Clingless Development, Transmutation & Progression
This niche topic for empaths, or energetically sensitive beings, encapsulates years of note taking from experience, study and practice, provides nine categories of approach:
1) Gratitude for opportunities
2) Mindfulness (– especially of contact and vēdanā)
3) Hedonic Tone and the Three Characteristics of Existence
4) Self and identification
5) Equanimity and compassion
6) The Four Right Efforts and Five Hinderances
7) Energy
8) Non-attachment
9) Miscellaneous strategies
For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Denny and I talk about caring for caregivers. Topics, not necessarily in order, include: Integrating Presence’s long linked list of Healing Modalities and Resources What is true, real, authentic non-inverted care, and does this differ coming fromContinue reading “Caregiving Roundtable: Caring For The Givers | (9/28/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)”
Ten questions to investigate the term “Early Buddhist Texts.” The first three:
How helpful and/or how detrimental is the term “Early Buddhist Texts”?
Where/how did it originate?
On one hand maybe it sets up a certain distinguishing category in a distilled type of way, but when does “early” begin and end?
Currently, over 15 (groups of) questions for investigating energy, including:
What is energy? How do you know?
Where and how do you experience energy?
What kinds, or types of energy are there?
Why is energy important?
Where does energy come from? Where does it go?
This blog post provides a more experimental approach involving mostly perception, reflection and contemplation. If not calling to you, or remain unmoved, please pass on it for the time being. Furthermore, any and all constructive critical responses are welcome — especially why this ought to be abandoned and/or any improvement suggestions.
The intent: how to continually practice karuṇā — compassion — at least in the background, even if/when life calls more for the other Bhramaviharas.
For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything LIVE” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Denny and I chat with meditation teacher Beth Upton most significantly about the Dependent Origination link Nāmarūpa, or Materiality and Mentality, which, according to Wikipedia, is “used in Buddhism to refer to the constituents of aContinue reading “Materiality And Mentality | (7/27/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu And Guest Beth Upton)”
The three types of people in the world are likened to a person with a mind like an open sore, a person with a mind like lightning, and a person with a mind like diamond.
“And who has a mind like an open sore? It’s someone who is irritable and bad-tempered. Even when lightly criticized they lose their temper, becoming annoyed, hostile, and hard-hearted, and they display annoyance, hate, and bitterness. They’re like a festering sore, which, when you hit it with a stick or a stone, discharges even more. In the same way, someone is irritable and bad-tempered. Even when lightly criticized they lose their temper, becoming annoyed, hostile, and hard-hearted, and they display annoyance, hate, and bitterness. This is called a person with a mind like an open sore.”
In the Vitakkasaṇṭhāna Sutta — The Relaxation of Thoughts (MN 20) the Buddha provides five themes to attend to at the appropriate times for those intent on heightening the mind. (The full post includes images and passages with explanations)
1) Small Peg Knocking Out Larger One (to attend to another theme)
2) Disgusted By Wearing Carcass (to know certain thoughts are unskillful, blameworthy, and resulting in stress)
3) Looking Away (to pay no mind to unskillful thoughts)
4) From Running To Walking To Standing To Sitting To Lying Down (to relax thought fabrications)
5) Clenching Teeth (to crush unskillful/evil mind with awareness)
For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything LIVE” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Denny draws from, and summarizes the teaching of Shifu Ji Ru to link together the Four Great Elements, Four “Mighty” Postures, Four Right Knowings, Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Three (or Four) Dharma Seals, and Three Gates of Liberation.
Due to a major interest in truth, I answered the call to read a Sutta at Beth Upton’s June 2021 full moon gathering. Each of these monthly online get-togethers explores a different topic and offers “a chance to deepen our connections with each other through group meditation and Dhamma discussion.”
Amongst other things, this blog post includes the text I read along with a passage from another text I considered reading; relevant quotes about truth; the main questions we explored and some we did not
Integrating Presence