44 Effacements

From MN 8

Now, Cunda, you should work on self-effacement in each of the following ways.

‘Others will be cruel, but here we will not be cruel.’

‘Others will kill living creatures, but here we will not kill living creatures.’

‘Others will steal, but here we will not steal.’

‘Others will be unchaste, but here we will not be unchaste.’

‘Others will lie, but here we will not lie.’

'Others will speak divisively, but here we will not speak divisively.’

‘Others will speak harshly, but here we will not speak harshly.’

‘Others will talk nonsense, but here we will not talk nonsense.’

‘Others will be covetous, but here we will not be covetous.’

‘Others will have ill will, but here we will not have ill will.’

‘Others will have wrong view, but here we will have right view.’

‘Others will have wrong thought, but here we will have right thought.’

‘Others will have wrong speech, but here we will have right speech.’

‘Others will have wrong action, but here we will have right action.’

‘Others will have wrong livelihood, but here we will have right livelihood.’

‘Others will have wrong effort, but here we will have right effort.’

‘Others will have wrong mindfulness, but here we will have right mindfulness.’

‘Others will have wrong immersion, but here we will have right immersion.’

‘Others will have wrong knowledge, but here we will have right knowledge.’

‘Others will have wrong freedom, but here we will have right freedom.’

‘Others will be overcome with dullness and drowsiness, but here we will be rid of dullness and drowsiness.’

‘Others will be restless, but here we will not be restless.’

‘Others will have doubts, but here we will have gone beyond doubt.’

‘Others will be irritable, but here we will be without anger.’

‘Others will be hostile, but here we will be without hostility.’

‘Others will be offensive, but here we will be inoffensive.’

‘Others will be contemptuous, but here we will be without contempt.’

‘Others will be jealous, but here we will be without jealousy.’

‘Others will be stingy, but here we will be without stinginess.’

‘Others will be devious, but here we will not be devious.’

‘Others will be deceitful, but here we will not be deceitful.’

‘Others will be stubborn, but here we will not be stubborn.’

‘Others will be arrogant, but here we will not be arrogant.’

‘Others will be hard to admonish, but here we will not be hard to admonish.’

‘Others will have bad friends, but here we will have good friends.’

‘Others will be negligent, but here we will be diligent.’

‘Others will be faithless, but here we will have faith.’

‘Others will be conscienceless, but here we will have a sense of conscience.’

‘Others will be imprudent, but here we will be prudent.’

‘Others will be uneducated, but here we will be well educated.’

‘Others will be lazy, but here we will be energetic.’

‘Others will be unmindful, but here we will be mindful.’

‘Others will be witless, but here we will be accomplished in wisdom.’

‘Others will be attached to their own views, holding them tight, and refusing to let go, but here we will not be attached to our own views, not holding them tight, but will let them go easily.’

Imbolc is a Gaelic traditional festival marking the beginning of spring.

Imbolc lands about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, Feb. 1st.

I just like the pagan culture because of it's love of nature, and curious collection of traits a god will have. Brigid the early deity of Ireland, "is considered the patroness of poetry, smithing, medicine, arts and crafts, cattle and other livestock, sacred wells, serpents (in Scotland) and the arrival of early spring."

"Brigid was said to visit one's home at Imbolc. To receive her blessings, people would make a bed for Brigid and leave her food and drink, and items of clothing would be left outside for her to bless. Brigid was also evoked to protect homes and livestock. Special feasts were had, holy wells were visited, and it was a time for divination."

Links

Brigid (Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia on Way Back Machine.)

Brigid (Wikipedia)

Imbolc

Goddess Brigid Chant (Soundcloud)

Cailleach is a divine hag, a creator deity, a weather deity, and an ancestor deity. In modern Scottish folklore studies, she is also known as Beira, Queen of Winter.

