Insights for February 2015
Pine Needles, Bainbridge Island, Margaret Gervais 2015
Buddhism A-Z: Your Basic Buddhist Library10 dharma books everyone should have, selected by the editors of the Shambhala Sun
After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, by Jack Kornfield
A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation, by Rid Meade Sperry and the editors of the Shambhala Sun
Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh
4. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialisms, by Chögyam Trungpa
5. Happiness is an Inside Job, by Sylvia Boorstein
6. Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Gunaratana
7. Real Happiness, by Sharon Salzberg
8. What Makes You Not a Buddhist, by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse9. When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chödrön
10. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki
Shambhala Sun, March 2015, page 67
For my suggested reading list please see http://theinsightcenter.net/resources/
Astrology: Pisces: “…deep, powerful, and ever-changing come to mind." "The Enigma of PIsces," by Genevieve Vierling, Mountain Astrologer, Feb./Mar. 2015
"I always encourage my Pisces clients to spend time either alone or out in nature. By doing so, they will gain a more authentic sense of their own separate identity apart from other people's energies. The practice of quiet contemplation can help Pisceans to know themselves better by stilling the mind and listening for the small inner voice. Once they connect with their core, they can then turn outward again and help many people." "The Enigma of Pisces," by Genevieve Vierling, Mountain Astrologer, Feb./Mar. 2015
On Meditation practice, by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche:
“The sitting practice of meditation is the starting point for developing mindfulness. It establishes a reference point for awareness of yourself as well as a general awareness of your environment and your experience as a whole.
From the general pattern of basic awareness in your practice, you step out and expand yourself into everyday life, using the mindfulness you develop in meditation as the starting point for mindfulness throughout life. Meditation is the source or the basic inspiration, and from there, slowly, mindfulness and awareness begin to merge in your life as a whole.
In our lives, the chain reaction of our mental processes and the network of our habitual reactions often create a whirlpool of confusion. We are not just subject to or living in this whirlpool at this moment; we are also manufacturing confusion for the future. We keep generating a chain reaction of confusion because we think it provides us with a security for the next minute, the next month, the next year. We want to make sure that there is something to hang on to.
It’s quite amazing that we manage to manufacture our own future confusion using our present experiences of hanging on to neurosis. With our present action and attitudes we create the seeds that blossom in the future. The present situation is inescapable. You are somewhat settled or habituated to it so you don't want to do something different in the future. You don’t want to have to change gears.
Generally people enjoy living in the world of confusion because it is much more entertaining. Even suffering itself is entertaining in a strange way. Therefore, we create further neurotic security over and over again on that ground. Although we may complain and we suffer, we also feel quite satisfied with our lives. We’ve chosen our own self-experience.
The practice of recollecting awareness throughout the day is the main way that we can prevent ourselves from sowing these further seeds of habitual cause and effect. In the present moment we can disrupt these chain reactions. The memory or recollection of awareness creates a gap, because awareness cuts through the continuity of our struggle to survive. The practice of recollecting our awareness shortens the life of that fixation. That seems to be one of the basic but powerful points of meditation practice.
With meditation we don’t reject the present situation. Beyond that, application of awareness is the way to sabotage confusion’s hold on the future. Awareness is a simple matter. It just happens. You don’t have to analyze it, justify it, or try to understand it. I n the midst of enormous chaos, recollection is a simple action. There may be problems, but you can simplify the situation rather that focusing on the problems. Natural gaps in our experience are there all the time.
Our post-meditation experiences will be clouded with all kinds of ups and downs. Sometimes there is a sense of enormous excitement. You feel that you are actually making some progress, whatever that is! Sometimes you feel that you are regressing and that everything is going wrong. And then there are neutral periods where nothing happens and things are somewhat flat. Those signs of progress or regression are just temporary meditative experiences, which occur both in the practice of meditation and in our daily awareness practice.
Sometimes people worry that their practice is actually regressing, but that never happens. Sometimes, if you push yourself too hard, your ambition will begin to slow down the speed of your journey.
You can’t fail at meditation.
Meditation practice is a haunting experience. Once you begin, you can’t give up. The more you try to give up the more spontaneous openness comes to you. It’s a very powerful thing.
You don’t have to have complete comprehension of what awareness is all about in order to experience a glimpse of awareness.”
Put Your Meditation into Action, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Shambhala Sun March 2015, pages 68-71
“The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.” Jack Kornfield
Insights from someone with a terminal cancer diagnosis:
"I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."
Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, is the author of many books, including “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html?_r=0
More information on how meditation changes the brain:http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/02/09/7-ways-meditation-can-actually-change-the-brain/Awakening:
"You see yourself get stuck, and then you see yourself come up for air, and you begin to notice where you are clinging…" On the process of awakening, Ram Dass, Love Serve Rememberhttps://www.ramdass.org/process-awakening/
From Adyashanti: Q. “How do you suggest we approach obsessive thoughts that consume us like fire twenty-four hours a day, like your initial obsession with the thought that you need to attain enlightenment? Does freedom from those thoughts come only when we reach a point of such complete desperation and failure that the mind caves in and one drops through into truth?”
Adya “So let’s start at the beginning. Obsessive thinking arises from fear, anxiety, and struggle. These are the drivers of excessive thinking. So in an addition to the meditation practice, you may want to begin to contemplate what you are afraid of, what you are running away from. What you don’t want to deal with within yourself or your life. By contemplate I mean to identify exactly what fears are driving you. What assumptions are they based on? What are you running from?
Also, rampant thinking is your mind looking for peace. As if, if you could just think enough and understand enough, your mind could be at peace. But the mind never thinks its way to a lasting peace. In fact, in the mind’s rush to find peace and security it overlooks the peace that is already present within the presence of awareness.So contemplate what your mind is trying to run away from, and what it is looking for. And begin to show your mind that peace is available in the present. Literally bring your mind’s attention to the greater peace of awareness. And give your mind something to do in the form of following your breath. Just follow the breath whenever you can during the day, because it will calm your nervous system and give your mind something to do other than to obsessively think. Of course thoughts may come, but anchor them in the breath. Be very, very patient and kind to yourself. Very patient and very kind.” With Great Love, Adyashanti, The Way of Liberating Insight Course"
Each step may seem to take forever, but no matter how uninspired you feel, continue to follow your practice schedule precisely and consistently. This is how we can use our greatest enemy, habit, against itself." Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, "Tortoise Steps"
Pluto, the planet of deep transformation and Uranus, the planet of restlessness and electrically charged impulsive changes will be exactly square each other March 17, 2015. You may feel the pressure as they are very close now and the pressure is building. Be aware, be calm, choose wisely, navigate carefully and be open to changes required. And after March 17, breathe deep and let it go.
"Redemptive Love does not shy away from suffering, whether one’s own suffering or others’. Redemptive Love embraces suffering in utter acceptance and Love. The challenge to us all is to continually open and stretch ourselves to become large enough to embrace the full measure of life in all its inexhaustible proportion. Life always asks us to become bigger than whatever we encounter, and to stretch our loving embrace to include more than we thought we could. For we are in truth more immense than we imagine, and when we surrender the confines of our mind to the magnitude of our heart, we grow day by day in transformative compassion that has the resilience to withstand the turns of fate that life presents us with." ~Adyashanti Redemptive Love Course
Stephen Hawking: One of Buddhism’s Three Poisons Threatens us all: http://www.lionsroar.com/stephen-hawking-one-buddhisms-three-poisons-threatens-us/