☸️ Buddhism and ...
- Tmwt (4)
- Acceptance (34)
- Daoism (8)
- Experience (56)
- Human (50)
- Love (3)
- Mindfulness (69)
- Motion (11)
- Nondual (46)
- Opposites (3)
- Resilience (18)
- Self (41)
- Slowness (18)
- Stoicism (6)
- Waking-up (29)
Buddhism and Tmwt
- Reality, seen and unseen, is one unified field of loving aliveness.
- The self is causes, conditions, patterns.
- Subject and object are distinct, but not separate.
- Everything is connected.
Buddhism and Acceptance
- No me, no problem. Just this!
- Simply be awake as the unvarnished bare actuality of just this, exactly as it is, rough edges and all.
- Suffering is struggling with things as they are.
- It's not a quiet mind that matters but non-attachment to the activities of the mind.
- Notice how giving experience a warm welcome makes you feel about yourself.
- Become viscerally intimate with the truth.
- Everything is perfect as it is, even the ego that insists it's not.
- You are partly right (whether it's praise or criticism).
- Develop a healthy relationship with your imperfections.
- Find peace by resting in the wider whole, of this and not-this.
- The thought that life shouldn't be a struggle is painful, so we try to escape it.
- Slowly, painfully, reconcile to life.
- Recognise unhappiness, without trying to change it or fix it.
- Practice is not having a problem with the endless stream of problems.
- Let problems support your practice, enhance your ability to respond appropriately.
- Experience emotions fully, without separation or rejection, without adding anything.
- When we resist impermanence, the feeling of self intensifies.
- Work patiently, steadily, calmly. Allow ample time.
- The intensity of the pain is equal to the intensity of the grasping.
- "If only" mind sets us up to be miserable now.
- Zazen is enacting stillness, non-reactivity.
- Let go. Don't push, don't pull. Make space.
- Trust and desire for control are inversely correlated.
- Suffering comes from aversion.
- RAIN. Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture.
- Meet your edge and soften.
- Imperfections are normal, natural, human.
- I see you, Mara. Let’s have tea.
- The greater the resistance to (inevitable) changes, the greater the pain.
- Give everything a warm welcome.
- Everything is allowed, even resistance.
- Be the loving witness.
- Accept whatever arises.
- Accept that flux and insecurity are the norm. It brings peace.
Buddhism and Acceptance and ...
Buddhism and Daoism
- Pay more attention to how much of your actions feel mysterious.
- Effortless action as in: no sense of self taking action
- Choosing obscures the way.
- Let action emerge from experience.
- The "I am" prior to all.
- Don't reduce a person to their temporary function.
- Withhold judgement.
- Reality is nondual.
Buddhism and Experience
- Being is always bright, whatever the contents of consciousness.
- The six senses are burning with craving.
- Pay more attention to how much of your actions feel mysterious.
- Absolute intimacy with the 10,000 things.
- See what's happening in this moment as exactly right.
- Recognise the matrix of (constructed) narratives you live in.
- Empty as in absence, the possibility of appearance.
- Simply to be alive presents us with tension and mystery.
- Zen uses contradiction and paradox to loosen our grip on concepts.
- Zen demonstrates reality rather than talking about it.
- The separation of subject and object is only conceptual.
- Soak in the silence and vastness of existence.
- Live with full attention and clear awarness.
- Labels divide and isolate.
- Just rest. Don't meddle with thinking.
- Clarity is accepting what's clear and what's not clear.
- Choosing obscures the way.
- Notice the freshness of unfolding reality.
- Naked awareness: thoughts and the mind are like clothes and the body.
- Attend to the dynamic nature of emergent life.
- Don't adopt the stupidity of not investigating.
- "Not knowing is most intimate.
- Everything is perfect as it is, even the ego that insists it's not.
- Just noticing that we were distracted, again and again: that is the practice, that is meditation.
- Seek, without wanting to change to a (transitory) state.
- Nothing to gain, no results. Just the process.
- We (subsconsciously, contextually) edit out the qualities that don't match what we want to see, good or bad.
- The knowing and the object arise as a pair, distinct but not separate.
- Don't recall, don't imagine, don't think, don't examine, don't control. Rest.
