dee thank you for sharing this with me, mindfulness is a constant practice. btw I noticed your question/comment on Feng shui from the other thread, and wanted to suggest a pinch of sea salt in every corner of every room in your place. It truly helps remove all negative energy in your space.

Thich Nhat Hanh--"Stay Always in the Kingdom"
 

"I want to buy a kilo of peace at the market"

Eckhart Tolle
 

Hope/Fear
 

"Abandon Hope" Pema Chodron

I needed this reminder today.

Eckhart Tolle
 

"grace is already arising from within you"

The Mindfulness and Meditation Summit
 

https://www.soundstrue.com/store/min...Registered+Yet

I just registered for this event... I am looking forward to many speakers..

Much Metta to all!
 

"our imperfection is our one true perfection".. ALice Walker

http://www.contemplativemind.org/pra...oving-kindness

This is a great link to understanding Metta.

Namaste
Knight

meditation
 

the use of traditional methods or techniques hmmm --- can love be achieved as the result of a method or technique?
One wonders at the traditions of yore, since the very word 'tradition' comes from the word 'trahere', and is related to the word 'betray', i.e. to 'betray' the moment - the present?!
One wonders also at the benefits of using a technique which obviously enhances the "i" (i.e. in the link you provided there is constant affirmation of "May I..." "May I...") constituting a "mantra", while the word "mantra" literally means to put away all self-centred activity...
How can the self be stressed and emphasized ("me" "myself", and "i") when it is the very cause and source of all the sorrow and suffering in the world?
charley

Hi charley.. nice to meet you.. I am sorry that I did not respond earlier to this.. I took a break from the planet for a few months.. and since I have been back this is the first time I have checked this thread... You make some great points and comments.. I can only answer some of your comments from my personal opinion and beliefs. In my opinion, the article here is speaking of love in general..and again for me personally I do believe that everything can be achieved by technique and the use of a method. They are not talking specifically about the ability to love, rather the understanding of what is love. Take for example the classic book the art of loving, Fromm points out the need for love to be looked at as a skill that we constantly improve.. Another very interesting point that you made charley, was about the use of Individual thinking and how it is the cause of suffering. In Buddhist philosophy, as I believe all begins with the individual.. and I believe again what is meant here in the article is.. one must have compassion for oneself in order to have compassion for every sentient being, and that goes for love, awareness etc. My suffering is your suffering and your suffering is my suffering... this is my understanding of Metta .

Anybody following the sexual scandal at Shambhala? I have been on their FB group for a long time because I like and have read a lot of Pema's work. It makes me so grateful I follow Vipassana/insight meditation where a relationship with the teacher is not prioritized. So creepy some of the excuses being made for the Sakyong. If you are old enough, you might remember his father was notorious for some of his behavior too.

But there are a lot of wise and wonderful Shambhala folks. I don't think those high in the hierarchy could have not known that he was sexually assaulting women, and I have no doubt that they gaslighted and threatened victims. So it is majorly creepy. And sad.

Thank God for Insight Meditation with its ordinary teachers and decentralized organization.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/tricycl...ual-abuse/amp/

Vipassana/Insight meditation
 

Have had many insights (aka Vipassana), without belonging or following any "group". The release of energy coursing through the body is wonderful, and have liked the changes they have brought about, the healing. Seeing what is true or what is false is always so liberating/freeing. :)

Sorry to hear about Shambhala group. Didn't know about them.

Compassion
 

"Metta" actually means goodwill - not compassion.
It is "karuna" which means compassion - from which Sanskrit word yields the English words cardio, coronary, etc. and the French word "coeur" - all pointing to the heart - which means compassion. It is important to remember that words themselves are only referents, they are not the things themselves.

One can use thought to learn how to drive a car, how to manipulate things, matter, how to go from A to B, etc. and such like. It is thought that thinks that, as you say, "everything can be achieved by technique and the use of a method". Here, one must understand that the word "thing" literally also means think/thought. So, it is only possible to think every "thing", every thought. The "I" is constructed by thought, is thought. This is an interesting discovery.

So, what I am saying it is only when thought stops that there is the possibility of filling one's heart with compassion.

