Balance

As Swami Chetanananda  so frequently pointed out.  Balance is a dynamic.  Trying to maintain ones balance without rebalancing is not feasible.  Balance, like trying to stay balanced on a bicycle is a good metaphor for the balance life demands.  It is dynamic and ever changing.  You balance on your bicycle and when it is time to stop riding you get off and shift to a new type of balance on your feet.  Not being able to effectively shift balance while riding or not being able to balance while ascending the bicycle to the earth in walking is dangerous.  And it is not a pose of balance to be bicycling or walking, but the dynamic of balancing and rebalancing, where if one were to pretend that one has a static pose that is perpetually balanced one is liable to bump his nose in a fall.  Balance is not dangerous. Imbalance could well be though.

Practices 01

My preliminary practice is to let my heart resonate loving kindness and compassion.  My practice is to let that loving kindness resonate with the universe around me.

A Short Interpretation of "Tayatha OM Gate, Gate, Paragate, Bodhi Swaha"

Tayahta OM gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha.   One who is in this way uplifted, OM, gone, gone, beyond gone, beyond ultimately gone, the pure compassionate intelligence I am that.

The Feeling of MIndfullness

We do a lot of things in our daily lives that limit our capacity to feel.  When we go inside of ourselves in meditation, we start feeling our blockages and as we drop the shields we use to wall off our feelings we start to feel again.  It isn't always pleasant.  But once we have acknowledged our feeling, then to that extent we come alive again.  This is not doing,  this is being done and getting on with it.  This is us not pretending we have such and such an attitude or self image, this is us feeling what we really feel like about our self image and what we are doing, and getting over it.

We all have our built in predilections representing the work that we have to do to free ourselves.  We might call it our "calling".  One wants to be a doctor, or a lawyer or a social worker or police man, what ever it is, it is our inner predilections calling us to do such and so.  But to grow from it we need to acknowledge what we feel like when we are living our professions or our recreations or our needs.   Who am I now and what am I feeling becomes the core of minfullness.  Mindfulness of being being aware of our body in our body,  how our body feels and how we are posturing ourselves in the physical sense and the feeling that we feel in our body, whether posturing, pain, strain or ease etc. .  Then also the body in the mind, how we look at ourselves, what our physical posture means to our self image.  Our emotions in our mind, how we feel ourselves as ourselves through such and so emotion.  And also our mind in our mind which is how we feel perceived as a being according to our image of ourselves.  There can be some dispute over whether these are accurately descriptive of the 4 Foundations of Mindfullness the Guatama put forth as a proposition and teaching.  This is how I remember them as being and what they mean to me.  Fundamentally, we are being aware of what we are, and how we are avoiding what is real.  

First Clarinet No. 2

This is the second installment of the "Clarinet" series. I just acquired the clarinet a few days ago and yesterday I finally had reeds for my instrument. Today I had the center joint fixed by getting it re-corked. Now I can actually make some coherent sounds. It still needs about $50 work repading and repairing leaks.  http://youtu.be/cfa7vVhh2gk

Yesterday's post

Truthfulness

In the same way I saw an ancient path, an ancient road, traveled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times. And what is that ancient path, that ancient road, traveled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times? Just this noble eightfold path: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration...I followedthat path. Following it, I came to direct knowledge of aging & death, direct knowledge of the origination of aging & death, direct knowledge of the cessation of aging & death, direct knowledge of the path leading to the cessation of aging & death...Knowing that directly, I have revealed it to monks, nuns, male lay followers & female lay followers...
—Nagara Sutta

‎^ Thanissaro Bhikkhu. "Nagara Sutta". Access to Insight. Retrieved 2008-05-06.

 What happens when we substitute the word "truthful" as the word "right" then we get: Truthful View; Truthful Aspiration; Truthful Speech; Truthful Action; Truthful Livelihood; Truthful Effort; Truthful Mindfulness and Truthful Concentration.

 There is also the fact that there are two truths in the world as well. The truth of one's perception of event and the truth of the event in the world.