Advising Oneself
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Dharma is sometimes presented as a lego kit, a series of bhumi, ox herding, koanic mastery, concentration to awareness or other steps taken to reach our nirvanic super model. In practice the path is often a series of openings and widenings, allowing us to become aware we are asleep and are the only person capable of wakening.
You can bring a horse to water but does that make them a fish? In other words, we have to change the form according to the conditions. My personal dharma trainer Mr Cushion, has taught me well. 
I have decided to step up my game by not playing certain games. Of course that is between me and the stuffed one but suffice to say he will be expecting a greater indentation.
How would you advise yourself at the present time? :wave: .
Comments
@lobster I recently have advised myself to dial things back down to basics, Samatha and Metta practice. I've read so many books and explored Theravada, Zen and Tibetan techniques that I think I got ahead of myself. I re-watched Ajahn Jayasaro's series on meditation that @aMatt linked me when I first came here three years ago and realised I've picked up a lot of bad meditation habits. Back to basics, keep the beginners mind.
Yes, there's a lot to be said for that.
Just before work this morning, I have been listening to a Ajahn Chah teaching audio. He said some of the things in meditation, you have to experience it yourself. Most of the time, it is not possible to put a finger on a term to describe the bliss or tranquility attained through samatha or vipassana meditation. He advised that sometimes our understanding could be swayed by the things we learned through books and teachers. Nothing is comparable to the actual practice.
The hardest advice I recently had to take from myself was to get rid of two friends.
They were my lunch buddies at work. They were super nice to me....but I began to notice how they treated and talked to others. They could go from 0-60 really fast and once they got upset with someone....they would sit at lunch and call the person out of their name...as in personal insults. I never co-signed and joined in...just not my personality...but sitting there and listening was bad enough. It began to feel wrong a couple of months ago...and even though they keep inviting me to lunch.... I just can't. Not anymore. It was weird the first couple of weeks....going from the big, cool lunch table to eating in my cubicle by myself, hahaha...but it was peaceful and I've started going to lunch with some people on the other side of the building I lost contact with....
.....
or I'll just go sit by myself by the water fountains and read NB while munching on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich....
Even after 40+ odd years of navel gazing...
just examining my moment to moment actions for whether they are really representative of
ceasing from harm,
doing only good,
&
the unbinding of the heart/ mind,
still uncovers ignorant elephants that have managed to hide in my garden in plain sight.
@Vastmind. Congratulations to you. Many people will avoid speaking badly of others. But how many will restrict listening to such speech?
I agree. Just because some one is your best friend doesn't mean she/he is a good person. I am sure Hitler, Bush, and Obama was/are also someone's best friend, but he/they was/are also mass murderers.
This may not be "advised" or "traditional" or maybe it's just being wishy-washy, but I find not getting hung up on being a Zen practitioner or Theravada practitioner or ____ kind of Buddhist has helped me lately. My practice can take the form of whatever it needs to be in that moment, without feeling like I'm "supposed to" practice in an XYZ way because that's what Zennies/Theravadans/whatevers do.
Did you really need to go there?
I resonate with that very much, but only recently. I behave a LOT like a honey bee. I see a patch of very nutritious flowers and spend time sipping them and then whoa! there's another patch. It's sort of a temperamental thing I have always done, it's my way of exploring life I guess. The idea of 'pollenating' is kind of cute too, but anyway . . . at 'first' I was a bit hung up on doing my practice 'right' which meant doing my practice in a Theravadan kind of way. Lately I've played fast and loose with even doing my practice in a strictly Buddhist kind of way.
I think one can take the dilettante-ism too far, and I know I have over the course of my life because I have the dilettante kind of habit. I just know that ANY 'habit' has it's downsides. I can get VERY distracted by some 'new' idea and distract myself with it, just when I was getting into some 'meat' that was perhaps a bit uncomfortable . . .?
Lately I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle. I see him differently than when I downloaded his audiobook eleven years ago, I finally listened to it -- so far about three times! My practice sort of has a mind of its own, I guess! So I relate to what you said very much
.
That kind of thoughtless inflammatory remark is the kind that gets threads closed.... Unnecessary. Do I need to add 'Moderator Comment'?
Thank you.
The best thing I have learnt so far from this site is:
I am not my story about me
They are not my story about them
The world is not my story about it
(That’s roughly quoted from Adyashanti in his latest book that I just read. It’s meant for contemplation)
I am trying to use that at the moment as practice in daily life. Being less stuck in the ideas and the judgments; being more relaxed and stilled just like when in formal meditation.
No matter what the facts, it's all fiction. Aaaaand....breathe.
Is what I am currently using as a 'Mantra'.....
The best advice I have ever given to myself is to always listen to other people's advice. Or simply listen. Full stop.
Galileo Galilei said "I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."
So in order to keep my mind flexible, in order not to get hostage to my own opinions, in order to keep learning and growing, I simply listen.
My father always used to say that 'it pays to use mouth and ears proportionately'.
(in other words, ears, twice as much as mouth.
"There was an Owl, lived in an Oak,
the more he saw, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard -
We should all be like that wise ol' bird..."
@dharmamom I love that. Listening with an open mind. Brilliant.
Im learning it's easy to spot aversions, not so easy to spot craving
, and even when I do it's hard to stay the heck out of it. 
I advise myself not to watch violent spectacles (easy) and to stay out of heated or one-way political discussions (hard).
Do the best with whatever you have. Always more manure.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhisvaha
(going going going across always going across awakened being)
Well, the opposite of an aversion is what is craved often, so look there first.
Indeed.
Practice is easy when the situation allows. What about when we lose faith or the going get's tough? Have we learned to picnic in hell? Show compassion for the face off with the hard karma?
Good advice. So hard to not be entrapped by apparent dukkha. If life is going through a final rinse, hard spin . . . that is when practice becomes what we can rely on.
Fiction seems real? Then perhaps our 'happy' time is a passing fiction too . . . and breath . . .
Appearance is delusion. The real does not appear in delusion.
Yes it is easy for me to say . . . :wave: .