Therefore, what I am saying is that compassion lies outside thought and, therefore, outside the self; thus, it is impossible to use thought to fill one's heart with compassion. If that were so, then everyone on the planet could/would be loving, but that is just not the case. So, to insist on self-love would mean that somewhere along the line that the "I" (the self) thought it could invent the idea, the idea of compassion. There is noone on the planet whose heart is filled with love when looking at themselves in a mirror while brushing one's teeth. It is here, I think it is important and crucial to realize that the word "love" is grossly misused just about everywhere. People don't really feel "love", when they say, "I love Coca-Cola" or "Pepsi" or whatever. What people really mean is that they like x, y or z. The only thing one can think when one thinks of oneself is that one either likes or dislikes oneself, but definitely not "love". The whole "idea" of self-love is nothing but narcissism insofar as I am concerned.

I was referring to the Insight Meditation movement, not even to the meditation practice and certainly not to a momentary insight. It's a Buddhist Tradition. It had its flaws to be sure, but it offers a bit more than access to aha moments during meditation. Glad you are doing well on your own. Many practitioners do. But IM is more than whatever you meant dismissively as a "group."

Shambhala - sexual scandal - organized religion
 

I do not belong to any organized religion, mainly because I feel that all of them (bar none) have within them the seeds of some kind of abuse. The organized religions of Hinduism and of Buddhism has kept all women in Asian countries no more than servants and slaves to the men propounding the ideas of Hinduism & Buddhism. So, I informed myself as to the subject herein and I am not at all surprised by the the very large number of women claiming allegations of sexual abuse by "elders"/"teachers" in the organized religion of the Shambhala movement:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...se-by-teachers

"Leaders of Shambhala International, which has more than 200 meditation centres across the world, including several in the UK, admitted to major failures in how it dealt with “abhorrent sexual behaviour”."

The report claims: “Known child abusers are freely active within the Shambhala community, some are even senior teachers. Meanwhile, many who have been abused have been left with no recourse but to leave the community to heal and move forward as best they can.”

Shades of Catholic priest pedophilia... doh!

Not only did such abuse occur, but the "leaders" did nothing to prevent and eschew their buds, while all the while preaching mindfulness and awareness!!!

I am sure that the Buddha would roll over in his grave at those who preach Buddhism, and do not even do what he said: as the 4th of his noble truths: "right action"; and the 5th noble truth, that of: "right speech" - lying and withholding information, the latter being worse of course - being lying by omission; and the 7th noble truth, that of: "right mindfulness".

How could anyone trust what comes out of the mouths of such leaders :hamactor: when they themselves are incapable of doing what the Buddha said?

As per https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/shambhala-abuse/

"In August 2017, Sogyal Rinpoche resigned from Rigpa, the international Buddhist organization that he founded, following accusations of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Sogyal was said to enter a period of retreat following the announcement (though he was seen shortly after at a conference in Thailand). Last spring, Lama Norlha, the abbot of New York’s Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery, stepped down after multiple women whom he allegedly had sexual relationships with came forward. Norlha died last month."

And from: http://www.newsweek.com/buddhist-gro...eachers-830333

Other Buddhist groups: "In 2012, Joshu Sasaki, a Los Angeles–based Zen master, was accused of groping and harassing female students over the course of several decades. Sasaki died in 2014, a year after an independent inquiry of Buddhist leaders concluded that the allegations about Sasaki's misconduct were true.It followed a 2011 report in the Chicago Tribune that hundreds of Theravada Buddhist monks accused of sexually assaulting children in Illinois, Texas and California were able to evade investigations by moving away from their accusers, and 2010 allegations of sexual impropriety against Eido Shimano, a spiritual teacher of the Zen Studies Society headquartered in Manhattan."

So, this situation has been known for some years... doh!

As far as I am concerned, all these monks and priests are fakes, all of them. They are fake human beings. And, none of them are or have ever been enlightened. And, I would never (repeat never!) accept anything anyone of them would say. Throughout history, there have only been a handful of human beings who went all the way, and who I might consider to have been enlightened. I remain as skeptical as I was as a child. Just because someone puts on eastern robes, and spits out clever sentences is meaningless, and that is because all intellectual understanding is meaningless in itself. So, I eschew all intellectual arguments as being utterly meaningless, because deep down such people can remain as oblivious to any kind of harm or abuse they may cause. Like the Buddha said: "nirodha", i.e. negate, negate all that is not real. But, people are gullible and think that if someone has some clever argument, some intellectual knowledge, that means something, and they accept without questioning, without questioning authority, without questioning the tradition of authority.