- Become less attached to your pains and pleasures.
- Find peace, humility in our smallness, our luck to be alive.
- Find peace by resting in the wider whole, of this and not-this.
- No things are truly independently existing.
- Beyond thought and self, not thinking-about-not-self.
- Our conventional sense of self is an illusion.
- Only the absence of the thinker of thoughts can be found.
- Seeing clearly is difficult because of the (imaginary) obstacles we put up.
- Zazen is enacting stillness, non-reactivity.
- Experiental reality is much deeper, richer, than what can be named.
- Experience is renewing itself in every moment.
- We maintain our sense of self by editing of, selecting from, experience.
- The richness of life is unedited, unjudged, aesthetic, experience.
- Human decisions are cause and effect, like all natural phenomena.
- Get past the conceptual overlay and just notice the raw data, direct experience.
- This moment, as it is, is good enough.
- Look for the center of experience. It's not there.
- Leave everything as it is, in its place.
- In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
- In seeing, only the seen. There's no you.
- The greater the resistance to (inevitable) changes, the greater the pain.
- Give everything a warm welcome.
- Everything is allowed, even resistance.
- Everything arises and passes away, all on its own.
- Consciousness is the prior condition of everything you experience.
- Concepts put imaginary fences around things.
- Accept whatever arises.
Buddhism and Experience and ...
Buddhism and Human
- You lack for nothing; your task is to recognise this.
- We practice for the benefit of all beings.
- More "Is this a helpful strategy?" and less "Is this a final, fundamental, truth?"
- Simply to be alive presents us with tension and mystery.
- Be friendly to yourself and merciful to others.
- Uncertainty is just a story you tell yourself. (Inaction is in fact an action)
- Plant good seeds. Day by day. Year after year.
- Live with full attention and clear awarness.
- Don't take it so seriously: be more playful.
- No separation between you and the circumstances of your life.
- Right Mindfulness (including Right Action (including Right Speech)).
- Pay close attention to the consequences of your behaviour.
- We (subsconsciously, contextually) edit out the qualities that don't match what we want to see, good or bad.
- You are partly right (whether it's praise or criticism).
- Develop a healthy relationship with your imperfections.
- To be able to provide help we need a little calm, a little joy, a little compassion.
- Making yourself an attractive object doesn't help you be happy as a subject.
- Love takes us out towards the world, opening to what's in front of us.
- Listen to others' needs, know your limitations, then act compassionately.
- Become less attached to your pains and pleasures.
- Joy and delight are better encouragement to learning than criticism.
- Celebrate your good qualities to acknowledge and improve them.
- Anger, anxiety, aren't the right states from which to best respond.
- Equalise self and others, as human beings.
- Our reaction to ordinary, everyday, events show us our true colours.
- The Fourfold Task: Embrace life; Let go of (instinctive) reactivity; See the ceasing of reactivity; Act from a place of clarity.
- The Four Noble Truths: there is suffering; the cause of suffering is craving; there is an end to suffering; the way is the eightfold path.
- The Eightfold Path; (Ethics) Right Speech, Action, Livelihood; (Meditation) Effort, Mindfulness, Concentration; (Wisdom) View, Intention.
- What happens when you bring compassion to the feeling?
- Mindful presence, mindful response.
- The Middle Way. Both indulgence and deprivation are equally useless for liberation.
- The consequences of our choices extend far and wide, in many directions.
- Practice is not having a problem with the endless stream of problems.
- Our emotions transform preferences into demands.
- Non-forgiveness comes from feeling separate, being self-centered.
- Do fewer (and fewer) things that make people (including you) miserable.
- We set the threshold (for gratitude, for example)
- The Three Poisons: grasping (greed); aversion (anger); ignorance (delusion).
- The Three Marks Of Existence: Impermanence (Anicca); Suffering (Dukkha); No-self (Anatta).
- The Four Heavenly Abodes: metta (loving-kindness); karuna (compassion); mudita (empathetic joy); upekkha (equanimity).
- We tend to assume that we can only be happy if things go the way we want.
- See the balanced view of yourself: your patterns and human imperfections; your basic innate goodness.
- Free will is an illusion. Can you decide to decide?
