Tricycle Daily Dharma April 30, 2013

Learning How to Live Not only is it of profound importance for each of us to understand in a deep way the law of impermanence but it’s also quite practical. It’s not merely metaphysical or something to be argued about in philosophy seminars and coffee shops. Learning the law of impermanence can be done there, too, but the Buddhist teaching is designed to help us learn how to live.   - Larry Rosenberg, “The Weather is Just the Weather”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 29, 2013

Working with Habits Changing ourselves involves learning how to develop those states, behaviors, and dispositions that are healthy, while allowing the unhealthy ones to atrophy from neglect.   - Andrew Olendzki, "Turning the Corner"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 28, 2013

Taming the Monkey Mind Your thoughts run around like a wild horse and your feelings jump about like a monkey in the forest. When the monkey and horse step back and reflect upon themselves, freedom from all discrimination is realized naturally.   - Dogen, "Instructions for the Tenzo"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 27, 2013

On Not Playing the Victim One of the worst kinds of elevation of the self is playing the victim. There are times when we actually are victims, when actual blame is appropriate, but to take on the identity of a victim and be stuck blaming is something else. Surprisingly, it is actually a subtle form of elevation—I’m not responsible, you are. This is giving up all freedom.    - Nancy Baker, "The Seventh Zen Precept"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 26, 2013

In It Together As our awareness becomes more liberated, we become more aware of the suffering of others, and of the social forces that aggravate or decrease suffering. The bodhisattva path is not a personal sacrifice but a further stage of practice: If I am not separate from others, how can I be fully awakened unless they are too? Today our world calls out for new types of bodhisattvas, who look for ways to address suffering, dukkha, as it is institutionalized in our social and political lives.   - David Loy, "Why Buddhism Needs the West"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 25, 2013

You Are Not Your Pain You can’t go preventing pleasure and pain, you can’t keep the mind from labeling things and forming thoughts, but you can put these things to a new use. If the mind labels a pain, saying, 'I hurt,' you have to examine the label carefully, contemplate it until you see that it’s wrong: the pain isn’t really yours. It’s simply a sensation that arises and passes away, that’s all.   - Upasika Kee Nanayon, "Tough Teachings To Ease The Mind"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 24, 2013

Forgiving Past Harms Most of us find it very difficult to forgive individuals who have hurt us deeply. Why should we forgive them? Although we sometimes make others feel uncomfortable when we express our anger toward them, we are the ones who wind up suffering the most when we do so. Maintaining anger is similar to picking up a red-hot piece of coal to throw at someone—whether we hit our target or not, we are the ones who get burned.   - Matthew Flickstein, "Forgiveness"

Tricycle Daily DharmaApril 23, 2013

Becoming Intimate with your Neurosis The teacher serves as a mirror but also encourages your ability to trust in yourself. You begin to trust in your basic goodness instead of identifying with your neurosis. There’s a shift of allegiance. Then the obstacles begin to seem temporary, and what’s permanent is the wisdom. To the degree that you become intimate with your neurosis—not acting-out and not repressing—to that degree you discover your wisdom.   - Pema Chödrön, “Unconditionally Steadfast”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 22, 2013

Gateway to Happiness We are constantly encouraged to reject what is unpleasant, disappointing or difficult. 'What's all this suffering? Let's be happy! Have fun!' But our suffering is not our enemy. It is only through a relationship with my pain, my sadness, that I can truly know and touch the opposite—my pleasure, my joy, and my happiness.   - Claude AnShin Thomas, “Conceptions of Happiness”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 21, 2013

Riding the Highs and Lows of Life Skillful attitudes of mind are the key to facing potentially explosive situations and the ongoing highs and lows of life and practice. In fact, recognizing these attitudes and cultivating their antidotes is the foundation for all spiritual growth. By cultivating skillful attitudes of mind, we will respond to more and more of life with awareness and wisdom.   - Steve Armstrong, "Got Attitude?"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 20, 2013

The Mind's Buddha Trying to find a Buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space. Space has a name but no form. It's not something you can pick up or put down. And you certainly can't grab it. Beyond this mind you'll never see a Buddha. The Buddha is a product of your mind. Why look for a Buddha beyond this mind?   - Bodhidharma, "The Snaggletoothed Barbarian"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 19, 2013

Daydreams of a Poet It is possible to take our existence as a ‘sacred world,’ to take this place as open space rather than claustrophobic dark void. It is possible to take a friendly relationship to our ego natures, it is possible to appreciate the aesthetic play of forms in emptiness, and to exist in this place like majestic kings of our own consciousness. But to do that, we would have to give up grasping to make everything come out the way we daydream it should.   - Allen Ginsberg, “Negative Capability: Kerouac’s Buddhist Ethic”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 18, 2013