The very word "tradition" comes from the word "tradere" which means things that are handed down - from the past to the present. It also means "betrayal". So, those that are enamored and attached to tradition are the ones who betray, are the ones who are treacherous. To live in tradition, one must of necessity betray the present, which is why one must be skeptical of anyone proposing and preaching any organized religion which follows any kind of tradition. As one can see, tradition itself denies the possibility of enlightenment, clarity, and truth, and the discovery of whether there is or there is not anything beyond the material, something holy, something truly sacred.

Of course, one can easily retain whatever beliefs and attachments that one has. And, all I can say to that is that it is your life, not mine.

I do not think anyone would disagree that religious leaders who abuse their students/parishioners are not authentic in their religious practice.

I assume you revere the Buddha. Well, he put the Dharma and the Sangha above all else. The Dharma is fairly intellectual. There are texts. There are arguments, which you say you eschew. The Sangha is community, which you said you reject completely. There is no Buddhist philosophy or tradition not based in these three. If you deny the Dharma and the Sangha, what is your path to enlightenment? Do you personally commune with an incarnation of the Buddha? Do you claim to be one?

You don't sound like any kind of Buddhist I've encountered. You can't hate everything and hope for enlightenment.

enlightenment
 

LOL@ communing with an incarnation of the Buddha, I HOPE NOT! lol Nor, god forbid for me to claim anything but being a human being.
I never said I hated anything or everything. Negation is not about hatred/acceptance. BTW, reincarnation is a just a belief, right? Interior memories could be just genetic memories. Think about that! (grins)

Well, I have the greatest respect for what the Buddha actually said, but no, I am not a Buddhist. Actually, there are accounts that there were 2 of his "followers", perhaps "friends" would be a better word, who listened carefully to what he said and "went" with him. These accounts also state that they died physically before he did, which is an interesting fact, isn't it?

Regarding Sangha, it is true that, in a way, I have turned my back on what society stands for - the greed, the cruelty, the malice, the violence, the hypocrisy and all the lying, the constant wars that are ongoing even as we speak, all the horrors and the abuse, aggression, the vanity, etc. In modern terms, I have turned my back on the fact of GDP or GNP. I feel that as long as society uses people as a means to an end, that itself is just cause to turn one's back on such a society - for one simple reason: a lack of a sense of the meaningfulness of one's life. And, without a sense of the meaningfulness of one's life, life itself becomes meaningless. (As an aside, do you know, that in Bhutan, they measure life in terms of GNH - Gross National Happiness? - wonderful, eh?) But that does not mean that I have turned my back on society per se. There is a big difference between what people think that society "should" stand for, what they attribute to society and that of people just living together. I would not bother to respond here had I turned my back on society.

You asked: "what is your path to enlightenment?" I think there is no path to enlightenment, in the same way that there is no path to truth - path being a method/technique. You see (or perhaps you don't, Martina), the "I" is the path, and that is the problem. Everyone has glimpses about truth now and then, especially artists.

I have no hopes (apart from a vague thought that it would be nice to win a lottery - laughs). All hopes always lead to disappointment, despair, and deception. They are opposite sides of the same coin, do you see that? The idea of opposites are an interesting thing to explore...

There is one thing I might add, love has no opposite.

tricycle magazine 3-4-2013
 

“The Examined Life”

"Life is profound if you’re awake to see it. It’s one thing to draw from culture, it’s another thing to be drawn so deeply into the culture that your true nature disappears. Wisdom is not merely something to be gained with old age. One can be wise in every stage of one’s life. To manifest wisdom means simply to step back and see— to reflect, inquire, be aware, be disciplined, and be focused not once in a while, but all of the time, moment to moment. This life is precious and fleeting. Pay attention.

Zen monk Seido Ray Ronci

Love that quote