Applying the 4 Noble Truths & 8 Fold Path to life in the modern world

9/12/2018

The Four Noble Truths

Applied Buddhism

Gaining a clear understanding of the Buddhas Four Noble Truths, which leads you onto the Eight Fold Path, brings about not only greater insight into your own state of being, but also greater wisdom on how to retain an overall state of calm as you navigate the events that arise as you journey through your day-to-day. With this wisdom and by following the eight fold path, you are able to focus on a much deeper level with a more profound state of peace and a more radiant heart. Gil Fronsdal and The Insight Meditation Center offer a short and easy to grasp look into the topic.

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Better to Face the Music

7/22/2018

The person resolute in the Way must strive not to lose sight of it, whether in a place of calm or in a place of strife. Beware of clinging to quiet places and shunning those where there is disturbance. If you try to take refuge from trouble by running to some quiet place, you will fall into confusion.

- Daikaku (1213-1279)

Essays In Idleness

10/7/2017

If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Consider living creatures—none lives so long as man. The May fly waits not for the evening, the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even a single year in perfect serenity! If that is not enough for you, you might live a thousand years and still feel it was but a single night's dream. We cannot live forever in this world; why should we wait for ugliness to over take us? The longer man lives, the more shame he endures. To die, at the latest, before one reaches forty, is the least unattractive. Once a man passes that age, he desires (with no sense of shame over his appearance) to mingle in the company of others. In his sunset years he dotes on his grandchildren, and prays for long life so that he may see them prosper. His preoccupation with worldly desires grows ever deeper, and gradually he loses all
sensitivity to the beauty of things, a lamentable state of affairs.

*from ESSAYS IN IDLENESS by The Surezuregusa of Kenko. Translated by Donald Keene

What the Monkey In Your Mind Will show you...

9/27/2017

If you become frustrated while meditating because your mind is busy swinging like a monkey from thought to thought to thought, you should recognize that the very fact that you are watching the tangle of thoughts in your head is an amazing gift of enlightenment. By observing mind activity, your are watching from the seat of your true nature, separate from thoughts. Let the monkey swing. When you realize that you have been distracted, promptly return your awareness to the breath. Every time you do this, you are rewiring the brain, so that with enough practice, the distractions will diminish and you will remain more and more permanently rooted in the pure and peaceful state of natural awareness. -MD

Notes to Self