Tricycle Daily Dharma January 31, 2013

Mature Wisdom The test of how far your wisdom has matured lies in the strategic skill with which you can keep yourself from doing things that you like to do but that would cause long-term harm, and the skill with which you can talk yourself into doing things that you don’t like to do but that would lead to long-term well-being and happiness. In other words, mature wisdom requires a mature ego. - Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Hang On to Your Ego”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 30, 2013

Unraveling Desire The truth is that we like our preferences and prejudices, we like defining ourselves in terms of what we like and don’t like. It is precisely desire’s entanglement with the sense of self that makes this all so difficult to unravel. Fortunately, there is a relatively easy and accessible way to counter the powerful forces of desire: the cultivation of equanimity. Every moment of mindfulness is also a moment of equanimity. - Andrew Olendzki, "The Buddha's Smile"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 29, 2013

Understanding and Respect Learning about other faiths helps us to understand, and to live side by side with, differing views and belief systems. To remain in one tradition without absorbing the benefits of the others seems disrespectful to the gifts that the Buddha passed down to us. Only through mutual understanding and respect can we successfully implement what the Buddha taught. - Scott Hunt, “Scott Hunt’s Seaworthy Dream In Two Parts”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 28, 2013

The Tyranny of Reaction When you aren’t run by reactions, you see things more clearly, and there is usually only one, possibly two courses of action that are actually viable. Freedom from the tyranny of reaction leads to a way of experiencing life that leaves you with little else to do but take the direction that life offers you in each moment. - Ken McLeod, “Freedom and Choice”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 27, 2013

Deeper into Practice Many people are doing shamata meditation. This is a kind of resting meditation, also called 'calm abiding.' This is good, but in Buddhist training you must go deeper than this. It is important to go deeper into emptiness—not nothingness, but into understanding emptiness as the nature of mind. This is where wisdom and compassion come from. - Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, "Trust Through Reason"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 26, 2013

Helping Each Other Through History's accelerating like technology's accelerated. Can't go back. We can blow the whole show up. Or we can calm fear, see the world is really changing, like a dream, & go explore & help each other through. It's all safe because as Einstein & the Buddhists secretly tipped everybody off long ago: the whole show is a harmless wave-illusion.  - Allen Ginsberg, “‘Letter to the Wall Street Journal,’ 1966”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 24, 2013

The Possibility of Transformation Only because of emptiness can things change and flow. Emptiness is not a vacuum, a black hole, but the possibility of endless transformations. There is no more grasping, or self-created barriers and limitations. The Buddha-nature can shine through and express itself fully. - Martine Batchelor, “The Ten Oxherding Pictures”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 23, 2013

What Connects Us All To be able to suffer with is good news because it means you can share power with, share joy with, exchange love with. Let your pain tell you that you are not alone. What we thought might have been sealing us off can become connective tissue. - Joanna Macy, “Schooling Our Intention”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 22, 2013

Transcending our own Views If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that even if the truth comes and knocks at our door, we won't want to let it in. We have to be able to transcend our previous knowledge the way we climb up a ladder. If we are on the fifth rung and think that we are very high, there is no hope for us to step up to the sixth. We must learn to transcend our own views. - Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Heart Sutra”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 21, 2013

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. If the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha are about anything, they are about a profound understanding of identity and the broadest possible meaning of liberty—teachings that sooner or later had to appeal to a people for whom suffering and loss were their daily bread. - Charles Johnson, "A Sangha by Another Name"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 20, 2013

Abandoning Futile Endeavors To look for total satisfaction in oneself is a futile endeavor. Since everything changes from moment to moment, where can self and where can satisfaction be found? Yet these are two things that the whole world is looking for and it sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it? But since these are impossible to find, everybody is unhappy. Not necessarily because of tragedies, poverty, sickness, or death: simply because of unfilled desire. Everybody is looking for something that isn’t available. - Ayya Khema, “No Satisfaction”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 19, 2013

The Reward of Practice As you bring alignment, relaxation, and resilience into your daily life, your breath automatically becomes fuller and starts moving through your entire body, just as the Buddha suggested in his description of meditation. Without forcing a thing, let your breath breathe you: breathe into your entire body, and breathe out just as effortlessly. This condition, nothing more, nothing less, is really the reward and benefit of the practice. - Will Johnson, “Full Body, Empty Mind”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 18, 2013

