/////////////////////B AVOID UNSKILFUL MENTAL QLITIES
B DTHING
DHAMMAPADA XVIII
: Impurities
You are now
like
a yellowed leaf.
Already
Yama
’
s minions stand near.
You stand at the door to departure
but have yet to provide
for the journey.
Make an island for yourself!
Work quickly! Be wise!
With impurities all blown away,
unblemished,
you
’ll reach the divine realm
of the noble ones.
You are now
right at the end of your time.
You are headed
to Yama
’
s presence,
with no place to rest along the way,
but have yet to provide
for the journey
...........Poignantly, much of our suffering is added to life. We add it when we
worry needlessly, criticize ourselves to no good purpose, or replay the same
conversation over and over again.
///////////As the Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel put it:
Brain cells have particular ways of processing information and
communicating with one another.…
…Electrical signaling represents the language of mind, the
means whereby nerve cells…communicate with one another.…
…All animals have some form of mental life that reflects the
architecture of their nervous system.
/////////////Every sensation, every thought and desire, and every moment of
awareness is being shaped by three pounds of tofu-like tissue inside your
head. The stream of consciousness involves a stream of information in a
stream of neural activity. The mind is a natural phenomenon that is
grounded in life. Major causes of both suffering and its end are rooted in
your own body
/////////////// In a saying from the
work of the psychologist Donald Hebb, neurons that fire together wire
together. This means that you can use your mind to change your brain to
change your mind for the better.
//////////////Mental activity and neural activity thus affect each other. Causes flow
both ways, from the mind into the brain…and from the brain into the mind.
The mind and brain are two distinct aspects of a single, integrated system.
As the interpersonal neurobiologist Dan Siegel summarizes it, the mind
uses the brain to make the mind.
//////////////////MIFU After just three days of training, prefrontal regions behind the forehead
exert more top-down control over the posterior (rearward) cingulate cortex
(PCC). This matters because the PCC is a key part of the default mode
network that is active when we’re lost in thought or caught up in “selfreferential processing” (for example, Why’d they look at me that way?
What’s wrong with me? What should I say next time?). Consequently,
greater control over the PCC means less habitual mind wandering and less
preoccupation with oneself.
/////////Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), develop greater top-down
control over the amygdala.
/////////More experienced mindfulness meditators, typically with years of daily
practice, have thicker layers of neural tissue in their prefrontal cortex,
which supports their executive functions, such as planning and self-control.
They also have more tissue in their insula, which is involved with selfawareness and empathy for the feelings of others. Their anterior (frontal)
cingulate cortex is also strengthened. This is an important part of your brain
that helps you pay attention and stay on track with your goals. And their
corpus callosum—which connects the right and left hemispheres of the
brain—also adds tissue, suggesting a greater integration of words and
images, logic and intuition.
//////////////////experienced practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism—
some who have already meditated for more than twenty thousand hours—
demonstrate a remarkable calm before receiving a pain they know is
coming, and unusually rapid recovery afterward. They also possess
extraordinarily high levels of gamma-range brain-wave activity: the rapid,
25- to 100-times-a-second synchronization of large areas of cortical real
estate associated with enhanced learning. Overall, there’s a gradual shift
from deliberate self-regulation toward an increasingly natural sense of
presence and ease during both meditation and daily life.
//////////////////Seven Steps of Awakening We’ll explore these ways of being in depth in the pages to come, but here you can get a sense of each one in a single meditation. For general information about how to approach experiential practices—including taking your time as we explore far-reaching and sometimes subtle subjects— please see this page in chapter 1, at the start of the Let Be, Let Go, Let In practice.
For this meditation, I suggest you find a comfortable place where you’ll be undisturbed and have enough time, at least twenty minutes. If you don’t relate to the later steps, you can just come back to previous ones.
