Best Of
Re: Selflessness and Altruism
@person said:
Which got me to thinking, what is the internal experience of selflessness? Is it an attempt to be good to others, or is the internal experience one of doing good without regard to self and other? You see suffering or a problem and regardless of whether its yours or someone else's you act to remedy it.
I help others when I'm in a position to do so/as the situations arise....I just do it without giving too much thought on the whys and what fors..In a sense it's like being on autopilot ...and the only thoughts passing through the mind are how can I be of assistance...However there seems to be a feel good feeling after the act, but this is not the goal. it's just a by-product of the experience
I'm not sure what the internal experience of selflessness is for me .... I just do it before the (often emotionally charged) self ( the selfish side) tries to talk me out of it...
At times I find I'm not in a position to help and there's an acceptance in the self that this is the case...
Shoshin1
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
We’re having a late summer heatwave over here, temperatures around 30 degrees for six days in a row. And that after the whole of July and August as intermittently wet and temperatures around 20.
Jeroen
No thought being true
I was rereading the No Buddhist Quotes thread, it has kind of become a shorthand for my spiritual wanderings, and came across this:
“In that moment in which I realised that no thought is true, all other thoughts became irrelevant. They didn’t mean anything. They were just the mind trying to describe something, trying to tell a story.”
— Adyashanti
And it occurred to me that this is the ultimate freedom, that you can just abide in the peace of the body and be free from thoughts. No thought being true means that they are all just mirages, illusions, attempts by the mind to tell a story or divine the future.
Any conclusion we reach, even the gyrations we go though in a dream or a nightmare, even the things we think in response to a feeling, the emotions that we trigger by the thoughts we have, it is just so much fluff, irrelevant, we can let it go.
The mind is a mechanism for detecting threats, and in the realm of the immaterial there are no threats, so unless you’re on safari and having to cope with hungry lions and stampeding elephants, it’s thoughts can be safely let go of.
What a wonderful, light feeling! It’s a good morning to be alive 
Jeroen
Re: Accentuate the Positive or Eliminate the Negative?
@person said:
Is one way more beneficial such that we are justified in advocating generalized advice to adopt one over the other?
Why do either? Anything, you do, like accentuate, or eliminate, gives rise to karma. Karma results in suffering and rebirth.
Why not the cultivation of equanimity instead?
Re: What music are you listening to?
@Bunks said:
If the North Dakota State Fair was televised and pulled 3 million viewers then yes indeed!
.
No, not even close. I guess that final is a bigger deal than the NDSF.
Aside: I wonder if they'll perform in makeup?
Re: Buddhist quotes
"How we relate to this moment is sowing the seeds of how we will relate to not just the next moment, but the next day, the next week, month, year, where we are further strengthening pre-existing propensities, pre-existing habits, pre-existing fears, pre-existing prejudices "
~Pema Chodron~ "Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change"
Shoshin1
Re: Buddhist quotes
“The sequence between shamatha and vipashyana makes perfect sense: first refine your powers of attention, then use them to explore and purify the mind, which can be directly examined only through first-person observation.”
~Alan Wallace~
Shoshin1
Re: Accentuate the Positive or Eliminate the Negative?
"Accentuate the Positive or Eliminate the Negative?"
A question I've pondered a lot but don't know if I've pondered up anything useful... 
I've found that "keeping one iron in the fire" works best. Work on eliminating one negative thing, or accentuating one positive thing. If I try to do five things at once, I generally fail at all five.
However, working simultaneously on eliminating one negative thing and accentuating one positive thing seems to also work for me - maybe the positive thing gets positively fuelled by the released/alchemized energy of the eliminated negative thing?
I also keep noticing how everything is interconnected. An advancement in one area of life fuels advancement in others. A backtracking in one area of life fuels backtracking in another. So maybe the question is not so important and the dilemma ultimately a false one?
I also had the thought today that historically teachers gave teachings more so to monks and advanced practitioners (this may or may not be correct). These boys and gals had most probably eliminated already the most gross impurities from their lives. Hence, we ordinary folk might do best to focus on eliminating the gross impurities from our lives first, rather than aim for lofty ideals while keeping lighting fires up under our own arses .
For practical purposes, ordinary people like me would most probably do best to skip the high philosophies, and focus on cleaning up their lives to the best of their abilities and as fast as possible.
marcitko
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
These 'special' moons (Pink, Blue, Super, TurboGigaWow) have no real astronomical significance - nor appear interesting when observed - yet reporters continuously report on them in recent years.
For instance, one of them just means that it's a second full moon in a calendar month, another that at closest approach the moon is 1% bigger than usual, and a third that the full moon occurs at a time when traditionaly pink flowers were harvested in China.
As an amateur astronomer I get pissed off that they report on these nonsensical 'events', when there are so many other interesting astronomical phenomena that the public could actually enjoy viewing and/or that have astronomical significance.
marcitko
Re: The Taste of Zen
@Kotishka said:
How can you just sit without focusing on the breath?
You can focus on something other than your breath.