 

 

 

 

Stillness Flowing: The Life and Teachings of Ajahn Chah by by Ajahn Jayasaro

Luang Por Chah is known as Ajahn Chah (1918 – 1992) was an influential Thai Forest tradition teacher.

There's an audiobook of the biography that I'm listening to.

One of his early teachers was Ajahn Mun. He spent 7 years in the wilderness. The tradition follows great austerity, the 13 Dhutanga. They had basic clothing, ate one meal a day that they got from lay people offering the monk food, not only going to rich houses, but to all houses. Living not in a house, but under a tree. Living near charnel grounds is good. Sleeping rough, wherever, though never laying down. Only sit, walk or stand. Pretty intense practices.

Like many revitalizing practices, this movement was a reaction to a kind of watering down of the tradition.

Like all teachers, a basic common sense and a kind of intensity seeps through the teachings. Ajahn Chah ran a tight ship for quite a long while at his monastery. His disciples found that he exemplified what he was expecting from others.  

For whatever reason, after my upbringing in the Triratna Buddhist Community, I've been attracted to these teachings the most. And I find the biographies interesting. Heroes to admire.

I don't feel the need to resolve contradictory urges (I am large, I contain the multitudes). I also have the urge for self reliance, inspired by Emerson's essay. What I think and feel matters most. But I like to be inspired by others exemplification. 

On the mend

My symptoms are decreasing after 9 days. 

I think it might have been a mistake to take nyquil because it has alcohol in it. 

I'm still tired, congested, short of breath, but I never got the lost of taste or smell. My headache was in part due to quitting coffee. I went 3 days without coffee, and I'm back on a cup when I wake up.

Glad I had a pulse oximeter so I would know if I needed to go to the hospital.

Thank you to the city for offering a hotel room, offering to run errands outside so I didn't have to break quarantine. I used none of those services, but if I'd needed them they would have meant a lot to me.

I forgot to wash my hands before I pet the cat. Opse. Hope Ella doesn't get it. Apparently you can give Covid to your cat. Be careful and mindful. One little slip of mindfulness could mean another's death.

I've been outside to move my car, and to put out the trash, but I didn't go near anyone.

I'm not some dope drinking a bottle of water to prove that I've survived it, that it wasn't deadly to me. I didn't get any drugs to speed my recovery, I didn't get any high tech medical care unavailable to the masses. Just texts from a city monitoring my progress. I did have the support of a loving family. Thank you.

Back to Buddhism. Buddhism lost another teacher in Joanne Friday. 

May all beings be happy may all beings be well.

Covid update

The whole house has it, the baby is just sneezing, maybe she doesn't have it. Partner was throwing up all last night.

My throat just keeps getting more soarer and soarer. I took a steamy shower and that helped. Tylenol. 

Lots of different advice. My aunt told me to get up and walk around every 2 hours. 

I got an oximeter from a relative. Dr. said goto hospital if it stays around 92.

I have high blood pressure, and I haven't gone in to get a new prescription. One thing or another comes up. My doctor doesn't return my pages. 

But My Chart from NYC has a talk to a doctor online feature, so I got a doctor online without waiting too much. So my son is going to get my meds, get some supplies and deliver them. 

Lots of family and friends reaching out, I feel loved. I wish everyone well. 

My analysis of why Trump is guilty of murders of American people

Trump's failures around Covid will be debated into eternity. You can't put every death at his feet, even in the countries that did it right, there were deaths. If you compare the graph for New Zealand Covid to the graph of USA, I can't help but see the initial bump that was the worst for New Zealand, is just a small bump for America, which keeps getting worse wave after wave. New Zealand did it right but still 25 people have died from Covid. Adjust that for population and that's about 1,673 cases would have been in USA if we'd been as effective as New Zealand. Now maybe it's harder to control more people, and there are a billion other reasons why New Zealand could do well, and the USA could not, but if you subtract say 2K from the USA total, we would only have 396K instead 398K dead recorded today. Well, that 2K, wildly exaggerated round up, would not be much of a drop in the bucket compared to nearly 400K. OK, maybe he is guilty of pretty much murdering 396K odd people so far. 

