Ah, yes.
A lifetime of memories-the pleasures and joy, sadness and regret.
"But whoever develops mindfulness of death, thinking, 'O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up one morsel of food... for the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out, that I might attend to the Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal' — they are said to dwell heedfully. They develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the effluents.
"Therefore you should train yourselves: 'We will dwell heedfully. We will develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the effluents.' That is how you should train yourselves."
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.019.than.html
Afa the specific example you gave, how in the world would you enforce that? Have everyone at the talk sign an NDA? You can’t possibly control the mouths of others.As the teacher , All you can do is stand on business. You say what you say, and clarify if need be. Otherwise, not gossiping or lying about conversations or breaking the confidence of others or even repeating stories the correct way intended by the other person is an everyday problem with people in general. Family, co workers, etc. ……Right speech isn’t just a holy issue. Not to mention… when someone in a particular power dynamic/imbalance says, don’t go tell anyone this…. It’s usually a red flag.
I found this a really interesting critique of the processes of Big Tech, where a service starts good and cheap, and becomes large and entrenched, and then becomes noticeably poor value for customers. Enshittification, it is also called.
Respect that is limited to holy people, just points out how little respect we have for everyone else.
As long as teachers allow students to simply swap gross attachments for more refined versions of the same, suffering for both teachers & students, will be inevitable.
I was encouraged, humbled, and enjoyed watching this video yesterday:
Edit: oops, this was supposed to go in the Israel-Palestine thread. But I guess it fits in nicely here too.
When Israel was re-established in 1948, the land the Palestinians were inhabiting stretched into Jordan and Egypt and the border into Lebanon was also further into Lebanon. These countries refused the Palestinians that land. Other countries like Syria and Iraq deemed this "avoiding the Palestinian refugee problem" Why are these countries not being held accountable as well?
Some Arab countries in the region did provide some support to Palestinian refugees, including humanitarian aid and setting up refugee camps. However, the decision to not fully integrate Palestinian refugees into their societies was influenced by political considerations, concerns about national identity, and to maintain pressure on Israel to address the refugee issue which they created.
However the responsibility for finding a solution lies with all parties involved, including neighboring Arab countries, Israel, the Palestinians, and the international community. And the spanner in the works is it would seem the US veto power...
What Meditation Is About
Nutshell answer.. it's about Minding your own business
Easy for you to mock the efforts of others. I don’t see you making any efforts of your own devising.
It seems to me that all search for truth can’t get away from the subjectivity of it, the fact that your own viewpoint defines the results and extents of the search. This leads you to explore yourself, to deconditioning and self-observation. In many ways earnestness, a commitment to honesty inside and outside yourself, is an ally in this search, an accelerant of the process in which you let go of many things.
It really is a process where the question “who am I?” forces you to confront all the untruths. It leads to many questions about yourself, and a long process of letting go of things. But as Ramana Maharshi said, “the question ‘who am I’ is not meant to get an answer, it is meant to dissolve the questioner”, and eventually the questions stop coming.
Eventually this exploration of the self leads you to a set of core issues. For me these were, how I related to honour, keeping my word, honesty; and later to love, my mother and my birth. Beyond that even to my earlier sense of being.