- Recognise the suffering.
- People's reactions are the result of their pain.
- Listen more closely, attentively, and actively. Really hear what’s being said.
- Imperfections are normal, natural, human.
- Everyone's good qualities are partly luck and partly effort.
- Be "happy for no reason."
- Be comfortable with ambiguity.
Buddhism and Love
- We practice for the benefit of all beings.
- See more clearly. See things as they are, see ourselves as we are.
- Respond rather than react. Intensity and reactivity breed more of the same.
Buddhism and Mindfulness
- Stop and realise you are the freedom you're searching for.
- Tend patiently to your mind, like a gardener to their garden.
- Take the cushion everywhere.
- Respond to discomfort from a place of stillness.
- Practice grows the amount of life you can hold with becoming upset, without it dominating you.
- Notice how giving experience a warm welcome makes you feel about yourself.
- Become viscerally intimate with the truth.
- The story includes the feeling tone includes the raw data of experience.
- Just noticing that we were distracted, again and again: that is the practice, that is meditation.
- When meditating, be very gentle with your concentration.
- Meditation is about resting. Not-doing, relaxing, refreshing, recharging.
- The task of the meditator is to care for bad feelings, like an older sibling.
- The problem is the reactivity, triggered by the underlying feeling tone, creating a compelling narrative.
- Listen to others' needs, know your limitations, then act compassionately.
- Learn to sense the feeling tone (vedana) before you become entangled and start to spiral.
- Don't recall, don't imagine, don't think, don't examine, don't control. Rest.
- Being distracted is not a problem but staying distracted is.
- Short moments, many times.
- Reaction to thought is also another thought.
- What happens when you bring compassion to the feeling?
- Quiet the mind, open the heart.
- More important than what's happening is how you meet it.
- Mindful presence, mindful response.
- Let problems support your practice, enhance your ability to respond appropriately.
- Experience emotions fully, without separation or rejection, without adding anything.
- Even a "bad session" of meditation interrupts the non-stop flow of thoughts.
- Renunciation, not action, is the path to liberation.
- Treat waiting as unexpected extra time to practice.
- Notice the space around objects, connecting objects.
- Awareness brings choice. Choice brings freedom.
- We practice to (have the strength to) confront problems effectively.
- Mindfulness brings concentration, concentration brings insight.
- Enlightenment is non-interference.
- Use whatever happens as opportunity to wake up, to soften.
- Refrain, not repress.
- Pay attention, no matter what.
- We tend to assume that we can only be happy if things go the way we want.
- "If only" mind sets us up to be miserable now.
- Awakening is an ongoing process, a ripening, cultivation.
- The richness of life is unedited, unjudged, aesthetic, experience.
- Get past the conceptual overlay and just notice the raw data, direct experience.
- You don't have to fulfil a desire for it to pass away.
- This moment, as it is, is good enough.
- The sky, not the clouds.
- The Second Arrow. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
- The ocean, not the waves.
- Follow The Middle Way.
- The big boulder is only heavy if you pick it up.
- Tend the garden.
- Take the backward step.
- See more clearly. See things as they are, see ourselves as we are.
- Recognise the suffering.
- RAIN. Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture.
- People's reactions are the result of their pain.
- Pay more attention.
- Pay lively attention to your own experience.
- Movement masks dukkha.
- Listen more closely, attentively, and actively. Really hear what’s being said.
- Leave everything as it is, in its place.
- Expand your window of tolerance.
- Everything is allowed, even resistance.
- Don't try. Don't try not to try. Relax. Let go.
- Don’t add a story.
- Come home to the present.
- Begin Again, with with a fresh, open-hearted, perspective.
- Be the loving witness.
- Be "happy for no reason."
- Be comfortable with ambiguity.
- Appreciate the sights you see from the train.
Buddhism and Mindfulness and ...
Buddhism and Motion
- Recognise your self as overlapping, malleable, stories.
- Life is defined by growth and transformation, aliveness.
- Notice the freshness of unfolding reality.
- Attend to the dynamic nature of emergent life.
- Practice is about moving from experiences to experiencing.
- Impermanence is what makes transformation possible.
- Awakening is an ongoing process, a ripening, cultivation.
