EFFECTS OF RIGHT RESTRAINT: full moon - Sunday 7th September 2025
It is good to restrain the eye. It is good to restrain the ear. It is good to restrain the nose. It is good to restrain the tongue.
DHAMMAPADA v. 360
There is so much happening in our world about which we can easly feel angry. If we try hard to not feel angry because the Buddha taught restraint is good, it is likely that anger won’t disappear; it will hide away in unawareness and resurface at another time. The Buddha did indeed teach that restraint is good. He also taught that mindfulness is good. If our efforts to be mindful are merely a mental exercise and are not including the fire we feel in our hearts when we are enraged, we may well fail. Mindfulness practice means we aim to feel the anger without becoming lost in it. Similarly with fear. Can we feel fear without becoming lost in fear. The cultivation of restraint is not the same as repression.
Q: The Increasing Of Greed Hatred And Delusion
(approx. 12 minutes) 27th January, 2025, Q: Is it the case that greed, hatred and delusion are taking a greater grip on the world? And, how do we hold this and work with this when it's effects seem to be all pervading?KEYWORDS: Living Buddha, speculation, evidence, technology, unawareness, anger, damage, influencer, greed, foolishness, discontentment, fear, responsibility, understanding, self-regulation, embodied mindfulness, conscious composure, integrity, smart phones, complacent, accurate understanding, affluence, weak, going without, electricity outage, frustration, disappointment, morning chanting, wisdom, storehouse of goodness, agents of suffering, Ten Forces For Transformation, parami, punnya, ocean, multidimensional, look deeper.
Q: Dealing With The Endlessly Critical Voice In My Head
(approx. 11 minutes) KEYWORDS: Q: "I have been keeping up the suggested '15 minutes of non-judgmental awareness practice' and am disconcerted to find an apparently endlessly critical voice in my head. I see where it comes from and how strong it is on sin and guilt, and how weak it is on forgiveness. I understand all too clearly what you mean by unacknowledged dukkha. How to proceed? If you have any more good advice, I will be glad to hear it." Compulsive controlling, unreceived, smoke, fire, indoctrination, knowing not-knowing, anger, counter design, spiritual faculties, heart language, head language, nebulous fear, reintegrated.
Q: Could The Mind Actually Become Our Friend?
(approx. 12 minutes) KEYWORDS: "Could the mind actually become our friend? At what point should we say....’enough, leave it be. Enough work has been done'?" There must come a point when we no longer need to keep looking back for the clearance of Dukkha.” Doubt, old pain, Ajahn Chah, friends, liking, trusting, honesty, stories, patient endurance, bhava tanha, obstruction, abstraction, balanced practice, allowing practice to happen, ‘doing the practice’, bowing, rituals, going for refuge, selflessness, ‘my way’, recovering, Aligning Meditation, disembodied, the unknown, limited disposition, open-hearted, befriending.
FEELING FEAR, FULLY: full moon - 23rd April, 2024
"Whoever has cut all that tethers and found fearlessness, who is beyond attachments and defilements, I recognise as a great being."
DHAMMAPADA v. 397
The idea of fearlessness is indeed attractive. How might we realise it? An initial approach could be to try avoiding anything we find frightening. Though it doesn't take a lot of insight to see avoidance strategies as unrealistic. Or, we could make the effort to wilfully repress feelings of fear. Such an approach is understandable in the case of children who don't yet have the faculties to reflect upon the consequences of denial. As adults, hopefully, we have learnt that when energy is denied, sooner or later it comes back to trip us up. If we follow the Buddha's advice, we will exercise our spiritual faculties – faith, energy, embodied mindfulness, collectedness, discernment – so as to be able to fully feel the feeling of fear: neither denying it nor indulging in it. With great patience, we keep training ourselves to truly meet fear, as it arises, in open-hearted awareness, because we are interested in knowing it accurately.