Status Updates From No-Nonsense Buddhism for Be...

Meditation:
“When we meditate, we’re simply trying to observe what’s there - thoughts, emotions, everything.”

“The goal of meditation isn’t to control our thoughts; it’s to observe them and become more familiar with the inner workings of our minds.”

The Four Nobel Truths:
1.) There is suffering
2.) There is cause to suffering
3.) There is end to suffering
4.) There is a path to end suffering

The Eightfold Path:

Wisdom
1. Right understanding
2. Right intent

Ethical conduct
3. Right speech
4. Right action
5. Right livelihood

Mental discipline
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right concentration

Reactivity leads to the pain of two arrows
Responding deals with the first arrow and brings the healing process

Acceptance is not the and as giving up. “Acceptance is about working with reality, not against it.”

“Meaning isn’t out there waiting to be found - it’s in you, waiting to be created.”

3 forms of suffering:
1. Physical pain
2. Suffering from loss
3. Self-inflicted suffering; it tends to have very little to do with our actual circumstances and a lot to do with how we perceive and interpret those circumstances

“When we understand that all things are impermanent, we can begin to find meaning and joy in every moment as it passes.”

The three poisons cont:
Hatred:
“In order to be free from the bonds of hatred, we have to practice a different way of perceiving what happens to us.”

“As a mental state, hatred affects the emotional well-being of the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.”

Overall theme: ~embrace & understand WHY~

Turning inward > blindly acting on impulse

The three poisons: greed, hatred, ignorance

Greed:
A skillful way of dealing with the poison of greed is to try to understand it; ask yourself WHY?
“Simply following our desires without taking time to understand them can lead to destructive behavior and mental confusion.”

“Buddhism teaches that enlightenment is our true nature. It’s not something we can become, because it’s something we already are. We just have to realize it.”

- Understand the nature of your existence
- Everything you need is already inside you
- Buddhism is the journey of looking inward

“Enlightenment is also freedom from wanting to be enlightened. Any notion we have about what enlightenment is can get in the way of actually experiencing it.”

“The unnecessary suffering we experience has more to do with ~how~ we see things than ~what~ we see.
It’s an internal change, not an external change, that will bring about the joy and contentment we seek.”

The Dharma: invites us to look inward and study our own minds in order to gain a clearer understanding of ourselves and of the nature of reality.

Reality vs. our Perception of Reality:
“A thought arises, we create a story about it, that story evokes an emotion, we create another story about that, and in and on until before we know it, we’re hardly paying attention to our lived reality at all, trapped in a habitual reactivity of our own thoughts.”

Намасте! подполковник махаяны Будданов 🫡 предъявите свою дхамму в развернутом виде или не видать вам восьмеричного пути до следующей кальпы.