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Best Of

Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!

Light pollution is severe in my city. It's gotten way worse over the last 20 years. BUT I just observed 8 globular clusters, a nebula, and a galaxy with ONLY binoculars. I know of no better way to approximate a spiritual experience than to observe the stars and contemplate the vastness of the Universe and our place in it. Look up, look up!

marcitko

“502” error on this site

Hi all, just a note to say I did notice the “502 gateway” error the site was throwing earlier and it’s been remedied. We did notice the same 3 weeks ago but were only able to put a temporary fix in place at that time and knew it would happen again. A longer fix was made this time.

If you’re curious, we’ve had challenges with our backup automation taking up too much space in the database server, and that server filling entirely is what triggered the downtime.

Linc

Re: Vassa Dhamma Challenge

From an old post....

According to Ven. Piyasilo (A Malaysian Buddhist monk and taken from a booklet called "On Being Your True Self" )

WE ARE A "BUNDLE" OF SELVES

"In our every day lives, very often we are but a bundle of selves - of which only normally one is operative at any time. One self decides at night to get up early in the morning, but what happens ? When we get up in the morning we find that another self has taken over in the night. The new self has now taken over and he (or she) does not want to get up.

We all know that from time to time we are subjected to what are called 'moods'. For example, we may feel depressed, or angry, or restless. The moods take possession of us and we do no know why we are simply 'not ourselves'. And to the extent that they persist, we feel as through that we are someone else. If we analyse ourselves, we will discover that we are not so much a self as a succession of selves- a "bundle" of selves like a cable of wires- transmitting messages all at the same time.

NO UNCHANGING, PERMANENT SELF

There is no single unified, completely integrated self that is continually operative inside us. We can even say that we are each a collection of selves, each of which is fighting for supremacy,and this explains why we so often fail to do the things we have set out to do.

Another way of looking at this situation is that we are always going through an ever changing process without any unchanging, permanent self. We are but the totality of this "bundle" of selves, which are often in conflict with one another. It is as if we were a bundle of selves loosely tied together by the thin string of personality with' a label bearing our name and address.

GETTING "ON THE LEVEL" WITH OURSELVES

In order to harmonize our various conflicting "selves", we should learn to know ourSELVES better. This is done through the practice of awareness, of which there are four aspects: the awareness of oneself, of others, of the environment, and of the truth. The awareness of oneself is best cultivated through the practice• of meditation. Such meditation methods, like the Mindfulness of Breathing, helps us become more calm and more aware of ourselves. When we reach a state of mental calm during such a practice, we are said to have reached "horizontal integration" - we are "on the level" with ourselves.

"VERTICAL -INTEGRATION"

As we become more and more of ourselves, we get a clearer understanding and experience of other people and our environment. We begin to see our untapped energies and enjoy our own higher potentiality. Our consciousness becomes more and more developed. This is called "vertical integration", that is, the integration of our conscious mind with the Unconscious (or the "higher mind").

As our consciousness becomes more and more developed, our experience of things begins to deepen and the horizon of our thoughts begins to widen. People and things around us no more delude us, but appear as they really are. No more do we see merely the surface of things, but we begin to "see through" them!"

Shoshin1

Re: Getting better "blog"

@Kotishka Most excellent, I'm proud of you, stay hard!

Would it help to explain to your wife what you're doing and why?

I've deleted Youtube from my phone two days ago. Still have it on desktop. My beef was that a) it's obviously conditioning me b) if I'm being conditioned I'd at least like to have some control over what I'm conditioned with c) especially the shorts section provides no control over what I'm watching and d) the algorithm keeps reccomending topics and videos that I do not want to watch (whatever I do stop that). So, I've decided I'd rather read before bed, even on my phone, since then at least it's an active activity and I'm deciding what I'll read.

As for any dopaminic activity, my experience is that the cravings go away totally if your decision is 100%. If it's less than 100%, there will be an internal battle, which comes up as occasional cravings, but which you can still keep winning with some effort. With 100%, it's like even the cravings "give up" seeing your great determination.

Now that I've sounded all sagey, and might have written more than I should have, I report that I had 2 and 3 beers over the past three evenings. Not fun. Did not enjoy it. The only good part is a strong determination to do good and devote myself to practice henceforth.

Why did I drink? Had a very stressful 10 days with signing the contract for the apartment. I think it was you, Kotishka, that said that "when the troops are tired...". That's basically it. Life is so much easier if we're at 100% with anything. New start, new opportunity!