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What qualities do you voluntarily take on board in your daily awareness.

JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
in Buddhism Basics
For me this is in the context of mandalas which are organizations of phenomena such as a politics mandala, a family mandala, and a practice mandala.

An example would be 'speed'. For example when working at home or work we may take speed as a value to bring to the mandala.

For me I take 'tranquility' as the object I am going for. On the positive it makes me curious about my mind and life and if I can appreciate the vibrational frequencies it can be quite relaxing. On the negative it can cause me to reject my experience. It's the flip side of appreciating experience in that when the experience isn't soothing and tranquil it leads me to self negativity or anxiety to the outside.

So we have two examples of qualities we take on board in our daily awareness: speed and tranquility. What are yours and can you say something about them. I think it is really important to think about this and see clearly what we are actually thinking and valuing as we practice.

Comments

  • rivercanerivercane Veteran
    edited July 2013
    I've heard you mention these personal mandalas before and I am intrigued. I want to learn more about these. Where would be a good place to start?

    Without knowing anything about them, I'll just say that one of the qualities I like to take on board in my daily awareness is warmth. It's the right thing to do as far as other people are concerned but mainly I just like the way it feels, ha.

    Like you say, I like the vibrational frequencies. I guess the other one would be wisdom, although I fall way short of the mark for both of these most of the time .
  • lobsterlobster Veteran
    Loss of 'qualities'
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    @rivercane, I am not sure of a reference to study mandalas. It is something my teacher has not published as of yet. You could take Lama Shenpen Hookham's four book course I guess, which is what I am doing and is how I received this teaching. But think of them as a principal. When something stands against the principal then because 'you don't have your way' you get vexed. And then you can turn back to the meditation mandala of letting all thoughts just be and not identifying with them. That is an example of returning to the meditation mandala when something is not to your liking.
  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    I guess my #1 quality is peace. It's a constant challenge in a house with 3 busy boys but it works amazingly well. Re-learning how to talk, how to interact, even how to clean and fed the pets as acts of peace was quite an amazing process. It all comes from within, of course. I truly believe there is no peace to be had in the world until men have peace in their hearts. But I didn't know until more recently exactly what that meant.
  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    I guess my #1 quality is peace. It's a constant challenge in a house with 3 busy boys but it works amazingly well. Re-learning how to talk, how to interact, even how to clean and fed the pets as acts of peace was quite an amazing process. It all comes from within, of course. I truly believe there is no peace to be had in the world until men have peace in their hearts. But I didn't know until more recently exactly what that meant.
  • CittaCitta Veteran
    edited July 2013
    I just breath in the good stuff and breath out the bad stuff. Minute by minute. Breath by breath. Sometimes more effectively than others. I am a simple soul.
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