THE MEDITATION Find a posture that is comfortable and alert. Be aware of your body, and let yourself be. As you focus on each theme in this meditation, you can let other things such as sounds or thoughts pass through awareness without pushing them away or following after them. Steadiness. Choose an object of attention such as the sensations of breathing or a word such as “peace,” and stay aware of it. For example, if it’s the breath, apply attention to the beginning of each inhalation and then sustain your attention to its full course, and do the same with each exhalation, breath after breath. Let your body relax… your heart opening…feeling more settled, calmer, and steadier…staying with the object of attention…Finding a stable sense of presence in the moment…awareness spacious and open…letting anything pass through it…as you rest in a stable centeredness.
Lovingness. With an increasingly steadied mind, focus on warmhearted feelings as your object of attention. Be aware of people or pets you care about…Focus on feelings of compassion and kindness for them… staying simple, focusing on the feelings themselves…Be aware of beings who care about you, even if the relationship is imperfect, and focus on feelings of being cared about…feeling appreciated…liked…loved…If other thoughts and feelings arise, let them come and go as you focus on a simple sense of warmheartedness…As you breathe, there could be a sense of love flowing in and out through your chest and heart. Steadily warmhearted…resting in love…sinking into love as it sinks into you.
Fullness. Present with an open heart, focus on the sense of enoughness in the moment as it is…enough air to breathe…simply living, even if there is also pain or worry…Let yourself feel as safe as you can…safe enough in this moment…letting go of any anxiety…any irritation… finding a growing sense of peace. Also find gratitude for what you’ve been given…focusing on simple feelings of gladness and other positive emotions…letting go of any disappointment or frustration…any sense of stress or drivenness falling away…resting in a growing sense of contentment…Then touching again some feelings of warmheartedness…lovingness flowing in and out…letting any hurts ease and release, perhaps as you exhale…letting any resentments ease and release…any clinging to others falling away…resting in a growing sense of love…Take a little longer to rest in a general sense of fullness…a sense of peace and contentment and love.
Wholeness. Resting at ease in fullness, be aware of the sensations of breathing in the left side of your chest…the right side…and left and right together…being aware of the sensations in your chest as a whole…many sensations as a single experience…Gradually widen awareness of breathing to include your stomach and back…head and hips…arms and legs included…being aware of your whole body as a single field of experience…abiding as a whole body breathing…While remaining aware of the whole body, include sounds in awareness… hearing and breathing together. Then include seeing…feelings…and anything else in awareness…Accepting all that you’re experiencing… opening to your whole being…accepting all the parts of yourself…all the parts of you as a single whole…widening further to include awareness…all of you as a whole…abiding undivided.
Nowness. As you abide as a whole, stay in the present…the sensations of each moment of breathing continually changing…staying present while letting go…remaining alert, experiences changing, things happening…with no need to follow them…no need to figure them out… simply being…now…finding a comfort in the present…a sense of going on being even as there is continual changing…Be aware of the continual arising of the next moment…Be at ease, you’re all right…here in the present as it changes…receiving this moment…receiving now… resting at the front edge of now…and now.
Allness. Abiding now as a whole…breathing air flowing in and flowing out…inhaling oxygen from green growing things…exhaling carbon dioxide to them…each breath receiving and giving…what you’re receiving becoming a part of you, what you’re giving becoming part of other things…Letting these knowings become feelings of relatedness… of inter-being…with plants…and animals…and people…and with air and water…and mountains and all of this earth. All this flowing into you and you flowing out into it. Know you are connected with the moon and sun and all of space, all the stars everywhere…that what is happening now in the mind and body is related to everything else… every thought and thing is a wave in the ocean of allness. Let edges soften between you and anything else…feel a sense of the allness of everything…all experiences are passing waves in allness…allness enduring…so peaceful…only allness.
