Inertia & Encouragement
Dhammika
Veteran
I'm a quote collector -- maybe because during a rough and tumble time in life, when you fall flat on your face and realize you maybe didn't understand things quite as well as you thought you did, it helps to have encouragement to get back up. Or to get to sitting. This excerpt from a Thanissaro Bhikkhu Dhamma talk was a shot of encouragement. Other encouraging quotes/excerpts welcome:
"So the Buddha said to focus your passion in the direction of the Dhamma. Find the happiness that comes from generosity, the happiness that comes from virtue, from being principled in your behavior, and the happiness that comes from meditation. He compares these things to food — and particularly the sense of wellbeing, rapture, and refreshment that come from getting the mind into a good strong concentration. That’s your food and nourishment on the path. It gives you energy. At the same time, his various teachings on the things that can be attained as we practice provide the motivation that gives you the passion for the Dhamma, that helps overcome the inertia that otherwise would keep you from practicing." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Mind Without Inertia"
See the full Dhamma talk here:
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/CrossIndexed/Published/Meditations6/100213_A_Mind_Without_Inertia.pdf
Comments
That is a good quote. So simple in its meaning, but for some reason, quite hard to follow without a reminder. Isn't it strange that we need reminded of the very things that are the most obvious?
Ironically, the sense of a self that uses language is itself an artefact of language -- a linguistic construct. Indo-European languages are dualistically structured in the way they distinguish nouns from verbs, subjects from predicates. To believe that words like I, me, mine, you, yours, etc., correspond to something real ("self-existing" is the Buddhist term) is to be trapped within a linguistic schema. Today we have neuro-scientific explanations of this process that are consistent with what Buddhism has been describing in its own way for 2500 years. And if the entanglement of language and our nervous system is what maintains the self, then we can appreciate why meditation is so important. Meditation enables us to let go of those dualistic linguistic patterns that largely determine our ways of thinking. Meditation helps us to transcend transcendence.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-loy/towards-a-new-buddhist-st_b_2545120.html