November 24th, 2003
dhamma notes
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I would also like to talk briefly about my progress in meditation, and also share some notes and ideas. I am still a learner, but I feel that maybe others can learn from my mistakes. Any other ideas are most welcome. You can skip over anything that dosent hold your interest.
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 10:20 AM Namaskaara, It is extremely noisy at my house, since I live at an intersection, and almost every vehicle which passes it honks, often loudly and shrilly. This noise starts sometimes as early as 5 AM up to as late as 10:30 PM, sometimes people honk even at midnight. Also, it has become a recent fashion for many young people to drive at high speeds on motorcycles without silencers… which makes a very deafening sound. All these years I had been quite oblivious to these noises, and they were just part of the background. In recent years the noise level has increased, and also I have become more sensitive as I am more aware of it. So due to both factors, it has been quite disturbing and sometimes prevents me from meditating consistently esp betw 6 to 7 AM or 10 to 11 PM, the times I find convinient to meditate. But as I progressed, I realised that there was no point in developing an aversion to these noises, and over time, my mind remained calm even inspite of the most loud disturbing sounds. Still it would be nice if I could find a quite place atleast once in a way, is there any group meditation center around Malleswaram? Rgds,
Date: Tue Aug 27, 2002 10:10 pm I have taken the Vipaasana course once so far, in It has benefitted me greatly in many ways so far, but It is about my train journey from Bangalore to I have put up on my home page at this URL: Rgds, PS: Earlier I had written that I was getting disturbed
Date: Mon Sep 2, 2002 9:16 pm Dear All, I had attempted to read the Bhagawad Gita a few years Almost all spiritual lines of thought ultimately come After some practice… there was a certain point in I found many useful insights at the site At first, I felt that I should keep all my thoughts to Thanks, ———————————- Two Ways To Wash Your Dirty Linen By MARGUERITE THEOPHIL I had been falling behind my body-work and meditation My husband, a regular with his practice, was pleased Noting our puzzlement, she added, to me: “If you are Thich Nhat Hanh taught the power of mindfulness and At the moment, I am making very slow progress. This is mainly because of my lifestyle of laziness and indiscipline, a pattern I am finding hard to break. I am finding it hard to solve this (though of course its reduced to a great extent compared to before)… and Of course getting dejected by failure would be against the whole point. I feel it will take a while to break the old habit pattern of the mind. I simply wonder where Im going wrong, is it that my resolve is too weak. I felt the root cause is my laziness, which is due to my attachment to myself. I watched myself when I come home from work, to see where I go wrong. I found that television is one of the major causes for loss of awareness. Theres always something interesting to watch, some amazing movie which Ive always wanted to watch etc and I get engrossed in it, and then hours together are lost where I sort of “unplug” my mind submitting blindly to whatever is coming on the TV. I found many similar ways where time gets lost in all kinds of really irrelevant activities. I realized that I should try to improve incrementally every day. I came across some nice quotes… A: For one thing because you merely seek relief from your pain, ———————————- “Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.” When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed the most” Also I have had this on my mind for long… to share some ideas I was fortunate enough to hear from some senior meditators [and am most grateful to them]: “Imagine a bad tempered street dog following you and growling at you on the street. If you run away, it chases you. But if you just stand still and simply be aware of it, it hesitates, and then walks away. That is the way of awareness.” [I felt this was an excellent analogy because I had actually been in such a situation once.] “Man might send a submarine to explore the deepest parts of the Pacific ocean and find a new depth in it. Even that ocean has a finite depth. Whereas the mind… it has no limits to its depth.” “Meditation should never be treated as yet another habit. Each session should be treated as a new experience.” ———————— The story is about how the whole world is actually a computer software program. Neo, the main character, wants to come out of the program into the real world. He is given a choice, a red pill and a blue pill. If he takes the blue pill, he goes back into the software If you take the movie to be an analogy to real life, its a choice every person has. Whether he likes to continue to live within the limits of his ego, or whether he wants to transcend it to see reality as it is. And I have seen that there are many people who would prefer to take the blue pill. For more info, visit: or http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/index_phi.html As for myself, I feel by meditating I have taken the red pill. Though of course it is not as simple as that, because I find that sometimes when I think I am free from one manifestation of my ego, I am only unknowingly engulfed in another 🙂 http://www.42.dropbear.id.au/jls.html I felt this is a truly excellent book. I felt there was a lot of relation with the principles behind Dhamma. These are the words of the eminent scientist Albert “A human being is part of the whole, called by us Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by ———————————————————————- Working Very Hard – Zen Story A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, “I am (in other versions of this story, the student says he is eager to Source (contains a good collection of stories and also reactions to http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/zenstory/zenframe.html
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Freedom “What, then, is happiness? The answer is not complex. Mindfulness in Plain English A beautiful online book… http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english.php I felt it was an excellent suplement [not substitute] to a 10 day course. It describes many problems and solutions, application to daily life, and has very helpful tips. As the title suggests, all the ideas are presented in very simple language. Note: I would strongly suggest that it not be forwarded to a non-Vipassana meditator, since I see two hinderances: it first of all gives meditation a very Buddhist appearance (I feel people have the biggest attachment to their religion and may reject the idea of meditating if they suspect that it has anything to do with conversion to another religion). Another thing is it is a site which tries to sell the technique, and worse still, through online tutorials 🙂 |
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Buddhas Teachings Anattalakkhana Sutta Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta Kalama Sutta “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with
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The Basket of Abhidhamma Havent read this yet, just posting it here for the record… http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/abhidhamma/index.html
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Vipassana Meditation Website This is the international home page of the organizations which offer courses in Vipassana Meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin as taught by S.N. Goenka and his assistant teachers. Yoga without tree hugging – Paul Bancroft Excellent very small book on Yoga… brilliant and very humourous. Explains the relationship to Zen (a form of Dhamma meditation). It dosent really teach yoga (best learnt from an instructor), but explains it. Of course there are 1000s of books on Yoga, but this book explains theres more to Yoga than just managing to get into confusingly convoluted postures. Zen Stories Collection of simple short stories with a lot of meaning. |