Timelessness. Abide…present…opening to intuition of what might be always unconditioned…not yet formed…always just before this moment…As ideas about this appear, let them go…settle back into a wordless sense of what might be not yet conditioned…distinct, fundamentally, from all conditioned mind and matter. An intuition, an intimation, perhaps a sense of possibility…spaciousness…stillness… abiding at the meeting of conditioned and unconditioned…what is conditioned is continually changing, what is unconditioned is not arising and passing away, thus eternal and timeless…Let go of thinking, not trying to make anything happen…for the time being…time passing in timelessness. When it feels right, come into a grounded sense of this moment…in this body…in this place…perhaps moving your feet and hands…eyes opening…perhaps breathing more fully. Touch again some feelings of fullness…warmheartedness…living from them. You are here, breathing and all right…being at peace.
/////////////////Flowers in springtime, moon in autumn,
cool wind in summer, snow in winter.
If you don’t make anything in your mind,
for you it is a good season.
WUMEN HUIKAI
////////////////////Problem solving and rumination usually involve inner speech that draws on
regions in the temporal lobes on the left side of your brain if you’re righthanded.
//////////////////You are the sky.
Everything else—
It’s just the weather.
PEMA CHÖDRÖN
////////////////THE FIVE HINDRANCES
Sensual desire: This hindrance is the stressful pursuit of lasting pleasure in
passing experiences. (It can also be approached as the stressful resisting of
pain; for simplicity, I’ll focus on grasping after pleasure.)
Ill will: This is the will for ill: a motivation to hurt and harm. It includes
hostility, bitterness, and destructive anger.
Fatigue and laziness: This is heaviness of body and dullness of mind.
There could be a sense of weariness, even depression, and little motivation
for practice.
Restlessness, worry, remorse: This is mental and physical agitation.
There’s an inability to settle down, and one preoccupation or another has
invaded the mind.
Doubt: This is not healthy skepticism but a corrosive mistrust of what
you know or what could be reasonably believed. There could be a lack of
conviction, an overthinking, a “paralysis by analysis.” This is a powerful
hindrance, since anything can be doubted.
/////////////////////Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
MARY OLIVER
////////////////////What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
WILLIAM STAFFORD
///////////////////Nearly 14 billion years ago, the big bang produced a
universe with four dimensions—three of space and one of time—and all of
them have been expanding ever since (the emphases are his):
The Big Bang is an explosion of 4D space-time. Just as space is
being generated by [this] expansion, so time is being created.…
Every moment, the universe gets a little bigger, and there is a
little more time, and it is this leading edge of time that we refer
to as now.…
…By the flow of time, we mean the continual addition of new
moments, moments that give us the sense that time moves
forward, in the continual creation of new nows.
////////////////////////Pali Canon that “deconstructs”
the flow of experience into five parts:
1. forms: sights, sounds, tastes, touches, smells; basic sensory
processes
2. hedonic tones: the quality of pleasant, unpleasant, relational, or
neutral
3. perceptions: categorizing, labeling; identifying what something is
4. formations: a traditional term for all the other elements of
experience, including thoughts, emotions, desires, images, and
memories; expressions of temperament and personality; planning
and choosing; and sense of self
5. awareness: a kind of field (or space) in which experiences occur
//////////////////All conditioned things are impermanent.”
Seeing this with insight,
one becomes disenchanted with suffering.
DHAMMAPADA 277
////////////////////There is no past.
There is no future.
You are completely supported.
ROSHI HOGEN BAYS
//////////////////////In truth we are always present.
We only imagine ourselves to be
in one place or another.
HOWARD COHN
//////////////////////Deep insight into the nature of all experiences can free us from holding on
to them, and thus free us from the suffering this clinging causes.
////////////////////In the deepest forms of insight, we see that things change so
quickly that we can’t hold on to anything, and eventually
the mind lets go of clinging.
Letting go brings equanimity.
The greater the letting go, the deeper the equanimity…
In Buddhist practice, we work to expand the range of life
experiences in which we are free.
GIL FRONSDAL
//////////////////MDGS CRSS X DTR CRSS X NO RUMINATION X BNCABOD LINE
//////////////////////
