300 posts tagged “books”

Dharmavidya writes:

It has been an intense day. We are holding a weekend seminar on themes from the new book. There are about fifteen visitors plus members of the household: a lively group that has engaged in a lot of intelligent discussion, sharing personal experiences, and exploring relevance of the theory for ordinary life, for therapy practice and also for wider application to social questions. Although we have changed the format periodically to assist the process, discussion has flowed fairly continuously all day with occasional inputs from me. This is pretty impressive given that with the book not arriving until Thursday nobody had had the opportunity to read it in advance. I realise in retrospect that I was somewhat nervous how the day would go since this late publication meant that this was the first public airing on the work. It was both a relief and a satisfaction that many people found the day inspiring and spontaneously came to tell me so.

Some themes: # contrasts between 'ideal' and actual love # critique/appreciation of 'mindfulness' methods # the question whether avoidance of disappointment means not loving # the risks of love # the ubiquity of the dilemma: can one love again # the proper attitude toward emotion in spiritual practice # since love involves holding one other more dear than others does it generate conflict and # does it contradict 'democratic' or 'justice' ideals? # loving people one does not like # the dilemma of therapy as a requirement to love on demand for a fee # appreciation/critique of the theories of Carl Rogers

When you dwell in stillness, the judging mind can come through like a foghorn. "I don't like the pain in my knee... This is boring...I like this feeling of stillness; I had a good meditation yesterday, but today I'm having a bad meditation... It's not working for me. I'm no good at this. I'm no good, period..."

This type of thinking dominates the mind and weighs it down. It's like carrying around a suitcase full of rocks on your head. It feels good to put it down. Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your judging and instead to let each moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as "good" or "bad." This would be a true stillness, a true liberation. Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, from Wherever You Go, There You Are

The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.

~ Pema Chodron The Places that Scare You : A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

Sometimes we find that we like our thoughts so much that we don’t want to let them go.

~ Pema Chodron The Places that Scare You : A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

How is there going to be less aggression in the universe rather than more? We can then bring it down to a more personal level: how do I learn to communicate with somebody who is hurting me or someone who is hurting a lot of people? How do I speak to someone so that some change actually occurs? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? In a potentially violent encounter, how do I communicate so that neither of us becomes increasingly furious and aggressive? How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable, and eternally aggressive begin to soften up, and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen?

Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change.

~ Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart : Heart Advice for Difficult Times

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything - every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment.

~ Pema Chodron The Places that Scare You : A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

As I left my daytime resting place on Vulture Peak,
I saw an elephant
come up on the riverbank after its bath.

A man took a hook and said to the elephant,
Give me your foot.
The elephant stretched out its foot; the man mounted.

Seeing what was wild before
gone tame under human hands,
I went into the forest
and concentrated my mind.

~ Dantika, in Susan Murcotts The First Buddhist Women from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

(T)his enlightenment of the Buddha's was profound and brilliant, accurate and powerful, and also warm and compassionate. It was like the sun behind the clouds. Anyone who has taken off in an airplane on a grim and gloomy day knows that beyond the cloud cover the sun is always shining. Even at night the sun is shining, but then we can't see it because the earth is in the way, and probably our pillow also. The Buddha explained that behind the cloud cover of thoughts - including very heavy clouds of emotionally charged thoughts backed up by entrenched habitual patterns - there is continual warm, bright, loving intelligence constantly shining. And even though in the midst of thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns, intelligence may become dulled and confused, it is still this intelligence in the midst of thoughts and emotions and habits that makes them so very captivating, so resourceful and various, so inexhaustible.

~ Samuel Bercholz, Entering the Stream

Do you live as though you have all the time in the world? Having all the time in the world is an illusion. You never know what might happen - an accident, an illness, or a disaster. If you only had moments to live, would you change your priorities? What would you do? Where would you go? How you would interact with your family, friends, loved ones - even strangers? But truly: Why are you not doing these things now?

~ Arnie Kozak, from Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants (Wisdom)
Timely question!

51. As a beautiful flower that is full of hue but lacks fragrance, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who does not practice it.

~ The Dhammapada, in Walpola Rahula's What the Buddha Taught