Could the USA president have done what the New Zealand Prime Minister did? Is the USA's ideas of freedom make wearing a mask feel like a totalitarian move that the right wing would resist? Was Trump's inaction really just rubber stamping what the right wing would have done anyway? Is there more travel to the USA, is a larger population harder to control? We'll never know. What we will see is how much Biden's leadership and actually addressing the issue will mean to driving down numbers, past expectations, which is another metaphysic.

Some people say Sweden didn't enact measures and hoped for herd immunity. They say that is a valid strategy. High stakes games.

Basically if you drank Trump's kool aid, then you don't see it as his fault. If you hate Trump like I do, you do see it all as his fault. It's hard to figure out where the objective truth lies. The post-truth era of Trump has decreased the size of shared reality. I'm not sure what to do with that. 

The Civil war was 650K, but I bet we get close to that, and for that I blame the south.

I have Covid, I'll record the journey here, to the extent I can.

Today is MLK Day 2021, a Monday, January 18.

Two days ago I had a headache, consistent with past sinus infections, but the cold didn't come down. My body was achy, but my doctor friend said that might be aging achiness, or heart failure. He's kind of sarcastic, and retired. I wasn't having any chest pressure, or trouble breathing. I had a sore throat, but two nights of nyquil had that OK, and I'd been sleeping 12-14 hours a day. But I ran out of nyquil and woke up this morning with a really sore throat, and now I can feel a light pressure on my chest. My oximeter is on the way to help me determine if I need to go to the hospital. Maybe I'll borrow someone else's if it doesn't come.

We've been fairly quarantined. I did leave the house and go the library, pick up a book on a table and check a book out. Wore a mast there. And the day before I went to the park with my daughter for 2 hours but I didn't get close to anyone, and wore a mask.

My co-parenting partner was angry that I didn't tell her immediately, but I wasn't sure I was sick and I wasn't sure if I was just being paranoid. I spent a few hours saying goodbye to everyone in my head, and then felt that that was foolish. If I've ever met you, I really loved our time together and am just really grateful for all the wonderful experiences I have had. 

I felt worse after she went to work and then told her the next day. She wanted me to address the situation quickly, but I did not know she needed documentation to avoid work, and quarantine with me. I also wasn't sure how sick I was and/or I was sick and not thinking clearly. 

Anyway, we went to the local library which was set up as a testing center. Waited in line outside in the cold--I'm sure that didn't help my health, and it also didn't spread it being outside, socially distanced and with a mask on.

I got the results today that I tested positive for Covid-19. Coincidentally I feel worse today. Now it's all calls to my doctor and others trying to figure out what to do.

When we were tested they told us alkaline water, Mucinex and vitamin C

I honestly only felt slightly ill the previous two days and I did spend some time in close proximity to my daughter and co-parenting partner. I really hope they don't get it. My daughter's test results haven't come through but she was tested on Saturday. My co-parenting partner tested negative. She came in and told me to not touch our cat, the cat can carry it to them.

In College I read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, a fascinating book about Otto Rank that won the Pulitzer prize. Since then I have read many books on death and dying, took a course in social work school on the topic. 

I don't know how much of the above prepared me for the Buddhist acceptance of death and dying as a natural thing. One time I told my father that we come into the world pretty mellow. He said no we don't, thinking about attending my birth. I meant conception, being inside. That's when we begin, though we're not separate from our mothers then and shortly after birth for a while. Mother and child are one for a while, I learned in social work school, studying attachment theory. Being born is a trauma that we must recover from according to Otto Rank. 

Anyway, I think it's Buddhism that says the arrow is in the air and will fall to earth. Also the bubble, and even waves are metaphors for life. The only surprise of death is in association with denial. I sometimes wonder if we would have a more sane politics if people were more aware they would die. Would more people be like Atwater who regretted his politics at the end of his life?

