Equanimity, Honesty & Compassion

     “… liberation arises when we are ‘without anxiety about nonperfection’ … when we are able to see ourselves and the world with honesty and compassion.” 

       Kornfield J. “A path with heart. A guide through the perils and promises of spiritual life.” Bantam books. NY, 1993. 

Kevin Van Paassen / The Globe and Mail

 

Head & Heart can be Miles Apart

     It's amazing how much one can read & know (facts) about a religion / philosophy of life, without this knowledge having any appreciable affect on one's way of living, and thus, quality of life. People can be very smart, and at the same time, be far from living wisely. For transformational learning to take place, learning has to be welcomed in & embraced by mind, heart, emotions, body - all that we are.
     But, for many of us, (with apologies to Vegas) 'What happens in the head, stays in the head'. Many of us remain "scientific materialists" at heart. We may accept the Buddhist ideas we read and hear about, but don't actually believe in them. "Instead, we live as if the world were dead and this (material) reality the only one that exists."

       Ray RA. Indestructible Truth. The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism. Shambhala, Boston, 2000.

Martin Kristiansen   www.dpreview.com

Just Take One Step at a Time ...

      “if you just take one step at a time, you can do anything. … your limits are mostly in your mind.”

        O’Halloran M. “Pure Heart Enlightened Mind: The Zen Journal and Letters of Maura ‘Soshin’ O’Halloran.” Charles E. Tuttle Company Inc, Boston, 1994. (a profoundly inspiring book)

johneb   www.dpreview.com

Connections, Interbeing, Oneness ...

     “When we come to perceive our interconnectedness, we come to know that fundamentally we each want and need the same things – we each want happiness and we don’t want suffering. Then we begin to see through the veil of illusion that obscures our views to the point where we wind up justifying or even passively accepting the denial of civil rights. A true awakening would have us step back and expand our awareness that all living beings are impacted by our thoughts, speech, and actions. If we can develop this awareness, we naturally come to universal love and compassion for the welfare of all ‘others.’ We might even notice someone amidst our daily routine standing a little taller and straighter, and breathing more freely.”

      “We are constantly ‘voting’ with our words, thoughts, and deeds for how the world is and shall be."

       Das LS. "The Big Questions. A Buddhist Response to Life’s Most Challenging Mysteries.” Rodale Inc, London, 2007.


     “all life is interrelated” … we are all “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
       Martin Luther King Jr

 

tko   www.dpreview.com

Death, Meaning & the Nature of the Cosmos

     “At the deepest level, I would suggest that meditation was a technique developed to address, in some form, certain control issues related to death, meaning, the nature of the cosmos. As such, it has been used as a technique to help gain experiential understanding about the nature of the universe, reality, and oneself at the deepest and most fundamental level of knowing.”

        Shapiro DH. Examining the content and context of meditation; A challenge for psychology in the areas of stress management, psychotherapy, and religion/values. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1994; 34(4): 101-135. 

     See also Ways to Wisdom: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/02/theword-religion-has-many-meanings-in.html

vladnm   www.dpreview.com

 

Patiently Observe the Bare Experience - Gather Data

     “I would like to beg you … as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves as if they were closed rooms or books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers, which could not be given to you because you would not be able to live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer.”            Rilke
 
       Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010.

Udayan Sankar Pal   www.facebook.com/UdayanSankarPal

Directly Knowing Experience Moment-to-Moment

     When Larry Rosenberg was very sick with dysentery in Burma, and everything that could had already been done medically, he was encouraged by Mahabu (his meditation teacher), to see if he could use this illness as practice.
     “He advised Larry to practice with the experiences just as they are, drop the words fever, dysentery, and so on. Let those go, and stay with the direct moment-to-moment experience that you’re having – sensation and feelings being known. Explore (though it may at times be hard). When he did, he noticed it was extraordinary – quite amazing what a difference it made being really open to the process, moment-to-moment. 
     Larry said that when he was labeling things and putting concepts on them, they seemed to get worse. But when he dropped that and got into the direct knowing, the direct experience, it didn’t get worse, and in fact at times there was a lot of calm and a lot of joy. He could see things come and go. Unpleasant? Yes, but they were arising and ceasing.”
       Sky Dawson 2013-05-17 "Reflections On Aging, Sickness and Dying"
http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/199/

CalBoy87   www.dpreview.com