Holidays

Yesterday was Dia de los Muertos is a remembrance of ancestors, a holiday from our Mexican brothers and sisters.

Yesterday was Halloween is a day when you can dress up in an alternate persona, or hero, and beg for candy. I never really got into it, though of course I did it as a kid for the candy haul. I went around with my daughter who was dressed up like a bat. She says next year she wants to dress like a witch with her mother. I sometimes think about getting a Cat in the Hat hat. Lots of amazing costumes on social media, some people are the opposite of me, and make it really happen. 

Someone’s haul

Today is Diwali is the triumph of light over darkness. My friend voted yesterday to get that out of the way, hopefully light triumphs over darkness politically. I've been reading about Zoroastrianism, because I'm studying Iran, and they have a specific take in the fight of light over dark. Jainism and Hinduism also celebrate Diwali. My Buddhist friend is part of a leading team for a Diwali retreat. 

Goldstein quote

In the Bhagavad-Gita the question is asked, "Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful?" The answer, "That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die."

From The Experience of Insight p. 128

I feel like I ward off anything that is Hinduism, like some sort of weird Christian sect, vigilant about belief, but I could loosen up a little bit and be open to more influences. 

Images, memes, quotes, art

Previous one and before that. 

Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu from With Each & Every Breath (2012)

He's not a Buddhist, but I do think his encouragement to be focused on your mind is important. 

From Japan

Reading about Manichaeism, and came across the Manichaeism painting of Jesus Buddha:

Goldstein quote

The courage of a warrior is both required and developed in the practice of meditation. It takes courage to sit with pain, without avoiding or masking it; just to sit and face it totally and overcome one's fear. It takes courage to probe and by that probing discover the deepest elements of the mind and body. It can be quite unsettling at first because many of our comfortable habits get over-turned. It takes a lot of courage to let go of everything that we've been holding on to for security. To let go, to experience the flow of impermanence. It takes courage to face and confront the basic and inherent insecurity of this mind-body process. To confront the fact that in every instant what we are is continually dissolving, vanishing; that there is no place to take a stand at all. It takes courage to die. To experience the death of the concept of self; to experience that death while we're living takes the courage and fearlessness of an impeccable warrior.

P68-69 The Experience of Insight by Joseph Goldstein

Thanissaro Bhikkhu The Meditator as Warrior YouTube 12 minutes

kukkucca, uddacca

“The fourth of the hindrances the Buddha mentions in the Satipatthana Sutta are the mind states of restlessness and worry. The Pali word for restlessness is uddacca, which means agitation, excitement, or distraction. It is sometimes translated as "shaking above," where the mind is not settled into the object but hovering around it. "Restlessness" —literally, without rest—expresses all these aspects. The Pali word for worry is kukkucca, which is the mind state of regret or anxiety. This refers to how we feel about not having done things that we should have done and about having done things that we shouldn't have. Although restlessness almost always accompanies worry, it is possible to have restlessness present without worry or regret.”

P153 Mindfulness by Joseph Goldstein.

Meditation support

I've been meditating with 3 fellows in Iran for a while now. 

I want to open it up to others who want support in meditation. It's 7 AM Eastern Standard Time, it's 2:30 PM in Iran. And it's 4 AM in California. It's noon in England, 12:00 PM. 

Please join us if you'd like to meditate, and we can chat after meditation if you want. The only trick is getting the link to you, the invite. So drop you email in the comments and I'll erase it once I see it, and then send you the link in the morning or even the google calendar invite.

You could probably ask me to meditate any time, and I'd do it.

The Five Aggregates

The Five Aggregates by Mathieu Boisvert, teaches at University of Quebec in Montreal, starts like this with a forward by A.K. Warder:

In Buddhist philosophy, the theory of the five aggregates (pancakkhandha) of realities, or real occurrences known as "principles" (dhamma), is the analysis of what elsewhere is often called the "problem" of matter and mind. In Buddhism, to separate these would be to produce a dilemma like the familiar one of "body" and "soul" (are they the same or different?). But the resolution is different. Whereas the "soul," according to Buddhism, is a non-entity and the problem therefore meaningless, consciousness is as real as matter. The tradition emphasizes that consciousness is inseparably linked to matter: there can be no consciousness without a body; although there ·could be a body without consciousness, it would not be sentient.

Matter and consciousness are two of the "aggregates"; the other three link them, or rather show diem.·inseparably bound together in a living being. These are, to use Boisvert's translations, "sensation" (vedana, variously translated as "experience," "feeling," etc.), "recognition" (sanna or "perception") and "karmic activities" (sankhara, "forces," "volition," etc.). Sensation - being either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral - can occur only in a body which is conscious. Similarly, recognition occurs solely when consciousness is aware of sensations. The karmic activities, sometimes restricted to volition (cetana), were gradually elaborated to include about fifty principles, from "contact" (phassa, the combination of a sense organ, its object and consciousness), energy and greed.: to understanding, benevolence, compassion and attention.

Links:

Review of The Five Aggregates

We are all subject to death, we lost K today.

Friend wanted a list of Sangharakshita talks

First one is actually Christopher Titmus, What self, what world (2005), warm up.

Sangharakshita:

First talk I think about is Mind Creative, Mind Reactive (1967).

The Ten Pillars of Buddhism (1984)

Here are 8 talks on the Bodhisattva Ideal (1999). 

History of Going For Refuge (1988)

Here's an example of the Sevenfold Puja ritual (1968)

6 talks on Milarepa (2006)

Wisdom Beyond Words (8) (1993)

What is the Dharma (7) (2000)

The Path of Regular Steps and the Path of Irregular Steps (1974)

Evolution: Lower and Higher (1966)