I have a lot of regrets in my life, of hurting people through greed, selfishness and delusion, but I don't really feel like I need to experience more life at this time. I'd had an awesome life.

I really hope my children are OK, and if anyone is in a position to help my children or their mothers, I greatly appreciate that. I am prepared to die to some extent, though I may be kidding myself. I'm always wary of kidding myself, aping spiritual advancement that hasn't happened. Start where you are, right?! Avoid spiritual bypassism. 

In the USA mortality rate is below 2 percent if I can make out all the graphs and numbers. My age, my HTN and my obesity contribute to an increased chance, not sure how much. So I like my chances. This is by no means a death sentence. 

And there is no place you can go that makes your immune to death. I've read science fiction that had the fantasy of one day technology solving all the aging issues, but that is not here yet. I see tantalizing articles about discoveries about aging, but I'm not seeing anyone reversing it yet. 

I'll update with anything interesting. 

Correct me if I'm wrong

I've always been surprised that Sangharakshita didn't like the Transcendentalists. It's the perfect foil for puritanism. An appreciation of high art and nature. Striving for the best things without the metaphysics of it all. 

On the other hand, the writings are not easy to read. 

On the other hand, Emerson was quite into friendship.

A response to Christopher Titmuss

I like Christopher Titmuss' talk on FBA. But his post after the attempted coup, clangs with me. Of course you can always point out the delusion of delusions, the American dream for one. But I just don't see that that is the apt point at the moment.

I don't know how provocative he's trying to be. He takes talking points of conservatives when he points out that black lives mattered when Obama was president, ignoring the increase in police violence, and the increase in the police force of right wing people acting not just as police, but also judge and jury, and the permission that Trump gave these people to be out in the open with their white supremacy. 

Yes, if you're looking for a perfect world in the political realm, you're likely to be very frustrated. The Buddhist path is a path that will bring great rewards.

Here is my response:

A president can't harness every instinct in America. He has to choose. Biden was hoping to inspire law and order, after a president that is historically criminal. I don't think you have to take care of and account for the Trump supporters when you become president. Most Americans accept the political process, but those who stormed the capital did not, and are being punished for their crimes.

I'm not sure if that's the time to point out that the American dream contributes to people's suffering. I wouldn't go to a school after a gunman shoots down people and tell them that well, in the end, you're suffering if you don't start the Buddha's path. There's a bit of a clang there. Of course we can empathize with how people got to the point where they felt compelled to do such a thing, and I have enough empathy for everyone, but read the room dude.

 

Devotion

I challenge you to put Mahasuka's mantra in the background for a little while and not find yourself singing it later. I was just in the kitchen washing dishes and making some food and I found myself 

I cleave towards the secular Buddhism, and I dislike religious metaphysics, and theology. I find reading Buddhism to inspiration to meditate, and meditation is the key to Buddhism. For me. I don't make any claims about how Buddhism should be. I believe in exploring what works for you. And what working for you is something you know in your heart, and don't have to define it, though it would help to work it through with trusted friends.

It was to my utmost surprise when I fell in love with the puja, devotional chanting on my first retreat, and in conjunction with reading Sangharakshita's book on the puja. 

I believe that a mantra can put you in an adjacent mindful head space, call to mind a head space when you were on retreat and chanting a mantra. I am forever grateful to the guys who helped me to record an Amoghasiddhi mantra that I loved. I am grateful to a friend who sent me a copy of someone chanting a longer mantra, a purifying mantra. I also am grateful to a friend who gave me a CD of choral mantras. I am grateful to another friend who shared with me an Amitabha mantra. These sounds feel precious to me, important, helpful. I take refuge in the sangha.