- Experience is renewing itself in every moment.
- Nothing really forms long enough to be an impermanent thing.
- Impermanence. Everything and everyone changes, regardless of what we might think or want.
- Everything arises and passes away, all on its own.
Buddhism and Nondual
- The witness is just a thought too.
- The self is just one of our many constructed models of reality.
- Not 'get rid of the self', but transcend and include it.
- No me, no problem. Just this!
- It is difficult to find awareness because it is too close, too accessible, too present, and too simple.
- Being is always bright, whatever the contents of consciousness.
- There's no need to be so antagonistic towards the costume you're wearing.
- The darkness behind your closed eyes arises in the transparency, the emptiness, of consciousness.
- Completeness can be accessed more easily through incompleteness.
- Our deepest nature is the unity that includes diversity.
- The illusion of duality is the primary source of human suffering.
- The harmony that includes our differences is deeper and more durable than the one that doesn’t.
- Say "no thanks" (to the self). And mean it!
- The wholeness of life is all there is.
- Life is something we are, not something we're trying to negotiate.
- Our true nature is deep, still, harmonious without the polarities of opinion and belief.
- Empty as in absence, the possibility of appearance.
- Effortless action as in: no sense of self taking action
- By holding fast to our likes and dislikes, we continually recreate the sense of self.
- Zen uses contradiction and paradox to loosen our grip on concepts.
- Totally embrace all ordinary opposites in harmony.
- The separation of subject and object is only conceptual.
- Labels divide and isolate.
- Craving something makes it feel farther away.
- Your identity is a narrow slice of your potential.
- Grasping and aversion both reinforce things.
- No separation between you and the circumstances of your life.
- Don't let the content of awareness veil your true nature of happiness and peace.
- Manifestation, performance, function, but no centre.
- An empty signifier with no fixed referent.
- Everything that exists is contingent.
- The sense of self is just another thought.
- The knowing and the object arise as a pair, distinct but not separate.
- Making yourself an attractive object doesn't help you be happy as a subject.
- Emptiness means not independent, not separate, not unchanging.
- The effort to meditate creates the meditator, separateness, duality.
- Feel the profound relief of recognising no-self.
- No things are truly independently existing.
- We can't think our way out of thinking, only observe it, from outside it.
- We can't think in a nondual way, only notice when we're not doing it.
- Practice is about moving from experiences to experiencing.
- Non-forgiveness comes from feeling separate, being self-centered.
- Things only exist by convention, in aggregates.
- Subject and object are distinct, but not separate.
- Reality is nondual.
- Everything is connected.
Buddhism and Opposites
- To address your shortcomings, embody the opposite.
- Craving something makes it feel farther away.
- In between any two opposites lies emptiness, creative potential.
Buddhism and Opposites and ...
Buddhism and Resilience
- Uncertainty is just a story you tell yourself. (Inaction is in fact an action)
- Trying to escape our own suffering creates a separate self.
- Beware escapism, it accrues interest.
- Beware desire, it destroys peace.
- A good life is rich and interesting, but not always happy.
- We practice to (have the strength to) confront problems effectively.
- Everything, every thing, causes some problems.
- Trust and desire for control are inversely correlated.
- Suffering comes from aversion.
- The Second Arrow. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
- The ocean, not the waves.
- The big boulder is only heavy if you pick it up.
- Recognise the suffering.
- Meet your edge and soften.
- Give everything a warm welcome.
- Don’t add a story.
- Begin Again, with with a fresh, open-hearted, perspective.
- Accept that flux and insecurity are the norm. It brings peace.
Buddhism and Resilience and ...
Buddhism and Self
- The witness is just a thought too.
- The self is just one of our many constructed models of reality.
- Not 'get rid of the self', but transcend and include it.
- To address your shortcomings, embody the opposite.
- Stop and realise you are the freedom you're searching for.
- Who are you, once you've let everything go?
- Recognise the matrix of (constructed) narratives you live in.
- Our true nature is deep, still, harmonious without the polarities of opinion and belief.
- By holding fast to our likes and dislikes, we continually recreate the sense of self.
- No part of a person is unchanging, permanent.
