pondering potatoes

One of my teachers had each of us bring a clear plastic bag and a sack of potatoes. For every person in our life that we refuse to forgive, we chose a potato, wrote on it the name and date, and put it in the plastic bag. Some of our bags were quite heavy.

We were then told to carry this bag with us everywhere we went for one week – we had to put it beside our bed at night, on the car seat when driving, next to our desk at work, and so on. The hassle of lugging this bag of potatoes around made it clear what a weight we were carrying spiritually (and emotionally).

Naturally, the condition of the potatoes deteriorated to a nasty slime. This was a great metaphor for the price we pay for keeping our pain and heavy negativity! Too often we think of forgiveness as a gift to the other person, when clearly it is a gift for ourselves...


From an unsigned posting on a web discussion group,
Published in The New York Kokoro Newsletter Oct 2006

our mind

A Grade-One teacher once asked her class "What is the biggest thing in the world?" One little girl answered "My daddy". A little boy said "An elephant", since he'd recently been to the zoo. Another girl suggested "A mountain".

The six-year-old daughter of a close friend of mine replied, "My eye is the biggest thing in the world"! The class stopped. Even the teacher didn't understand her answer. So the little philosopher explained "Well, my eye can see her daddy, an elephant, and a mountain too. It can also see so much else. If all of that can fit into my eye, then my eye must be the biggest thing in the world." Brilliant!

However, she was not quite right. The mind can see everything that one's eye can see, and it can also imagine so much more. It can also hear, smell, taste and touch, as well as think. In fact, everything that can be known can fit into the mind. Therefore, the mind must be the biggest thing in the world. Science's mistake is obvious now. The mind is not in the brain, nor in the body. The brain, the body and the rest of the world, are in the mind!

ashes of the dead

"Uncalled he hither came, unbidden soon to go;
Even as he came, he went. What cause is here for woe?
No friend's lament can touch the ashes of the dead:
He fares the way he had to tread."

The Jataka

Teddy Stallard Movie

Click below to watch movie clip:

Teddy Stallard Movie

Ever Tractatus

We often speak with fear of not being understood, and just as often we refrain from speaking out of the same fear.
What is more touching, for example, more desperate and fragile than a declaration of love? When I say that I love you, I am reaching across an unbridgeable abyss. You have no means to compare the content of this statement to the real state of affairs in my head and heart, nor can I be sure that what you understood me to say is just what I meant by it. In fact, I cannot control the meaning of this phrase even for myself. But for as long as we live, we find ourselves wondering, sometimes doubting what these words refer to in ourselves and in the other, whether, for instance, they could be a conventional reflex that does not necessarily correspond to an authentic feeling.


Alfred Nordmann in Wittgenstein's Tractatus

We must walk a fine line between
surender and engagement.


Rob Preece

the mark

"A mark of spiritual maturity
is the ability to endure pain
without being overwhelmed by it."

Bhikkhu Bodhi

short and long

Love is so short,
Forgetting is so long...


Pablo Neruda

mindfulness

With resolution and mindfulness,
discipline and self-control,
the wise can create an island
no flood can submerge.

Fools and the ignorant,
indulge in heedlessness.
The wise keep mindfulness
as their best treasure.


Dhammapada

a higher love

Love - without desire to possess,
knowing well that in the ultimate sense
there is no possession and no possessor:
this is the highest love.

Nyanaponika

once in a while

Every once in a while
we need to stop ourselves in our tracks
and ask ourselves - what are we doing?
And why we are doing whatever it is that we are doing.


Editor - Path of Joy

Symptoms of Inner Peace

An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

Loss of interest in judging others.

Loss of interest in interpreting actions of others.

Loss of interest in conflict.

Loss of ability to worry. (very serious symptom)

Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation or unattached giving.

A tendency to smile more often

Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.

Frequent attacks of smiling through the eyes from the heart.

Tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.

Tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fear based on past experiences.


From: www.dhammasukha.org

as always - dear mother teresa

the truth of desire

Our usual perceptions are tinged with “unwise consideration”. We ordinarily look only at the surfaces of things, scan them in terms of our immediate interests and wants; only rarely do we dig into the roots of our involvements or explore their long-range consequences. To set this straight calls for wise consideration: looking into the hidden undertones to our actions, exploring their results, evaluating the worthiness of our goals. In this investigation our concern must not be with what is pleasant, but with what is true. We have to be prepared and willing to discover what is true even at the cost of our comfort. For real security always lies on the side of truth, not on the side of comfort.

