the Meditation Circle

“Now we have the attitude of, ‘Well, how does the dharma fit in with my life?’ The dharma can’t fit in with our life. The dharma is our life, and it’s not about convenience.”

~  Natalie Goldberg
from “Face-to-Face with Natalie Goldberg” in Tricycle.com.
Read article for free through Sept. 24, 2012

“When you admit to yourself, ‘I must make this change to be more happy’—not because the Buddha said so, but because your heart recognized a deep truth—you must devote all your energy to making the change. You need strong determination to overcome harmful habits.

~ Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Getting Started”
Read more from this article at Tricycle.com

Serendipity landed two e-mails from very different sources in my e-mail box this morning, but addressing the exact same subject:  dealing with the challenge of pain. As you can see from the quotes, the  ‘pain’ referred to is not just the physical sort, but the psychological kind, which can be as challenging to deal with as the physical pain, if not more so. The first quote is from a Buddhist source we often quote from on this website, the rich resource of the Tricycle.com website for the Buddhist magazine. The other comes from a resource I recommend to you, the Farnam Street blog, which continually drops telegrams of insight into my e-mail box, culled from a rich variety of articles, blogs and books. Today’s Farnam Street clipping is not avowedly Buddhist, but it could be, in spirit. Click the links for the source article and a longer read. Read the Tricycle article soon as they ungate their articles for a day or two and then they disappear behind a pay-wall (although if you ‘e a serious Buddist practitioner, an online membership at Tricycle.com will enrich your practice). | douglas imbrogno

TRICYCLE.COM: When Pain Happens to Us

“We suffer because we marry our instinctive aversion to pain to the deep-seated belief that life should be free from pain. In resisting our pain by holding this belief, we strengthen just what we’re trying to avoid. When we make pain the enemy, we solidify it. This resistance is where our suffering begins.”

– Ezra Bayda, “When It Happens to Us”

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FARNAM STREET: When we encounter pain, we are at an important juncture in our decision-making process.
It is a fundamental law of nature that to evolve one has to push one’s limits, which is painful, in order to gain strength—whether it’s in the form of lifting weights, facing problems head-on, or in any other way. Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way. At the same time, nature made the process of getting stronger require us to push our limits. Gaining strength is the adaptation process of the body and the mind to encountering one’s limits, which is painful. In other words, both pain and strength typically result from encountering one’s barriers. When we encounter pain, we are at an important juncture in our decision-making process.

Most people react to pain badly. They have “fight or flight” reactions to it: they either strike out at whatever brought them the pain or they try to run away from it. As a result, they don’t learn to find ways around their barriers, so they encounter them over and over again and make little or no progress toward what they want.
— Ray Dalio

“Awareness itself is the primary currency of the human condition, and as such it deserves to be spent carefully. Sitting quietly in a serene environment, letting go of the various petty disturbances that roil and diminish consciousness, and experiencing as fully as possible the poignancy of this fleeting moment—this is an enterprise of deep intrinsic value, an aesthetic experience beyond words.

~ Andrew Olendzki, from “Busy Signal”

“People are often careless about the thoughts they give rise to, assuming that once they forget about a thought, that thought is finished. This is not true. Once you give rise to a thought, it keeps functioning, and eventually its consequences return to you.

  ~ Daehaeng Kun Sunim
from “Thinking Big” at Tricycle.com.
Read full article here

“Equanimity is a protection from what are called the Eight Worldly Winds: praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. Becoming attached to or excessively elated with success, praise, fame, or pleasure can be a setup for suffering when the winds of change shift. For example, success can be wonderful, but if it leads to arrogance, we have more to lose in future challenges. Becoming personally invested in praise can tend toward conceit. Identifying with failure, we may feel incompetent or inadequate. Reacting to pain, we may become discouraged. If we understand or feel that our sense of inner well-being is independent of the Eight Winds, we are more likely to remain on an even keel in their midst.

~ Gil Fronsdal, from “A Perfect Balance: Cultivating Equanimity.” Read full article at Tricycle.com

‘No matter what comes up, we can learn new ways of being with it.’
‘We have a capacity to meet any thought or emotion with mindfulness and balance.’
‘Whatever disagreeable emotion is coursing through us, we can let it go.’

Re-reading those words may keep you going when sitting down to practice is the last thing you want to do.

~ Sharon Salzberg, from  “Sticking with It” at Tricycle.com

image source

There is a vast potential, latent within human beings that remains undiscovered because of the limitations placed on consciousness by habitual preoccupations. The recommendation that all cravings be relinquished does not mean that detachment itself is the goal; it is a means of breaking through self-imposed restrictions and opening up to this inexhaustible treasury of potential.

~  Muso Kokushi (1275-1351) | From DailyZen.com for June 9, 2012

Excerpt of image of “Buddha’s Blue Meditation” by Paul Heussenstamm from mandalas.com

What is anger? As Tulku Urgyen taught, a deluded emotion like anger is a movement of the mind not knowing its own nature. Anger is a strong aversion in the mind, reacting to a negative image that the mind has constructed of someone or something, unaware that it is reacting to its own image. We may get slightly or more intensely angry every day, in many little moments.

What are anger’s roots? Anger as we normally experience it occurs when our sense of self and its world feel threatened. Someone does something that makes it hard for one’s mind to maintain its concept of self and its world, triggering a painful mental feeling. With that arises an image of the other person as loathsome, not fully human. The mind then blames the other person for its painful feeling.

It’s important to note that anger is a form of fear. Someone does something, and suddenly the mind feels ungrounded and reacts with anger, trying to reestablish a firm ground by reaffirming one’s narrow sense of self. Anger’s aim is to establish safety in that deluded way.

The problem is that real safety is not found within such self-centered fear and anger. Real safety is available only in the depth of our being, our underlying buddhanature. Love and compassion are, among others, fundamental qualities of the deepest nature of mind. In those unchanging qualities is the actual source of safety for self and others. To realize this is to recognize our own deep worthiness and potential for inner freedom and goodness, and to recognize the very same in all other persons … | Read On

– John Makransky, from “Aren’t We Right to Be Angry?” at Tricycle.com