Best Of
Nugget
If you have one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, ….. you’re pissin’ on the present.
We’re all guilty. We all need to be more mindful of the moment and not getting dragged back…or worrying yourself to death about shit that is out of our control. Life is a struggle…..life is suffering. This is some bullshit!!! . ……Whew.
Take a breath. A couple more.
Keep it movin
Adjust accordingly.
🙂
❤️
Vastmind
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
Bunks has decided to go on "retreat" from Nb. He may be back some day. Like a good member that he is, he left quietly, softly closing the door behind him. I would never lock it. He knows he's always welcome if ever he wants a cuppa and a chinwag.
I will pass on your obvious good wishes.
federica
The energy of a holy place
I’m currently on holiday in Germany, but the weather is lousy, there’s a severe weather warning in place which means that it’s not really good for walking in the hills of the Schwarzwald, which is what I was intending to do. So I have been visiting the local churches, admiring their art and so on.
They have a very meditative energy, i like to sit quietly in the pews and soak up the feeling. I remember reading somewhere that the early Christians used to put their Churches on the holy sites of the old pagan religions, so who knows how long mankind has been worshipping in these places. The churches go back a thousand years or more.
Jeroen
Re: The practice of 'no-esteem'
I learnt this lesson when I started running. When you are running, such as around a track, you very frequently either get overtaken by someone faster or overtake someone slower. And at first I would either feel elated or sad each time. 'Look at me go''. 'Woe is me'. But then I 'caught' these ideas and saw that I should compare myself only with myself yesterday. The race is only against myself. These days whenever I overtake someone or get overtaken by someone, I quietly root for them, I compare myself with myself yesterday, but see that we are all running our races together.
marcitko
Re: Questionable teachers in Buddhism
@BrianRuhe said:
Well! I am the Brian Ruhe you are all so concerned about. After seven years I just now discovered this blog, LOL!. I still stand up for my views after all these years. Over 90% of people don't know that we have been grossly lied to about Adolf Hitler. Like my website byline, I claim to be Canada's highest standard of truth and I invite anyone in the world to a debate on that.
Hello and goodbye. Anti-semitism is not welcomed at our site. You can debate this nonsense elsewhere.
Jason
Re: Gurdjieff’s stop exercise
A while back I was listening to a podcast. In it one of the people talked about being overwhelmed with frustration in her life and that a helpful strategy to deal with the mental suffering of it was to do something productive with her body. I think she talked about gardening, but it could be something like cleaning house or building a bookshelf. Something that tells the body's nervous system that accomplishing things is possible.
I guess basically the sorts of actions you take with your body influences your mental outlook.
person
Re: The practice of 'no-esteem'
Each Buddhist lineage or school can be delineated by how they each address this question.
This is just as much an issue for beginners as it is for senior practitioners.
For me, self-esteem is neither good nor bad but is just a mind's habituated attempt at establishing dominance over any the other incoming data of all that we see, hear, smell, taste and feel.
This dominance requires some or all of these sense gate data streams to either be actively excluded or enhanced at any moment to allow the space for our mind's fiefdom to establish itself.
Suffering results to the degree that we allow this dominance to occur. A path towards a cessation of this suffering occurs when a more equaling balancing of the data flows of all the sense gates is fostered so that our mind's own habituated empire building has little choice other than to become a more collegial expression of a wider equanimity.
One sutra of this can be the meditative understanding of the 4NT & the 8FP.
Here, self-esteem can simply be worked with as a warning signpost in our practice that some imbalance in our sense gate data flows is now being detected and where to look to address it.
how
Re: The practice of 'no-esteem'
There are better tips out there but I have a practice of seeing others as collaborators working on the same project. It helps me to re-frame a negative view into something more beneficial and refreshes myself with a sense of togetherness and desire to help rather than separate from and desire to compete.
Figuring out why/if it matters to hold views like negative comparisons can also be beneficial. Or even reflecting deeply on how those negative comparisons impact you. Reflecting on some of my negative views helps me see how they lead to more problems rather than less problems which makes it easier to notice/reduce/stop.
I don't have any sutta reference but I might point toward Right View and Right Livelihood if you enjoy digging. Though I still don't understand Right Livelihood in this context.
Thoughts surrounding receding hair, wrinkles, and a deceased cat.
Life and death flow around us. After a period of pleasure and almost little encounters with death, I've had my first serious
encounter today while picking up the corpse of Bibastek -a stray cat I was taking care of- of the road. The scene was quite gruesome. I will not go into details but I was shocked to the point of going around in circles while just muttering "Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!"
To think she was eating and sleeping all day by the backyard and now she is gone. So unexpected.
Lately, for the last 2-3years I've begun also seeing how I'm ageing myself. My hair less thick, wrinkles, annoying things like "knee pain" or wrist pain which I was unknown to. It is not that I'm aching and losing vitality, which possibly I am, but there is a change, a constant change always of course, but it is being noticeable now.
With the first example, I think the unexpectedness was the critical factor.
We always assume we will have time, we can leave things for later. Short-term sensual satisfaction instead of long-term peace.
Do not leave meritorious deeds for later. Be kind, be good, be considerate, be compassionate....
Goodbye Bibastek.
Kotishka
Re: Help Needed - offered
Mother died. She had become yellow tinged overnight but within half an hour of my sisters arrival had died.
I was not there but I think she was waiting for a friendly voice. So they were there for her.
She is in the hospital morgue.
Do I want to go there to grieve? No! I lit a candle …
I can grieve anywhere, anytime … and stop if required. I rarely have the need to stop.
Hopefully I won't have to grieve my passing and be too busy to notice … 
Now I have a body to dispose of. Can I just stick it in the boot of a car and drive it somewhere to compost, leave to science, burn, bury etc. No everyone has rights to access. Not me. Pah!
I might in a different culture, be able to use the skull to drink from (a vajrayana thing) but my sisters would probably prefer a mug with her pic on it … there is no accounting for taste … and I am pretty tasteless 🤭
lobster