New Year's Wisdom from a Real Source

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HAPPY NEW YEAR !

I've come to the understanding this year especially with my current journey away from "home" that I don't know anything. My experience in life, although somewhat unique...will never transfer over to others unless I naturally come from a realized place. This may mean I might have to shut up, to give others the space to see themselves. This happens with some monks I have encountered where I ordained or meditated with. They let you, see youself.

TREAT EACH HUMAN FRIEND BY THINKING THAT :

He is our friend who was born to be old, become ill, and die, together with us.
He is our friend swimming around in the changing cycles with us.
He is under the power of defilements like us, hence he sometimes errs.
He also has lust, hatred, and delusion, no less than we.
He therefore errs sometimes, like us.
He neither knows why he was born nor knows nibbana, just the same as us.
He is stupid in some things like we used to be.
He does some things accordingly to his own likes,

the same as we used to do.
He also wants to be good,

as well as we who want even more to be good - outstanding - famous.
He often takes much and much more from others whenever he has a chance, just like us.
He has the right to be madly good, drunkenly good, deludedly good, and drowning in good,

just like us.
He is an ordinary man attached to many things, just like us.
He does not have the duty to suffer or die for us.

He is our friend of the same nation and religion.
He does things impetuously and abruptly just as we do.
He has the duty to be responsible for his own family, not for ours.
He has the right to his own tastes and preferences.
He has the right to choose anything (even a religion) for his own satisfaction.
He has the right to share equally with us the public property.
He has the right to be neurotic or mad as well as we.
He has the right to ask for help and sympathy from us.
He has the right to be forgiven by us according to the circumstances.
He has the right to be socialist or libertarian in accordance with his own disposition.
He has the right to be selfish before thinking of others.
He has the human right, equal to us, to be in this world.
If we think in these ways, no conflicts will occur.

— Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
Translated by Buddhadasa Indapanno
Mokkhabalarama, Chaiya
22 May, 2531

A Liberated Mind?

In the pursuit of wisdom in the midst of a slight funk I was reading Buddhadasa Bhikkhu on Anapanasati Bhavana about seeing if the mind is stable(done in meditation). "Normally most common people have not been emancipated spiritually in so far as the mind is concerned, so how are we going to know what a liberated mind is like? The answer is to think of the reverse of the present troubled state of mind. For example(s), if at present the mind is full of worries, a liberated mind will be just the opposite—free from all worries, if the mind clings to happiness, a liberated mind clings to nothing, not even happiness; if the present mind is troubled, chaotic and full of suffering, a truly liberated mind will be free of troubles, peaceful and calm. This is the way to picture what a liberated mind is like."

Now, we all know you can implement this in daily life as the person who meditates is the exact same one who is out trying to make sense out of daily life. We can chose to let go of mental images that provoke dis-ease and start to introduce joy even under the most difficult situations. So, how do you see yourself?

Because I think this can be an entry point. Case in point, I like people to know that I have a brain injury, so they know why talking is difficult for me, but upon further examination no one can know your suffering or understand it, they have their own and are really engaged in their own. So, exactly why would they trade sides?

A Little Bit of Joy

“An event becomes an experience

only when I am emotionally interested.

I am in a state which is complete,

which seeks not to improve on itself.

Of what use is experience to me?”

— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

10 Silent Minutes with Buddha

Can't fine the ideal time or the place to meditate?

Here you go, take 10 minutes. No surprises.

The Purpose of Samadhi

“So we see that it is most important to know about our self. How we came to be born, how we will be reborn, and when we sleep and dream what is the cause and condition for it. And again, when our thought flash here and there each moment, what it is all about.

Now that which flashes here and there in thought is called the ‘heart’. Before coming here, when still at home, your thought had already flashed here, is that not correct? And the next instant, did it not flash off to other things elsewhere? Now you are seated here, your thoughts flash back home, and elsewhere...

The purpose of is Samadhi to control these flashings of the ‘heart’. If we are able to control these flashings and keep the mind still, then he mind will attain to great power, to great utility, to great purity, and be able to achieve whatsoever the mind intends. The mind which is uncontrolled, flashing here and there, is a force which is being wasted in all directions, like a river flowing from the heights, which channelling off into streams and tributaries loses its original impetus and force. If this force were to be damned up, the power would be indeed great and could turn a great machine. So it is with the concentrated and controlled mind....”

— Teachings of

the Venerable Chao Khun Monkol-Thepmuni, Wat Pak Nam