Best Of
Lama Tsultrim Allione on how to feed ones demons
https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-feeding-your-demons/
This reminded me somewhat of @lobsters rants on this subject, but turning ones demons into friends seems like a good practice.
Feeding our demons rather than fighting them contradicts the conventional approach of fighting against whatever assails us. But it turns out to be a remarkably effective path to inner integration.
Demons (maras in Sanskrit) are not bloodthirsty ghouls waiting for us in dark corners. Demons are within us. They are energies we experience every day, such as fear, illness, depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship difficulties, and addiction.
Anything that drains our energy and blocks us from being completely awake is a demon. The approach of giving form to these inner forces and feeding them, rather than struggling against them, was originally articulated by an eleventh-century female Tibetan Buddhist teacher named Machig Labdrön (1055–1145). The spiritual practice she developed was called Chöd, and it generated such amazing results that it became very popular, spreading widely throughout Tibet and beyond.
Jeroen
Re: Blessings
...From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes. ~John Roberts
person
Re: What movies are you watching?
Exactly — it is. But at the same time it is training the brain with fake stuff. We like stories because we think it is a shortcut to wisdom and experience, but in reality most of the stories told to us are not of that type anymore.
Fake news, in whatever form it takes, is definitely something to be wary of.
Online games, particularly those centred around 'killing' and 'elimination,' can condition the mind, normalising violence and aggression. We're seeing real-world examples of this, where individuals who have grown up immersed in such games commit acts of violence as though their victims are simply make-believe characters.
Mind training—such as meditation—is crucial. It's about training the mind to cut through all the noise and distractions (AKA bullshit), leaving only the essence. When it comes to movies, for example, that essence is entertainment.
For some, however, it's not so easy to separate fiction from reality. After all, there's a reason movies are called movies.
Which reminds me of this Red Tara dedication:
"May I clearly perceive all experiences to be as insubstantial as the dream fabric of the night and instantly awaken to perceive the pure wisdom displayed in the arising of every phenomena"
Shoshin1
Re: What movies are you watching?
I heard about that film… that there were some sections of sexual violence in it, although it was otherwise a competent thriller, and that put me off. I watch very few films these days, maybe half a dozen a year, and very little other tv.
It’s like my brain has understood that most television is fake, that there is nothing real to be learnt from it, that the people are just pretend people.
Jeroen
Re: Thich Minh Tuệ: Modern day practice of dhutanga
No, I was an acolyte of a tall and lazy labourer called Kenton. In my working days.
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
I would go see a doctor, stingrays can be poisonous…
Jeroen
Re: The 80/80 split
@person said:
Its based on a couple rough principles. First is the notion of low hanging fruit, that you can get say 80% of the juice with only 50% of the effort. To get the last 20% takes more and more effort with diminishing returns as you try to get 100%.
Think there is much truth to this.
A few years back, I picked up @Jeffrey's "don't eat stupid shit" principle and did nothing else regarding food. It was easy, simple, we all know what "stupid shit food" is. This could be an example of 80% of the benefit with 50% of the effort. Coupled with other positive lifestyle adjustments I made massive progress regarding health and wellbeing.
I'm trying to implement "don't do stupid shit" these days, as a kind of upgrade and widening of the principle, but so far am seeing limited progress (no fault of the principle).
I'd like to say more about how integrating differing areas can create something greater than the sum of its parts. I have an intuition that this can be true in many circumstances, but I haven't investigated and thought it through enough.
>
In that period of successful positive lifestyle adjustments, I was blown away by how progress in one area positively influenced other areas, often in totally unexpected ways, and how the whole thing together was a positive self-reinforcing mechanism and definitely "greater than the sum of its parts".
For instance, as a result of improved health and wellbeing, I noticed much better reasoning capacity and better relationships (due to less negative emotion and more positive emotion), things I of course highly value but was not "working on" in any way. Then these things positively reinforced other areas, such as joining a sports club (felt more at ease in social situations) and getting a prestigious professional mentoring scholarship (finally trusting my mind).
Y'all might have touched on this, but I think there are examples where trying to maximise one thing, in practice does not actually maximise it.
Ex:
- To the best of my knowledge, the social-democrat (mixed economy with lots of social spending) Scandinavians were much more equal economically (and much richer as a bonus) than the equality-maximising USSR.
- A friend was frutaritarian (extreme diet) in order to become physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. I'll skip the details, but that went south very fast.
- up to a point, larger wings for birds or planes support their flight. If they become too big, the bird or plane can't even fly any more.
marcitko