Best Of
Re: Right Speech
I'd have to go with the Buddha on this as well. The "radical" approach, if I took it, has the potential for me to just say whatever goes through my mind as thought. And we all know how trustworthy knee jerk thoughts can be.
Re: Right Speech
Polite will suffice.
If you're honest, it will be YOUR truth. Whether you are 'Right' or not, will be up for debate, which is both healthy and educational, in both ways.
I never mind being contradicted, providing those wishing to contradict, conduct themselves courteously.
federica
Re: Our personal quotes
"I awake in the morning and ask myself:
Do I have something to be happy about?
Do I have something to be UNhappy about?
If the answer is 'no' to both, then it's far better to be happy for no reason, than unhappy for no reason!"
federica
Re: (Un)natural Disasters.... Is Mother Nature Trying to tell us something?
Railing against the weather often seems as useful as our railing against the effects of birth, old age disease and death. Few things disturb as surely as our inevitable experience of the underlying entropy of all of existence. Here, natural and un-natural disasters get imagined to be some intruding chaos breaking through some wider potential calm of a normal existence. What imagines such a thing?
Here, are we not Mayflies dreaming of the possibility of another day of life?
Is such a view not just the limit of a self?
Like a questioning of whether its best to grab a poisonous snake in the wild by the head or the tail, when such a question only obfuscates all the alternative options of how to possibly act in the presence of a harmful snake.
how
Re: (Un)natural Disasters.... Is Mother Nature Trying to tell us something?
It takes an agonizingly long time for society at large to recognize these trends. Almost four decades ago I was studying molecular biology/biochemistry and the professors were stridently warning about the coming impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2 from energy use. What they were saying then is only now widely recognized, and there are still significant proportions of climate deniers. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962.
Astute we are not. Interestingly, the prescient warnings came remarkably early, though sadly (perhaps disastrously) unheeded.
Your catastrophic flooding, our (North America) bomb cyclones, African famines, were all predicted by science long, long ago.
Steve_B
Re: Right Speech
At this moment....Right speech is the timely vocalization that best illuminates or manifests the path towards suffering's cessation.
how
Re: Right Speech
The best right speech or the most noble (as in golden) is silence. However we can also use skilful or compassionate speech when enabled.
If we speak with integrity and not just blindly harming ourselves and others through ignorance of our own lack of skill and/or oblivious or uncaring of the effect, we may be telling the truth but will be ostracised, socially awkward or just considered down right rude …
lobster
Re: Don’t be a Buddhist, be a better whatever-you-are
His concern, I think, is the putting on the trappings but not taking in the substance.
An example is a group, of people going the a talk by the Dali Lama and paying $50 OR $100 to be there as they blow by temples and centers where they can learn for the price of just going in the door. They are more interested in the image, the flash, than the message. The wear the trappings but do not hear the message.
Buddhism, no matter the specific tradition, is to be lived. It is not show, it is life.
I live my Buddhism. I do not put on airs, I do not shout out how great I am because I am a buddhist. I live it. It is not the flash or flavor of the day. It is a life, a culture, a way of thinking and acting that has become embedded in my life and living. It is an understanding transcending words. It is to live fully as a human being, to live honestly, warts and all and allow/enable other to do so as they are.
Just a thought
Peace to all
Lionduck
(Un)natural Disasters.... Is Mother Nature Trying to tell us something?
Well around the world, storm after storm, quake after quake, flooding after flooding, heatwave after heatwave, fire after fire...Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something....Enough is Enough...
Shoshin1
