Best Of

Re: The Knowledge That Matters

@person said:
The ability to not get attached to our thoughts is an important part of the practice though. >I hear lots of people talk about how understanding that this was even possible was a major >turning point in their lives.

This was the case for me a few months ago while sitting in the waiting room at my neurologist's office. My outcome (which I will find out in a week), will quite literally change my life. I realised in the moments of waiting, that I will not possibly know what to expect or how to feel with the outcome. Why not start letting go now?

SuraShine

5

Laughter and the sense of being

I wanted to talk about the experience of being while you are laughing. It is difficult to be mindful while you laugh, but after you have had a good, deep laughter, immediately afterwards you can examine the memory of it and get a glimpse… Osho once said that this is what it is like to be a buddha.

So what I experience is a kind of absence of mind, and a space filled with light, and cheerfulness, a living, jolly, tinkling place of the sense of song and bells. Pure joy, sheer dance, overflowing energy. Not at all serious but playful.

It was my mother who occasioned this. We were eating dinner, and she had put on her spoon an amount of powdered Parmesan cheese. Just as she brought this to her mouth to eat, she suddenly drew a deep breath, as if in preparation for a sneeze, with as result that she sniffed up a good amount of the Parmesan cheese! She was hacking and coughing for a good ten minutes, and I had to laugh so hard…

It was afterwards that I started to recall how great it felt. Laughter is a wonderful thing…

Jeroen

5

Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!

@Shoshin1 said:

@Jeroen said:

@Shoshin1 said:

@Jeroen said:
Hi @Shoshin1 did you mean to make all those videos private that you linked to? It sounds like quite a trip to Europe and back…

Can you access the videos @Jeroen ?

No… it just says the videos are private and you should sign in. I am signed in to my Google and YouTube account and don’t have access.

Can you view them now ?

Yes, I’ve seen them now. That was quite a trip! And not many western tourists…

Jeroen

1

Re: What music are you listening to?

Heavy Foot - Mon Rovia

The highest form of wisdom is empathy.

Shoshin1

1

Re: Good and Bad People

Here are the actions I take to combat evil. I think the extreme partisanship of the US is undermining the possibility of consensus and the functioning of government, which are the foundation for all the other things we want. There are a bunch of reasons for this and many of the solutions are effectively out of reach (like amending the constitution), so putting energy into them is a waste of energy, dare I say a similar sort of evil to the good person who does nothing is the good person who tilts at windmills? One place that can be changed that would have a fairly big impact is in our primary elections. As they are now, the people who show up to vote are the most engaged and thus the most partisan, which pushes the candidates available in the general election to be the ones that won't reach across the aisle and won't build consensus, so nothing gets done and no problems are solved. You may like one side of this, but that one side comes with the other side in this system of high partisanship. So to fight evil and try to shore up the crumbling foundations of our liberal democratic system (a good in my view) I put some of my energy (albeit probably a small amount compared to the good™ people of the world) into understanding voting issues and at times emailing the appropriate people.

Another thing I do to combat evil is develop my inner resources to live a good and decent life. To acquire the knowledge and skills to understand and communicate ways other people can improve their lives so they can be happier and better people in the world.

person

2

Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!

From time to time, the weight of those who or whom have passed flows over.
My parents and all my aunts and uncles are gone. My older brother and a son, friends..my graduation class will be having it's 60 year reunion with more on the wall of memory than remaining.
But, from anther light, for those still around and those who have fallen, for whatever span of time we each have or had, we all enjoyed the jewel of life. To die, one must first live. So, even as we miss the ones who have gone, we celebrate having shared our lives with theirs. We celebrate sharing and having shared the priceless jewel of life.
A toast - To those we have known, those we now know and those we shall know,
THANK YOU, ALL!

Peace to all

Lionduck

6

Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!

I’m finding I’m in a more somber mood these days… feeling the weight a bit of all the people who have passed away and disappeared from my life in recent years… my uncles Kees and Henk, my aunt Elly, my stepfather and most of all my dad. It’s just me and my mother now.

I used to always be quite cheerful, a joyous person, usually with a smile on my face. But recently I have been surprising serious and anxious expressions on my face when I would return from being concentrated on something.

Jeroen

2

Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!

Well I arrived back in Aotearoa Saturday evening after spending just over a month overseas visiting my children and siblings in the UK and Europe. Going over I had a 12 hour stopover in Beijing (I got to stay in a transit hotel not far from the airport). On my way home I spent three and half days in Beijing. I booked into a traditional Chinese hotel in the city centre (well one of the centres) for three nights.

I visited Tiananmen Square and walked (in part) the Great Wall of China plus rode on a bullet train....I can remove them from my bucket list...

The videos are short.

It was daylight when I left my hotel to walk to Tiananmen Square which was not far. Little did I know that there would be big queues and security checks along the way.