Body in Practice In a sense, all of Buddhist practice takes place here, in this most intimate realm: here, in the family, shoulder to shoulder with fellow workers, beside each other on the cushion. Even alone in a cave, there is no way out of the sense object we call the body. We meet each other face to face, and so have all our teachers and ancestors met each other. In this way have all the Buddhas taught. Hand to sweating hand. - Sallie Tisdale, "Washing Out Emptiness"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 17, 2013

Our Highest Intentions No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, 'What is my highest intention in this moment?' If you can have enough awareness to take this small step, your heart will give you an answer that will take the conversation in a different, more positive direction. - Jack Kornfield, "Set the Compass of Your Heart"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 16, 2013

Revealing What is Hidden Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the heart; it moves us beyond mere concepts to allow for a direct experience of reality. Meditation embodies the way of awakening: both the path and its fruition. From one point of view, it is the means to awakening; from another, it is awakening itself. - Lama Surya Das, "The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 15, 2013

The Ultimate Reflection The Buddha exhorted his disciples to reflect on death a lot—to use it as the ultimate prompt to practice now, in this moment; to practice every day. To stoke the fire before it’s too late. To prepare ourselves to make skillful choices in the moment when we leave this body. The same things that impede meditation are those that cloud our view at death: pain and emotional distraction. The better we master these fetters in life, the better chance we have of forgoing them at death. - Mary Talbot, "How Buddhists Can Prepare to Die"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 14, 2013

Adversity's Blessing When empathy spontaneously arises, we sense the power of love as a blessing revealed by adversity. How embarrassing it is to see how preoccupied we have been with our own petty concerns! Seeing how affection stirs people to acts of selflessness inspires us to extend ourselves as well. With lovingkindness we see the needs of others and respond. - Judith L. Lief, "Welcome to the Real World"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 13, 2013

Knowing When to Speak Saying things you shouldn’t say or speaking much more than is necessary brings a lot of agitation to the mind. The other extreme, complete silence, or not speaking up when it is useful or necessary, is also problematic. Applying right speech is difficult in the beginning; it takes practice. But if you practice every time you talk to someone, the mind will learn how to be aware, to understand what it should or should not say, and to know when it is necessary to talk. - Sayadaw U Tejaniya, "The Wise Investigator"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 12, 2013

Compassionate Action When we are energized with anger we often do things that worsen our situation. Being compassionate does not mean being passive. We can actively work to counteract injustice and harm, but we do so with compassion, not self-righteous anger. With compassion, our positive efforts can be sustained for a long time and will be effective. - Thubten Chodron, "Working with Anger"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 11, 2013

Facing Fear To willingly reside in our distress, no longer resisting what is, is the real key to transformation. As painful as it may be to face our deepest fears, we do reach the point where it's more painful not to face them. This is a pivotal point in the practice life. - Ezra Bayda, "Bursting the Bubble of Fear"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 10, 2013

The Thought Remedy Generosity trusts the emptiness that runs through things, even ungenerous or ungainly things—it links to the clarity that underlies all our madness. Whenever my thoughts turn toward greed, acquisitiveness, or stinginess, my shoulders tense up, and it feels as if I’m holding my breath. To find a remedy, I don’t have to improve my thoughts, though—just be generous with them. Then freedom seems to appear automatically. - John Tarrant, "The Erotic Life of Emptiness"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 9, 2013

Accessing our Inner Strength Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It's the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength. - Pema Chodron, "The In-between State"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 8, 2013

Growing through Pain The meditation orientation is not about fixing pain or making it better. It's about looking deeply into the nature of pain—making use of it in certain ways that might allow us to grow. In that growing, things will change, and we have the potential to make choices that will move us toward greater wisdom and compassion, including self-compassion, and thus toward freedom from suffering. - Jon Kabat-Zinn, "At Home In Our Bodies"

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 7, 2013

Developing Equanimity When we really see, in our mind’s eye, a person we think we don’t like, and instead of solidifying our reasons for hatred we honestly wish them happiness, good health, safety, and an easeful life, we start to forget what we thought we hated and why we felt that way in the first place. A sense of equanimity toward everyone arises as we do this practice—we feel compassion for those who were once invisible to us, and our disregard and apathy morph into concern for their well-being and safety. - Cyndi Lee, “May I Be Happy”

Tricycle Daily Dharma January 6, 2013

A Great Dharma Feast When we take words to be statements of ultimate truth, then differences of opinion will inevitably result in conflict. This is where ideological wars come from, and we see in the history of the world an endless amount of suffering because of it. But if we see the words and the teachings as different skillful means for liberating the mind, then they all become part of a great dharma feast. - Joseph Goldstein, “One Dharma”