Best Of
Playing with structures
Once labelled, it is tasted, and then it cannot be unstained so easily. Samsaric lifestyles vs spiritual lifestyles, a dichtomy which carries different adjectives or atributes.
After practising for a few years now (2019- ), I realise the importance of sitting and walking meditation, of time off screens, of balance in food, word and thought; kindness, recollectedness, equanimity. All these concepts and their behavioural manifestations are very powerful. I still do feel, and my text shows I think, how I cannot escape being analytical and cerebral. It does become a hindrance in the practice, sometimes even thinking of what this session meant, how it was so important and necessary.
I sense that the sitting and walking does help to overcome this, but this path is inevitably quite hard and boring. This last aspect is important to notice because it is in the mundane and wholesome where you find an ease hard to define. And a passionate career too, when you can. But the former feeling/state does remain in many more contexts.
Kotishka
Re: Days of decompression
A girlfriend said to me, “as long as you are respecting your own life and that of other conscious beings, being kind and trying to be a better person you are still being spiritual”. And I kind of agree with her, these are spiritual values, not societal values.
Jeroen
Re: Selflessness and Altruism
@IdleChater - I think I wasn't asking the right question. I was looking for descriptions of the characteristics of a Buddha or an arahat. A person who has reached enlightenment.
I have a very difficult time connecting with reading the suttas. The language in the translations is often so old-fashioned and I find myself mentally chipping away at the vocabulary instead of learning something. The old fashioned formality of it is exhausting.
ScottPen
Re: Selflessness and Altruism
@how said:
The last time I looked, he just said he was awake!
This is a serious answer. There's probably some more detailed stuff out there, but in general when asked about himself, that's what he said.
person
Re: Selflessness and Altruism
No correction on my end, just my thoughts on the topic and specifically your last post. A lot of it differs depending on one's POV. And you're correct, many Buddhists practice generosity as a way to create merit. I've found that this is true for many traditional Buddhists n countries like Thailand, specifically with offerings to monks.
Jason
Re: Ploggers of the world...unite!
With all packaging being naturally biodegradable in the Buddha's time, before plastic, what would they be picking up?
They used to make their robes from abandoned garments of the dead so that was the only plogging that I've heard of.
how
Re: The limits of the mind’s understanding
"The mind that opens to a new idea, never returns to its original size"
~Albie Einstein~
Shoshin1
Re: How is dependent origination different than determinism?
@lobster said:
Determinism proposes that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to one's free will.
Yuk! Life is just luck? Yuk?
If there is truly free will, all would be chaos.
Imagine trying to cross a busy road or getting paid for doing no work.
Re: The limits of the mind’s understanding
When it comes to us focussing on consciousness, if anything, it's the other way round, we serve as instruments through which consciousness examines and refines itself....
Indeed.
We do refine, reframe, return to different forms of self. The Real Self (TM) ... as trademarked is the flux, flex, featured and experienced in a continuum through which we wonder, wander and ultimately enfold into ...
lobster