of this is the understanding that awakening is the journey to complete sanity. We know sanity when we see it, and we should encourage that intuitive response forward rather than succumbing to the power and influence of any teacher. If it feels off, it probably is. We are such a doubting culture that we think. “Who am I to doubt someone as wise as my teacher.” Dropping the doubt, who are we not to? 
     It should be noted that awakening does not carry the skill of personal interactions along with it. Just the contrary, if we were untrained in personal relationships in the beginning, we will be untrained when we awaken. We ascribe so much to awakening that we believe everything that is uttered, every interaction undertaken, all arise from some pristine state of being, when it is more likely occurring because we have not learned the competencies of how to live."

       Rodney Smith, author of Awakening. A Paradigm Shift of the Heart. Shambhala, Boston, 2014. being interviewed: http://blog.shambhala.com/2014/03/12/rodney-smith/

Two Levels of Practice

     "There are two levels of practice.
     The first is the foundation, a development of precepts, virtue, or morality in order to bring happiness, comfort, and harmony among people. 
     The second, more intensive and unconcerned with comfort is the practice of Buddha Dharma directed solely toward awakening, toward the liberation of the heart. This liberation is the source of wisdom and compassion and the true reason for the Buddha's teaching."

 A Still Forest Pool. The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah.
Jack Kornfield and Paul Breiter eds. Quest, 1985.

Raindrops

Foundation for Meditation Practices

     "Just as an artist cannot paint in empty air, so it is futile to begin vipassana practice without a basis in morality and understanding of the law of kamma. Without these two things, there will be no surface, as it were, to receive concentration and wisdom. In some meditation centers, morality and kamma are ignored. Not much can result from meditation under these circumstances."

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

From Rigidity towards Wisdom

"For the good man to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good
is to enter on a straight and narrow path
compared to which his previous rectitude was flowery license."

                                                        John Middleton Murry

 Fulghum R. Words I wish I wrote. A collection of writing that inspired my ideas. HarperCollins, NY, 1997.

Where To?

     Adults should consistently work towards living an exemplary, moral, altruistic, empathic life - ie towards full awakening. The details of one's life must be directed by & fit into this overall trajectory of consciousness evolution.

     "A young person who both explores & commits is said to have an achieved identity status, whereas a person who does neither is said to have diffuse identity status. A person who commits without exploration has a foreclosed identity status, and a person who explores but does not commit remains in moratorium identity status." 

       Helson R, Srivastava S. Three paths of adult development: conservers, seekers, and achievers. J Pers Soc Psychol 2001; 80(6): 995-1010.

 

Snowflake by Alexey Kljatov   www.dpreview.com

Boredom to Rapture; Anxiety to Tranquility

     "The enlightenment factor of rapture is born from the freedom from remorse that comes from practicing the precepts of nonharming, and the increasing momentum of awareness that comes from sustained, balanced energy. Rapture is the quality of intense interest, and it arises from a close & caring attention to whatever is arising. It is just the opposite of boredom, which is a lack of attention; so when we’re feeling bored or disinterested, that feeling itself is a very useful feedback that our attention has become halfhearted. In The Manuals of Buddhism, Ledi Sayadaw, the great Burmese meditation master and scholar, wrote, “Rapture is the joy and happiness that appears when the power of seeing and knowing increases.” At one time, Ānanda asked about the rewards and blessings of practice:

     “What, Venerable One, is the reward and blessing of wholesome morality?” “Freedom from remorse, Ānanda.” “And of freedom from remorse?” “Joy, Ānanda.” “And what is the reward and blessing of joy?” “Rapture, Ānanda.” “And of rapture?” “Tranquility, Ānanda.”

     The Buddha goes on to say that these states arise naturally, one from the other."

       Goldstein J. "Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening." Sounds True, 2013. 

       http://www.soundstrue.com/shop/Mindfulness/4436.pd

 

Insight Meditation Society, Barre, MA   http://www.dharma.org/

 

Do We Really Need More "Nuclear Giants" who are "Ethical Infants"?

     “Higher education looses upon the world too many people who are masters of external, objective reality, with the knowledge and skill to manipulate it, but who understand little or nothing about inner drivers of their own behavior. Giving students knowledge as power over the world while failing to help them gain the kind of self-knowledge that gives them power over themselves is a recipe for danger – and we are living today with the proof of that claim in every realm of life from economics to religion. We need to stop releasing our students into the wild without systematically challenging them to take an inner as well as outer journey.”

        Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010.