Best Of
Re: Funny Stuff
I just wanted to share this, a friend said it to me this morning…
Jeroen, many spiritual people are not sceptics, they are septics. Existence has been playing with them by giving them brain rot. One of the symptoms of this debilitating disease is that it often prompts its victims to speak in tired spiritual cliches that actually mean very little. The sad thing about it is that the brain rot victim is in such a sorry state they are fooled into believing they are speaking highly original words of wisdom.
You know, like “Existence is working on you”. “Existence is playing with you” is similar. It is all recycled bunkum and strictly for the dummies.
I laughed-out-loud, really, it hit my funny bone.
Jeroen
Re: Our personal quotes
-pushing mountains is like faith, wait till they come to you
-clever is not clearer
-quote a quarter of goat
lobster
Re: How to Teach?
Realize that everything we see, all that we do, everyone we meet teaches us.
We are just not always open to the lesson.
The most profound lessons can not be learned if our ears are plugged and our eyes closed.
Do you breeze the breeze, the touch of a hand, the cloth upon your skin?
Do you smell all the aromas, the scents about you?
Do you taste all the flavors?
Dare to live!
Dare to laugh!
Dare to be!
Dare to explore!
The teacher is the student.
The student is the teacher.
If you can not live, you can not teach.
If you can not teach, you can not learn.
If you can not learn you can not live.
LIVE!
Peace to all
Lionduck
Re: How to Teach?
Teach to learn.
I recently learned of a learning-type that suits me called the "explainer" or "active learner" who learns through explaining it or teaching it themselves.
Re: How to Teach?
It’s funny, I had this thought the other day, that anything that you really believe in you should be prepared to teach. I found that even the mere fact of explaining what I believed was a form of teaching, a form of passing on the dharma. So its a good idea to be prepared to do it well.
For me buddhism is about finding happiness, peace and freedom from suffering. That is usually where I start to talk, when I am talking about beliefs. Happiness is what remains when all unhappiness is cleared away. Peace comes from calm and simplicity. Freedom from suffering comes when we let go of clinging.
It’s not easy, teaching. It requires clarity of thought on what we want to pass on.
Jeroen
"Buddhism Meets Western Science" Gay Wilson
Some may find this of interest
" Buddhism has always been concerned with feelings, emotions, sensations, and cognition. The Buddha points both to cognitive and emotional causes of suffering. The emotional cause is desire and its negative opposite, aversion. The cognitive cause is ignorance of the way things truly occur, or of three marks of existence: that all things are unsatisfactory, impermanent, and without essential self.
The noble eightfold path is, from this psychological viewpoint, an attempt to change patterns of thought and behavior. It is for this reason that the first element of the path is right understanding (sammā-diṭṭhi), which is how one's mind views the world. Under the wisdom (paññā) subdivision of the noble eightfold path, this worldview is intimately connected with the second element, right thought (sammā-saṅkappa), which concerns the patterns of thought and intention that controls one's actions. These elements can be seen at work, for example, in the opening verses of the Dhammapada: The noble eightfold path is also the fourth noble truth.
"All experience is preceded by mind/perception,
Led by mind,
Made by mind.
Speak or act with a corrupted mind,
And suffering follows
As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox!
All experience is preceded by mind/perception,
Led by mind,
Made by mind.
Speak or act with a peaceful mind,
And happiness follows
Like a never-departing shadow!"Thus, by altering one's distorted worldview, bringing out "tranquil perception" in the place of "perception polluted", one is able to ease suffering. Watson points this out from a psychological standpoint:
Research has shown that repeated action, learning, and memory can actually change the nervous system physically, altering both synaptic strength and connections. Such changes may be brought about by cultivated change in emotion and action; they will, in turn, change subsequent experience !"
Shoshin1