The Power of Perspective Only a being’s perspective leads to suffering. Two people in the exact same situation, according to their outlook and expectations, can have completely different experiences. Turn that around, and any conditions can be a vehicle for bondage—or freedom and awakening.   - Vinny Ferraro, "The Heartful Dodger"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 17, 2013

A Change of Heart A change of heart requires a great deal of courage and a great deal of compassion. The courage is to not avert our gaze, but instead to turn to the various sufferings in our own life or in the world around us and see them with the concern and compassionate eyes of the Buddha.   - Jack Kornfield, "A Change of Heart"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 16, 2013

Meditation in Action Buddhism often appears to promote personal transformation at the expense of social concern. Some Buddhist teachings claim that the mind does not just affect the world, it actually creates and sustains it. According to this view, cosmic harmony is most effectively preserved through an individual's spiritual practice. Yet other Buddhists amend the notion that mind is the primary or exclusive source of peace, contending that inner serenity is fostered or impeded by external conditions. Buddhists who place importance upon social factors and social action believe that internal transformation cannot, by itself, quell the world's turbulence.   - Kenneth Kraft, “Meditation in Action”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 15, 2013

Living a Virtuous Life Buddhist practice is never about creating goals and trying to achieve them. It’s about learning to see clearly for ourselves our own real state in each and every moment. As we come to see what life really is, we begin to behave more logically and ethically, because that’s what makes sense.   - Brad Warner, “The Enlightenment Pill”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 14, 2013

The Light of Reality  The sense of self creates a feeling of solidity, like the apparent solidity of the clouds veiling the face of the sun, but at certain moments a gap is opened up, through which we may receive a glimpse of the light of reality.   - Francesca Freemantle, “The Luminous Gap in Bardo”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 13, 2013

Great Enlightenment Great enlightenment is the tea and rice of daily activity.   - Dogen, “Tea and Rice”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 12, 2013

Simple Practice It’s definitely the case that we can practice at any given moment. We can always try a little more to be kind, to be compassionate and be careful about what we do and say.  - Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, "Keeping a Good Heart"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 11, 2013

See the World in a Moment It is very important to see your life not only from the narrow view of your egoistic telescope but also from the broad view of the universal telescope called egolessness. This is why we have to practice. Right in the middle of the stream of time, we have to open our eyes there and see the total picture of time. Through spiritual practice we can go beyond our egoistic point of view. We can touch the core of time, see the whole world in a moment, and understand time in deep relationship with all beings.  - Dainin Katagiri, “Time Revisited”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 10, 2013

Beyond the Reach of Stress We should be intent on cleansing and polishing our hearts so that they can gain release from their worries and preoccupations, the source of pain and discontent. Peace, coolness, and a bright happiness will arise within us, in the same way as when we unshackle ourselves from our encumbering burdens and debts. We'll be free—beyond the reach of all suffering and stress.  - Ajaan Lee, “Sowing the Seeds of Freedom”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 9, 2013

The Ground of Compassion To be truly and wholly present even for the briefest moment is to be vulnerable, for we have arrived at the point where the obstacle that fear constructs between ourselves and others dissolves. It is here that the heart is drawn out of hiding and the inherent sympathetic response called compassion arises.  - Lin Jensen, “An Ear to the Ground”

Tricycle Daily DharmaApril 8, 2013

Putting Your Body to Good Use What should you do to put your body to good use? Most people have no idea. A craftsman who borrows some tools will try to make the best possible use of them while they are available. Your body, too, is actually on loan to you for the time being, for the brief period left before it is taken back from you by death. Had you better not use it to practice the dharma while you can? - Dilgo Khyentse, "The Day After You Die"

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 7, 2013

How to Let Go The starting point is realizing that letting go is not a dramatic moment we build up to some time in the future. It is happening now, in the present moment—it is not singular but ongoing. Letting go is based on our present realization of the reality of impermanence. - Judy Lief, “Letting Go”

Tricycle Daily Dharma April 6, 2013

An Ever-Present Refuge Love and compassion make us feel safe because they express the safety of their source—the deep buddhanature within us, the unchanging inner space of primal awareness that cannot be harmed. By receiving unconditional love and compassion from those who’ve awakened before us, we sense that we too can relax into the very source of such love in the unconditioned nature of our minds, our buddhanature. - John Makransky, "Aren't We Right to be Angry?"