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Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
@how said:
@FleaMarket
Especially for those of us who tend to live in our minds.....Meditation in the stillness of a formal sitting is the easiest state to see the differences between natural and manipulated thought. Here, in the stillness of meditation, our acceptance of the arising, living, and fading away of natural thought allows for a potential development of objectivity and equanimity, whereas our directing of natural thought into a deliberately manipulated thought is usually just another pandering over our ego's storyline.
A practice though is about moving the stillness in activity.... into the activity in stillness..
I wish it was that clear for me. I keep coming to the conclusion the only natural thought is to sit in stillness of formal sitting and continue to let all thought go. Everything else, arousal, hunger, thirst, the need to scratch an itch or relieve waste, it's all registering as directed and manipulated thinking.
Or is it the arousal, hunger, thirst...are the natural thoughts that bubble up and the directed and manipulated thoughts are the inclinations/urges of what to do about it? Hunger so I go to the fridge or I order fast food or I go to the market. Those goings are the directed thoughts? Or keeping it on topic, arousal leading to decide upon going with mind's fantasies, or internet, or the club or bar.
Objectivity and equanimity then maybe being sitting with the sensation until all the inclinations and urges subside? But in terms of food and water, one dies in days without following some directed inclination.
Natural thought being like the weeds sprouting in the garden and directed/manipulated thought being what the gardener does with the weeds once noticed. Maybe that's not a great analogy if the stillness in meditation is to watch the weed's lifespan grow and wither without taking any action at all.
Of course, we need deliberate thought to survive in daily life but by bringing along the objective skills that you've developed in formal meditation into the equations of any arising, living or fading thought, our responses to it, no longer need to be dictated by a habituated storyline of our own selfishness.
This is a hard one to grasp before fully grasping the concept of natural and directed thought. Being able to distinguish the two more readily probably improves this just by nature of knowing. At least for me, the determining between the natural and directed does not feel clear enough. Probably need to meditate more often and hang out in the mind's "chasing after meaning" less often.
Mooji’s guided invitation to freedom
I was watching this video yesterday, and I found it helpful.
I’m not very familiar with Mooji’s teachings beyond knowing that he teaches a kind of Advaita and he comes from Poonjaji and Ramana Maharshi’s lineage. So his style is to work with “pointings”, questions which aim one with some immediacy into the space within.
I think it is important not to think too much about the questions he asks, but to allow insight to manifest when you hear the question. Once you start thinking about it you’ve lost the immediacy of it. It’s self inquiry of a sort, but on me it had a kind of gentle centering effect, bringing me back home.
Jeroen
Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
@marcitko said:
A side question (for all): I found this paragraph by @how very interesting since when trying to adopt good habits/behaviors and avoid bad ones I frequently notice that it is easy to resist while it is difficult (while under "attack") but once the "attack" subsides and I think "nice, it's passed"... I still succumb. A strange phenomenon that I do not quite understand.
It's a false "passing". The actual attack is in the calm after the storm when the troops are tired and need a pick-me-up.
Re: How do you find the end of the mind?
@FleaMarket said:
It's really difficult to say with much confidence that I made up a story about an actual past life of mine but if there were to be one it would probably be that one. Some of my first impressions of Buddhism and rebirth were that I got to be a human by luck or that I wasn't supposed to find the Dharma but use up my good kamma from past lives here. Mara certainly uses that to their advantage like a rude child messes up a good sand mandala half way finished. It was going to go anyway but could you let me finish it first?
In this case Mara would actually be doing you a favour.
You were never ever going to finish the sand mandala.
The rude child that messes up your dream party is the actually the Buddha.
Everything can be pulled apart until you arrive at that which cannot!
"Just as when boys or girls are playing with little sand castles: as long as they are not free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for those little sand castles, that's how long they have fun with those sand castles, enjoy them, treasure them, feel possessive of them. But when they become free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for those little sand castles, then they smash them, scatter them, demolish them with their hands or feet and make them unfit for play.
