Showing results for five step practice five-step
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[…] to Moore’s Law as it is popularly understood, computing power doubles every eighteen months. This rapid exponential growth has two important implications. The first is that every five to six years completely different spaces and completely different capabilities emerge. As a consequence, creative thinkers have limitless scope for their imagination. The second implication is […]
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[…] traditions, this strength of character is not talked about explicitly. In Mahayana Buddhism, for instance, it is covered by the cultivation of compassion and the corresponding cultivation of the first five of the six perfections: generosity, ethics, patience, energy, and meditative stability (the sixth is wisdom). In Vajrayana, it is what samaya (commitment to awakening) is about, a commitment […]
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[…] happening, serve what is true, and accept the results. Brings us into the mystery When we bring our attention to bear in a situation and act, we step into a mystery: the point where we are at the limit of our ability in attention and we don’t know whether we are in pattern or […]
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[…] have, in fact, taken spiritual awakening as the foundation of your life. Work with a spiritual friend and follow the way of the Dharma These are practical steps. Every teacher has their own ideas but the key point is that refuge is part of a path rather than an enthusiastic response to an initial […]
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[…] and aspiration prayers. Between meditation sessions, we were encouraged to read teaching and aspiration prayers to fill the time and keep our minds from wandering. We recited five or six long prayers at the end of the evening ritual. And the daylong practices involved pages and pages of prayers of many different types. All […]
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[…] aspects of forgiveness—the dynamic in the relationship that tied the two parties together no longer holds. It is gone. Forgiveness is also a way for you to step out of the transactional framework that has reduced our relationship to what is or is not owed. In this sense, forgiveness is about returning to the […]
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[…] locked by necessity or by choice into a materialistic approach to life. In all probability, no more than a few million have even a possibility of spiritual practice, and of those, probably only a few thousand may actually touch the mystical experience we call buddha nature. We are deeply conditioned to think and feel […]
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[…] We had just finished that long list of negations and everyone was a bit off balance, having had the rug pulled out from under them four or five different ways. The next lines were, “Because for bodhisattvas there is no attainment, they rest, trusting the perfection of wisdom.” “When he reaches the perfection of […]
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[…] to learn or develop. A short list would probably include motivation, skills in meditation and prayer, contemplation, etc. Like music and painting, most of us learn spiritual practice better with someone, rather, than, for instance, by reading a book. When we interact with an actual person, we have to give expression to what we […]
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[…] emotional reactions are reactions, and the path of Buddhism is about developing the skill and capacity — through emptiness, compassion, right speech, and so on — to step out of reaction and into response. How we respond in our lives, however, is very much an individual matter and depends on many factors. Many people […]
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[…] in one of the more progressive counties of one of the more progressive states in the US, I am living in a bubble. In fact, if we step back a bit, we can see that many of us have lived in a series of both nested and overlapping bubbles and they are all popping. […]
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[…] being Buddhist and focus instead on being human. In particular, I wrote that our responsibility is to use the skills and capabilities we develop through practice to step out of our own reactivity. Then we have the possibility of seeing clearly and and responding appropriately, whatever that may mean in the particular circumstances of […]
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[…] cliff into an ocean of feeling and experience that is deeper, vaster, and more unknown than anything I have encountered before. So be it. I take the step. When I do, I cannot hold on to the conceptual mind. I stop being able to think in the way I ordinarily do. Another reason why […]
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[…] the world or the demands of reactive processes. It consists of a set of power-based methods for presence. Presence, of course, is the aim of all spiritual practice. But two problems consistently show up: Passivity in developing the level of attention that makes insight, compassion, and intention possible. Passivity in cutting through internal and […]
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[…] the feeling or evoke it. Then engage your regular activities while you are the feeling. Look at the world while you live in the feeling. In this step, you see clearly that the way the feeling causes you to experience the world is purely projection. Finally, whenever you can, look at what is experiencing […]
