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
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?
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
For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — (despite some technical snafus) Denny and I pick one topic each we’ve yet to discuss much publicly — the Eight “Touches”, and wholesome sexuality(/sexual energy), respectively.
“Monks, these are the four developments of concentration. Which four? There is the development of concentration that, when developed & pursued, leads to a pleasant abiding in the here & now. There is the development of concentration that, when developed & pursued, leads to the attainment of knowledge & vision. There is the development ofContinue reading “Types Of Samadhi (From Early Buddhist Texts)”
“What is your definition of self,” is often one of the first questions I ask someone once it is clear they are serious about seeking, and/or clear about their spiritual path, or even someone heavily seeped in philosophy. From what I innerstand, while the historical Buddha never simply denied that there’s a “self” directly andContinue reading “The Buddha’s Images For The Five Clinging Aggregates”
Integrating Presence