- Solitary confinement is (the sense of self is) a prison.
- The effort to be a different person increases the tension, the suffering.
- Decisions seems like problems from a self-centred point of view.
- Manifestation, performance, function, but no centre.
- An empty signifier with no fixed referent.
- The "I am" prior to all.
- Seek, without wanting to change to a (transitory) state.
- The sense of self is just another thought.
- The self is like a constellation. It exists only be convention.
- The self is just a concept, coming from identifying with what's arising.
- The effort to meditate creates the meditator, separateness, duality.
- Feel the profound relief of recognising no-self.
- Our reaction to ordinary, everyday, events show us our true colours.
- Your deeper identity is that relaxed, alive, stillness.
- The movement of thoughts in your mind creates a narrative, a self.
- What's real doesn't disappear when we look carefully.
- We can't expect the thinking mind to (break the illusion of the self) by not-thinking.
- "Selfing" has interacting existential, psychological, and social layers.
- Our conventional sense of self is an illusion.
- Only the absence of the thinker of thoughts can be found.
- The self is a stream of dependently arising processes interacting.
- See the balanced view of yourself: your patterns and human imperfections; your basic innate goodness.
- Integrate insights by being present and open to changes.
- Free will is an illusion. Can you decide to decide?
- Bringing attention to things gives us choice.
- We maintain our sense of self by editing of, selecting from, experience.
- You can't get there from here.
- The sky, not the clouds.
- The self is causes, conditions, patterns.
- The ocean, not the waves.
- Everyone's good qualities are partly luck and partly effort.
Buddhism and Slowness
- Practice is something we do for the rest of our lives.
- Practice grows the amount of life you can hold with becoming upset, without it dominating you.
- Let action emerge from experience.
- Have patient determination: just commit to the next step on the path.
- Meditation is about resting. Not-doing, relaxing, refreshing, recharging.
- Nothing to gain, no results. Just the process.
- The problem is the reactivity, triggered by the underlying feeling tone, creating a compelling narrative.
- The freedom is in the not-(becoming).
- Not analysis, but unthinking absorption.
- Learn to sense the feeling tone (vedana) before you become entangled and start to spiral.
- The Middle Way. Both indulgence and deprivation are equally useless for liberation.
- Do everything with two hands.
- Find calm by suspending the why.
- Work patiently, steadily, calmly. Allow ample time.
- Let go. Don't push, don't pull. Make space.
- Withhold judgement.
- Respond rather than react. Intensity and reactivity breed more of the same.
- Movement masks dukkha.
Buddhism and Stoicism
- The consequences of our choices extend far and wide, in many directions.
- Beware escapism, it accrues interest.
- Beware desire, it destroys peace.
- Our emotions transform preferences into demands.
- Respond rather than react. Intensity and reactivity breed more of the same.
- Don’t add a story.
Buddhism and Waking-up
- There's no need to be so antagonistic towards the costume you're wearing.
- The wholeness of life is all there is.
- More "Is this a helpful strategy?" and less "Is this a final, fundamental, truth?"
- Life is something we are, not something we're trying to negotiate.
- Cause and effect is an infinite regression.
- You are the principle victim of your delusions.
- You are the principal beneficiary of your practice.
- Renunciation, not action, is the path to liberation.
- The self is a stream of dependently arising processes interacting.
- Experience is renewing itself in every moment.
- Free will is an illusion. Can you decide to decide?
- Get past the conceptual overlay and just notice the raw data, direct experience.
- You can't use concepts to get beyond concepts.
- You don't have to fulfil a desire for it to pass away.
- You can't get there from here.
- This moment, as it is, is good enough.
- The self is causes, conditions, patterns.
- Subject and object are distinct, but not separate.
- Pay more attention.
- Look for the center of experience. It's not there.
- Leave everything as it is, in its place.
- In seeing, only the seen. There's no you.
- Impermanence. Everything and everyone changes, regardless of what we might think or want.
- Everything arises and passes away, all on its own.
- Consciousness is the prior condition of everything you experience.
- Concepts put imaginary fences around things.
- Begin Again, with with a fresh, open-hearted, perspective.
- Appreciate the sights you see from the train.
- Accept whatever arises.