I've never met Mahasukha. I haven't gone on a Buddhafield retreat. I hear they are wonderful. He has albums on the above link to Bandcamp and he has links to other stuff like his YouTube page. But I greatly appreciate his sharing of beautiful mantras. I just watched this video on Avalokita mantra; He explains, meditates for 7 minutes, and then the mantra begins around 9:30. It's an interesting version. 

Sedition and Coup attempt

I was pretty upset with the attempted coup. I rarely watch the news, but I streamed some CBSN and CNN. As always I read the NY Times, check in on Google News and Reddit. I listen and read Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook and in her emails.

I'm not sure if I want detachment and equanimity on such days. I called my friends. My friend was blase, and my parents talked more about the quarantine and their friends. I went for a walk. 

I asked what my ideas were about America that made me think sedition and pathetic coup attempt were so horrible.

The idea that keeps coming back to me is the idea of equality before the law. To me that means that it doesn't matter who you are, we are all equally responsible to follow the laws of the land. Nobody is above the laws. Trump wrote a executive order that sought to punish protesters of lawful government, that will apply to this protest.

If America doesn't want this to happen again, they were prosecute the people who broke the law. It's not a political matter. And there's no moving on or ignoring the laws. I know a lot of laws are not enforced. I'm pretty sure everyone who drives speeds at some point. There are people who don't drive, how do they break the law? Most people fib, but that's not against the law. Most people are fairly law abiding.

I have found a selfish reason to be ethical. Experiments in free flowing ethics have lead to difficult meditating. Because we are all connected, it's considerate to follow the laws. I've found that selfishly, being kind and considerate is very important to me. When successful it can even lead to the gladdening. The Gladdening is when you haven't created a karmic debt, and feel good about your contribution to the world. Veganism adds to my gladdening. I have too many regrets in my life to feel the gladdening personally, but I wish to cut down on my regrets, and move forward in a positive way. I just feel better when I try to be nice. It's easy to imagine you have exception to the rules, but it's quite complicated to really justify breaking the rules.

I do support peaceful protests, attempts to improve governance. I don't experience the attempted coup, to interrupt the certifying of the presidency as a protest. With 5 people dead, that's not a protest, breaking the law to interrupt a fair election, one that the idea of "stealing" is preposterous, that's a coup, and Trump's words were seditious and a factor in that. 

(I find it funny that Trump told Pence he's not his friend any more like some toddler. He's going to want a pardon soon, so maybe he should be nicer to Pence.) 

Also terrible is the woman who called up C-Span and asked if it wasn't true that the election was stolen. It took people dying for her to question the death cult spin she'd previously accepted. There has been a systematic effort at disinformation that is pernicious as well. The volume of crimes and lying by the president is disheartening even for people who remained in the republican party. Most people with integrity resigned from the republican party. I respect those people. The cabinet members who resigned after the attempted coup were like the people who unbuckle their seatbelts on a plane just before it stops, they've already gone for the ride.

In my opinion, Trump is responsible for the 350K+ deaths in the USA. New Zealand had 25 deaths, and projecting it out to the USA population, that's much less than 2K. So you can basically say that Trump is responsible for whatever number we have minus 2K, which seems insignificant. Basically he's responsible for not leading the country towards a non-New Zealand result. Maybe no US president could have steered the USA to such a good result. Maybe we're too stupid or too uncontrollable or whatever it is that would make us unable to get New Zealand results. Maybe. That Trump did not try put the consequences at his feet. 

Two days later, we see book deals canceled, attempts to identify and bring to justice those who have participated in this attempted coup. 

To those who make light of it, say they just certified in the evening what was interrupted in the afternoon. There have been efforts to say it was left wing people trying to pin trouble on the right--that is disproven, and shows that perhaps they do that on the other side. It's a question how much of the protests have been right wing thugs trying to smear left wing protests. That certainly happened in Nazi Germany, and recently in America. The parallels to Nazi Germany were not lost on many. The wannabe dictator Trump has been voted out of office. On the larger level, democracy worked, but to many it seems slow and reluctant to figure out what crimes a sitting president has commited. 

