Best Of
Re: Cultivating Discipline
I do a couple of Zoom 30 min sittings a day with some friends at 7 am and 10 pm.
No dharma talks or ceremony, save a bell showing when it starts and ends. It places a certain time commitment that is put aside for a social formal sitting where we share in a meditative pilgrimage. It says that no matter what else shows up in my life to compete for time for formal practice, at least in these two times, I am saying that our sharing of a meditative journey trumps all else. It also means that instead of just formally meditating when I feel like it, I end up sitting through the many revealing states that I would have otherwise probably avoided.
how
Re: fortunate failing
While practitioners might hope for a mind that more closely resembles a domesticated dog's generous attention & loyalty,
a cat's self-centered semi-domesticated state of wildness more typically describes the mind that we have to work
with.
how
Re: fortunate failing
The path may be a straight line and not even very far but the mind will effin' knife you in the back while you try and then come to your rescue while you bleed out just to do it again. Hello my mind, I see you. I love you anyway and am learning to pay you none extra than your deserved keep. I'm gunna sit on that zafu the second you look away. I forgive you if you knock me off a second later. I have nothing better to do than try again.
Re: suttafriends.org
Thanks for sharing. I find the search feature and user interface on this site much more friendly than on https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ while both have a quality of content I appreciate so far. I'll keep checking out the resources there.
On the Dhammapadda
Today I read the whole Dhammapadda for the first time (previously only fragments) from the SuttaFriends site here, and I thought I would put together a few bullet points as a mini-review now that it is fresh in my mind.
- It is a long list of pointers to dhamma — do this to be wise, act with restraint
- It has elements of propaganda, it talks up how wonderful it is to be wise, a monk, a follower of the Dhamma
- It covers good - happiness - and bad - hell, anger - and gives a view on how these qualities coexist
- Some things repeat a number of times in different sections, like not associating with bad acquaintances
- I found it to be limited in poetic expression, compared to say Seng’can’s Verses of the Faith Mind (here)
On the whole I was a little disappointed, I think I prefer the middle length discourses of the Buddha, but by all means go and check it out if you haven’t read it, it is held up as a classic of buddhist literature.
Jeroen
suttafriends.org
a website I have just discovered and I think it is very good is suttafriends.org.
It is more than just a collection of suttas, it is more like a complete system of systematized information about suttas.
Re: What happens to the world when everybody attains Buddhahood?
I've heard it said that samsara is beginingless. I can't remember the exact phrasing the Buddha uses. Our day to day world operates under Newtonian physics, so we see something end and we know that it had a beginning. We know that the larger cosmic forces don't always operate in the same way, there's no reason to say that existence couldn't have just always been.
person
Re: What happens to the world when everybody attains Buddhahood?
We are sentient beings in samsara, but that is an illusion. In fact, nobody attains buddhahood as it has already been attained. Great. Except that we're still here. Removing the concepts based on duality and being one with the dance of being, how wonderful! Yet, why are we here in the first place? Buddhism doesn't really have an answer to that (yeah I know, simile of the arrow, etc). Some teaching say sentient beings and the world are product of karma, ok. When everybody attains buddhahood, "beings" are here but everything is seen as empty play of illusion. So in a way, no beings are here. It has always been like this. And so we go in circles. 
Bored?
From another thread:
Any profanities, trolling, flaming....? Personal attacks? Serious "Jeezus luv yew" militant Christians throwing their weight about? Any obscene photos or posts, soliciting members to commit unspeakable acts? Any knives, guns or lethal weapons being bandied about?
Anything?
...Nothing...?
My time has come … or maybe not …
The need for stimulation, even negative is part of our condition as evolved (allegedly) primates. The need to feel superior to the angry troll, unspeakable actors, the trivial or anyone else we are temporarily not like.
The Buddhist template of Sangha, Dharma and Buddha make us aware of a refining balance from extreme conflicted states. We align with a more karmically fruitful behaviour. How to move from one situation to a more beneficial?
Practice, would be my answer. Any better ideas?
lobster
Re: https://awakentheworld.com/
@FleaMarket we can talk about expansion and contraction. We absorb and discard. So for example we may hear a variety of potentially useful/skilful ideas but focus on the ones that resonate, for whatever reason. So there is a limited personal expression and an absolute. However refined, if the expression can be contradicted as not self evident, then it is in Buddhist terminology - ego.
Truth is empty when expressed but has a form when not. In other words, what we say is our sense but what we convey is open to betterment.
lobster