@Shoshin1 said:
Don't have expectations, just practice, forget about trying to achieve something and things will eventually fall into place....
Years ago, one of the first times I received meditation instruction at a Zen center, the instructor said gently before we started that "you're not trying to achieve anything." I thought it was good advice but also out of left field, since we had just met and she didn't know my motivations.
But of course she did know, even if I didn't yet.
Thus have I heard...
Om Mani Padme Hung ....The Jewel is (already) in the Lotus
What you crave for, you already have. it's your craving which is keeping you from it.
Don't have expectations, just practice, forget about trying to achieve something and things will eventually fall into place....
The Dalai Lama once said "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
That's the weird and wonderful Dharma for ya...
Shoshin1
I sometimes wonder what is actually important?
Here are some answers I found helpful...
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-mortality-matrix-a-framework-for-decision-making-in-an-overwhelmed-world/
lobster
"If you feel pain, you're alive. But if you feel the pain of others, you're human"
~Leo Tolstoy~
Shoshin1
A little piece of Eckhart Tolle on addiction:
If you have a compulsive behavior pattern such as smoking, overeating, drinking, TV watching, Internet addiction, or whatever it may be, this is what you can do: When you notice the compulsive need arising in you, stop and take three conscious breaths. This generates awareness. Then for a few minutes be aware of the compulsive urge itself as an energy field inside you. Consciously feel that need to physically or mentally ingest or consume a certain substance or the desire to act out some form of compulsive behavior. Then take a few more conscious breaths. After that you may find that the compulsive urge has disappeared for the time being. Or you may find that it still overpowers you, and you cannot help but indulge or act it out again. Don't make it into a problem. Make the addiction part of your awareness practice in the way described above. As awareness grows, addictive patterns will weaken and eventually dissolve. Remember, however, to catch any thoughts that justify the addictive behavior, sometimes with clever arguments, as they arise in you mind. Ask yourself, Who is talking here? And you will realize the addiction is talking.
Jeroen
Game On!
Augmented reality is coming. Will it be addictive like ticktock, Instagram and blowing up imaginary robots etc? Sure.
However there is another game called RL (Real Life). E.g.
No?
Restart Game? Yes/No?
lobster
When we chase pleasure, we find the pleasure we thought we we chasing is an illusion, a mirage, ephemeral, fleeting, smoke in the wind.
When we think we are avoiding pain, it wraps around us, smothering us.
When we are in the Middle Way, a true pleasure arises from within and pain is defused, disbursed fading to vanish as if morning mist in the sunlight.
We are neither enraptured by pleasure not tormented by pain.
It is not that we do not feel pleasure or pain. We do. But they are as wind buffeting us as if a cork upon the sea. Rather than being buffeted by these winds, we are as upon a sailing vessel and they are winds which enable us to navigate the vast sea.
Peace to all
I go on the computer.
I push buttons and move a mouse to cause changes on a screen.
Here I choose a smaller more controllable world than a wider less controllable reality.
Isn't a gamer just anyone in any moment who chooses a dream over being awake?
how
@Jeroen
Isn't what you call an astute observation, simply that which a "gamer" is unwilling to face.
What an ego/identity, or the selfish self fears to sacrifice, the practitioner transcending such fears manifests as freedom's graces.
When someone under a gamer's yoke, endlessly complains about the costs of their bondage, tell them that such slavery depends only on them turning down freedom's options, one nanosecond at a time. Can we practice in any other time than within the one fleeting nanosecond that we can live in? That which we are unwilling to face requires no more than a nanoseconds worth of bravery for a nanoseconds worth of life.
This does not entail a mind stirring its own mental mud puddle with its attachments in the hopes of finding clarity.
This entails a mind, dropping its own stir-stick to allow the mud puddle to settle, simply revealing that which is clear water and that which is mud.
how