Best Of
Re: Unusual mantra?
Hello person!! I’ve been a way for along time, it seems, lol. Great idea to try Google translate - I’ll give it a shot! 
Sile
Unusual mantra?
Hello folks!
Someone found this mantra (?) inside a pendant (sadly, I don't have a photo of the pendant or access to it).
On the other side of this paper there are 5 stripes: violet, white, red, green and yellow
It seems to be sort-of Sanskrit (possibly another Indian language altogether?), but I found myself wondering whether it was actually code; maybe to get a message past Chinese censors, disguised as a mantra?
The less exciting alternative is that the non-Tibetan pendant seller simply wanted to sell the pendant and scribbled this out, lol, but it looks a little too competent in some ways for that.
Very curious - would love to hear what you think, and thank you!
I have for the first part (clumsily on my part no doubt):
Om thunk'a thhubba' bba' thbarth'a bbaha tha tṛṣā thha bbaod thurga thha bb[X] tsge med
Another person offered:
Om thunk'a thhubba' bba' thbarth'a bbaha tha ṭ.hya-śa thha gbo-ta thurga thha bb[X] tsge med.
We think possibly "bbaod" or "gbo-ta" could be crypto-spellings for "bod" (Tibet).
Very intrigued to see what you all think!
Warm regards,
Sile
Sile
Re: For the coming year
When you give attention to your breath with friendliness and love, you get to recognise the wisdom of the body. It just breathes in a shallow way, taking in just enough breath to keep the body functioning when you are at rest. It doesn’t breathe deeply or bring in lots of oxygen when it isn’t necessary — it knows when enough is enough.
Sometimes I find that the in-breath generates energy and tension, and the out-breath is a moment of release and relaxation, then my in breath is short, and my out breath is long, and I find myself in a tremendous space of let-go.
Jeroen
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology." ~ Edward O Wilson
person
Re: The Dalai Lama in ‘Wisdom of Happiness’
This is finally out on Apple TV so I just got a chance to watch it. I found it quite touching, that at 90 years old the Dalai Lama still finds the opportunity to carry a message out to the world. I’ll write a short review when I’ve seen it a second time, I keep falling asleep…
Jeroen
Re: I'm Thankful For...
Wot run out of gratitude's?
- Grateful for my Christmas decorations, including an already flowering cactus
- Food (not squirrels) for breakfast
- Heresy, alchemy and rasayana
- My old Shingon cult Mantra NAMU DASHI KONGO RENGE HUM HRI
- Stories I was read as a kid
- My many relatives (includes squirrels)
- Everyone on New Buddhist, olde and Neo
- The Buddha Metta Ray (Maitreya) who I chant to every day
- My new website mettaray.com
- GOTO 1 being able to learn programming in C++
lobster
Re: Trauma and Buddhism
Great Ajahn Chah story from the interview — Jack Kornfield was a student of Ajahn Chah…
Ajahn Chah wasn’t afraid of working with emotions. When I was twenty-two, I went to live and meditate in a forest hut. At that time, I was a peaceful person in my own eyes. My father had been violent and abusive, and I’d been the peacemaker of the four boys. That’s who I thought I was. Then when I meditated, to my surprise I discovered I had an immense amount of anger that I’d stuffed down. The monks near me were irritating me, and all of a sudden, I wanted to, you know, strangle them. It wasn’t their fault. It was all the stuff I’d never looked at.
I went to Ajahn Chah and said, “I’m really angry.” He smiled, “Good. You’ll learn about anger. Go back to your hut, close the door and the window, and sit there. If you’re going to be angry, do it right. See how big it gets, let yourself feel it.”
Of course, I did—in the hot season and under a tin roof. After a while, it felt like the anger could burn up the whole monastery, the whole world. Then came tremendous pain—grief and sobbing and all the layers around trauma. Ajahn Chah was really instructing me not to avert my gaze.
Bringing out trauma is often misunderstood, but these are primitive reactions to real life events which make their effects felt after weeks or more, and it is only when you can bring it to the surface and hold it with loving presence that it starts to heal.
Jeroen
Re: Some troubles with new sila efforts
I too have been thinking about this thread. I started a new job and from day 1 my main responsibility has been to interact with and help an external stakeholder of the company with a track record of extremely dubios affairs in relation to the best practices of the industry. This stakeholder, while being external, is still closely related to the company and the company can fire him. It's clear to me that this stakeholder should have been fired ages ago, but he's too big and important for that, from the perspective of the company.
I'm trying hard to act professionaly and ethicaly but am becoming really pissed off by the situation.
Anger and self-rightesousness? Aha!
I think I will try to seek out counsel from someone within the industry who is both ethical and more senior than me and who is not embroiled in the situation and can thus be objective.
marcitko
Re: Some troubles with new sila efforts
For whatever reason this thread came up in my mind today. The thoughts that percolated up were that a good portion of our personality is genetic, we're disposed to being introverted or extroverted. Agreeable and disagreeable is another similar personality spectrum. Its often hard to change these traits in a deep way about ourselves (neuroticism <-> emotional stability being the most changeable I'll note as a point in favor of a spiritual practice), but we can develop skills in the other direction. I'm pretty introverted, but need to meet new people and persuade them of my ability professionally often so have developed extrovert skills.
The other reflection I had was that for much of my life people never really confronted me on certain behaviors or when work I did wasn't up to par. As such they never got corrected or improved upon and it led to problems in my life. Since, I've adopted an attitude that its often kinder in the long run to tell someone they need to use deodorant for example. But there are kinder and more tactful ways of doing that.
Then this interview on 10% Happier came up today and felt very relevant.
person