When desire is scrutinized closely, we find that it is constantly shadowed by 'unsatisfactoriness' (or dissatisfying). Sometimes 'unsatisfactoriness' appears as pain or irritation; often it lies low as a constant strain of discontent. But the two — desire and dukkha — are inseparable concomitants. We can confirm this for ourselves by considering the whole cycle of desire. At the moment desire springs up it creates in us a sense of lack, the pain of want. To end this pain we struggle to fulfill the desire. If our effort fails, we experience frustration, disappointment, sometimes despair. But even the pleasure of success is not unqualified. We worry that we might lose the ground we have gained. We feel driven to secure our position, to safeguard our territory, to gain more, to rise higher, to establish tighter controls. The demands of desire seem endless, and each desire demands the eternal: it wants the things we get to last forever. But all the objects of desire are impermanent. Whether it be wealth, power, position, or other persons, separation is inevitable, and the pain that accompanies separation is proportional to the force of attachment

Desire breeds fear and sorrow. Renunciation gives fearlessness and joy.


Bhikkhu Bodhi

the path

The search for a spiritual path is born out of suffering. It does not start with lights and ecstasy, but with the hard tacks of pain, disappointment, and confusion. However, for suffering to give birth to a genuine spiritual search, it must amount to more than something passively received from without. It has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot. When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It overturns accustomed goals and values,
mocks our routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments stubbornly unsatisfying.

No longer can we continue to drift complacently through life, driven blindly by our hunger for sense pleasures and by the pressure of prevailing social norms. A deeper reality beckons us; we have heard the call of a more stable, more authentic happiness, and until we arrive at our destination - we cannot rest content.


Bhikkhu Bodhi

a battle hard to win

ONe who repays an angry man with anger
Thereby makes things worse for himself.
Not repaying an angry man with anger,
One wins a battle hard to win.

He practises for the welfare of both
His own and the other's
When, knowing that his foe is angry,
He mindfully maintains his peace.


Samyutta Nikaya

time

It is by living together with someone that his virtue is to be known,
and that after a long time, not after a short time;
by one who is attentive, not by one who is inattentive;
by one who is wise, not by a dullard.

It is by dealing with someone that his honesty is to be known,
and that after a long time, not after a short time;
by one who is attentive, not by one who is inattentive;
by one who is wise, not by a dullard.

It is in adversities that a person's fortitude is to be known,
and that after a long time, not after a short time;
by one who is attentive, not by one who is inattentive;
by one who is wise, not by a dullard.

It is by discussion with someone that his wisdom is to be known,
and that after a long time, not after a short time;
by one who is attentive, not by one who is inattentive;
by one who is wise, not by a dullard.

A man is not easily known by outward form
Nor should one trust a quick appraisal,
For in the guise of the well controlled
Uncontrolled men move in this world.

Some move about in disguise:
Inwardly impure; outwardly beautiful.


Samyutta Nikaya

essential

Those who mistake the unessential for the essential
and in the essential see the unessential,
dwelling in wrong thoughts,
never arrive at the essence.

Those who know the essential as the essential
and the unessential as the unessential,
dwelling in right thoughts,
will arrive at the essence.


Dhammapada

in the realm of the spirit

This is the only satisfying way for the seeker of truth when the
diffuseness of the external world with its thin layer of
culture, comfort and allurement, ceases to be interesting and is
found to lack true value. The seeker knows to a certainty that
what he wants is to be found in the realm of the spirit.

Soma Thera

beyond the horizon

... spiritual awareness and the quest for enlightenment do not arise spontaneously in harmony with our natural modes of world-engagement, but require a turn "against the current", a break away from our instinctual urges for expansion and enjoyment, and the embarkation in a different direction. This break is precipitated by the encounter with suffering. Suffering spurs the awakening of the religious consciousness in that it is the experience of suffering which first tears us out of our blind absorption in the immediacy of temporal being and sets us in search of a way to its transcendence.


Bhikkhu Bodhi