Of course we don't want lawsuits and whatnot to plague a sitting president. That is a republican move to depower a president, bring up indictments that are in fact baseless. Clinton's emails come to mind. The Hunter Biden narrative comes to mind. Bill Clinton getting a blow job comes to mind. The 20+ sexual assault cases brought against Trump will have to wait for him to leave office. Perhaps that is one of the reasons he doesn't want to leave office.

Most of the republican dirty tricks are perhaps not illegal. Ballooning the deficit and then turning into deficit hawks for Democrats is one. They don't want to roll out entitlements the people get used to, so they look like they're taking them away when they eventually come back into power.

My question is will he be removed before his time is up? And will he remain in America and where will he go if he doesn't remain here? He committed more crimes than Nixon, for sure, and Nixon resigned so he could get pardoned. 

Will the pardoning laws be rewritten? Will the electoral college be abolished, so the popular vote isn't even in question? Of course some bozo can come along and challenge the vote count, but from what I've heard this last election was a quite good one. There's not even a question that Trump lost, but yet there are people that believe that because he said it, and he has claimed the mainstream media is never truthful, only he speaks the truth. So there's no checks and balances if you just listen to him.

In the end, I think what I've learned from the politics of the Trump administration is that we can't turn our gaze away from politics, as repugnant as it can be. Tolerating frustration and not knowing is a key skill in this.

I also need to understand why it appears so upsetting. In a very real way there's a confrontation of the abstract and the real. There are paradoxes between freedom and rights. The freedom of speech does not include sedition. The ideals overlap, and can be contradictory at times. The judgement to negotiate these guideposts is what governing and politics is all about. Politics is a weird combination of the abstract and the concrete. That's why it befuddles me so much.

One of the touchstones I retreat to in a crisis is the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The Buddha doesn't have anything that is specifically relevant to this situation. But I have to admit that I lost some equanimity on January 6th. I had techniques and skills to regain my equanimity, and I was careful not to act out and base serious decisions on my upset state of mind.

Two days later I can process in public some of the happenings. I am in favor of punishing the coup attempt actors to the full extent of the law. They just certified the election in the evening instead of the afternoon, and Biden can be said to have no impediments for anyone to object to, to assuming the presidency January 20th. Five people died as a result of the shenanigans, so I don't see any reason to trivialize this event. Once again Trump's rhetoric was underestimated. America's exceptionalism in foreign policy is dead. I'm not sure if I even believed in it, but to me, it's clearly not even a question. 

I want to add that I'm disgusted to the level of political debate the country has sunken to. Up to the Trump presidency the political discourse mostly was at a higher level. I hope we can go back to debate, reason, common sense and concern for all Americans and minimize paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories. As far as I can tell the Trump administration stood for undermining public discourse, the press, enriching the rich and incompetence in federal government.

For me the heroes are the women who brought the sealed ceremonial electoral vote documents with them when they had to flee.

For me the hero is Heather Cox Richardson putting all this into historical context. I just got another email in my inbox, I'm going to read now.

To me the republican party is dead, they have betrayed "rejects monarchy, aristocracy, and hereditary political power; expects citizens to be virtuous and faithful in their performance of civic duties; and vilifies corruption." They will need a new leader to move forward. My hope is that at least the sedition and attempted coup forbid Trump from keeping power of the republican party and running in 2024. That is yet to be determined.

Ajahn Chah quote

 Like and Dislike

"If we still don’t know like and dislike as they arise, there is still some concern in our minds.  If we know the truth of these things, we reflect, ‘Oh, there is nothing to this feeling of liking here.  It’s just a feeling that arises and passes away.

Dislike is nothing more, just a feeling that arises and passes away.  Why make anything out of them?’ 

If we think that pleasure and pain are personal possessions, then we’re in for trouble, we never get beyond the point of having some concern or other in an endless chain.

This is how things are for most people."

Ajahn Chah