"In the same way, Radha, you too should smash, scatter, & demolish form, and make it unfit for play. Practice for the ending of craving for form.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn23/sn23.002.than.html
Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
Sexuality and desire or any attachment.
Some compass notes on Life, in or out of the soap opera of self.
One of the best meditative aids in addressing our susceptibility to craving, aversion or the deliberate ignoring of any phenomena is learning how to meditatively discern the difference between our natural thoughts and our deliberate thoughts.
Natural thoughts allow for the plain observation of the arrival, life, and departure of any data past our sense gates, while deliberate thought reflects the ways and means by which we coerce any of that data to effect a specific ego-confirming result.
Natural thought allows for acceptance and equanimity in the presence of those data flows.
Deliberate thought reflects how our habituated impulses to control those data streams, inevitably imprison one within an identity's dream structure.
One allows for the potential of selflessness to reflect how we relate to anything.
The other adds the complication of a dream's agenda to muddy any waters of clarity.
Herein with every new nanosecond of thought, another opportunity awaits to either head towards a deeper slumber of dissatisfaction or head towards what the Buddha called an awakening.
how
Re: How do you find the end of the mind?
All that you can ever find is the ending of phenomena or things.
The rays of consciousness alight on things other itself. That is all that can be noticed.
It is not that the rays can turn back and illuminate itself.
Much like the finger can only feel things other than itself.
Alight means "land on," or "step on," or "stick to momentarily."
Consciousness keeps landing on things -
it is that landing that creates a name and form or an object.
There is no ending of this until one has completed all that needs to be done.
Manopubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā
Mind precedes created things; mind’s their chief; from the mind they spring.
"Just as if there were a roofed house or a roofed hall having windows on the north, the south, or the east. When the sun rises, and a ray has entered by way of the window, where does it land?"
"On the western wall, lord."
"And if there is no western wall, where does it land?"
"On the ground, lord."
"And if there is no ground, where does it land?"
"On the water, lord."
"And if there is no water, where does it land?"
"It does not land, lord."
"In the same way, where there is no passion for the nutriment of physical food... contact... intellectual intention... consciousness, where there is no delight, no craving, then consciousness does not land there or grow. Where consciousness does not land or grow, name-&-form does not alight. Where name-&-form does not alight, there is no growth of fabrications. Where there is no growth of fabrications, there is no production of renewed becoming in the future. Where there is no production of renewed becoming in the future, there is no future birth, aging, & death. That, I tell you, has no sorrow, affliction, or despair."
— SN 12.64
Re: How do you find the end of the mind?
"How do you find the end of the mind?"
You don't
If you try, you fail.
Lionduck
Re: Sexuality and Desire in Buddhist teaching
@how said:
The most common experience of finding oneself face-planting about it, again, on such a path occurs whenever one's preceding thoughts have been that they've finally got a handle on it.
A side question (for all): I found this paragraph by @how very interesting since when trying to adopt good habits/behaviors and avoid bad ones I frequently notice that it is easy to resist while it is difficult (while under "attack") but once the "attack" subsides and I think "nice, it's passed"... I still succumb. A strange phenomenon that I do not quite understand.
marcitko
Re: Is the middle way comfortable?
I think the closest answer I can share is one of an astronaut being propelled up into space. And the song "Momentum" by Origin.
At moments at peace,
others at awe, with thw sweaty chance of sudden death dribbling through your mind....
And then hungry.
I sit. And it is hard. I have so many things to do. But I sit, because when you sit for sometime, then you really begin to finally slow down l.
Kotishka
Re: Our personal quotes
The eyes take a sight, the mind's vision becomes that sight,
The ears take a sound, the mind's voice becomes that sound,
The nose takes a smell, the mind's scent becomes that smell,
The body takes a touch, the mind's sensitivity becomes that touch,
The tongue takes a taste, the mind's flavor becomes that taste,
The mind becomes the signs of the other five, nothing there but still alive.