Tag: beautiful mindstates

1) Background of the teaching of the 25 Beautiful Mindstates in the Abhidhamma Pitaka. 2) The 52 mental factors 3) The meaning of confidence, the first of the beautiful mind states. 4) Two kinds of confidence: confidence in an external factor and confidence in ourselves. 5) The meaning of confidence in the Buddhist context: faith in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. 6) Confidence in our ability to do the practice and confidence in integrating the practice as a structure for how we live our lives. 7) Understanding the value that we embody in ourselves and for our community. 8) Confronting and overcoming obstacles in our lives. 9) Realizing better health for ourselves from a clear sense of moral and spiritual purpose. 10) Finding empowerment in our lives through the practice and the Dharma: being able to work directly with suffering and being able to understand how suffering arises.
7/23/2022

1) Two definitions of Mindfulness 2) Varying descriptions of mindfulness: An alertness through the six sense doors; a heightened awareness of our internal and external environment; a sense of metacognition; the forces of automaticity and unconsciousness; the relation of mental health to physical health; the ability to discriminate between wholesome and unwholesome action; strengthening of our brains executive functions. 3) The basic premise of mindfulness: that we do not see the world as it actually is. The relationship between “bare awareness” and “associative thinking”. The subjective as opposed to objective nature of experience. Jeffrey Martin and our “narrative self”. 4) How does mindfulness work: Quieting the commenting judging mind. Attaining focused concentration, returning to a state of bare awareness or “pre-verbal” awareness; Seeing our experience clearly with a mind that is fully concentrated. 5) What is the result of mindfulness: Opening to the fullness of our experience through the five physical senses. Opening to the truth of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 6) Mindfulness and the concept of “flow”. 7) What are the benefits of mindfulness: liberation from suffering, the wisdom path. Achieving our fullest potential as human beings. Achieving a sense of presence in our lives. Seeing our interconnectedness with all other sentient beings. 8) The effect of mindfulness practice on the brain: the idea of neuroplasticity. The work of Richard Davidson. The work of Dan Siegal. 7) How mindfulness enhances our prefrontal cortex, the work of Dan Siegal. It increases our capacity for attuned communication, emotional balance, response flexibility, insight, empathy, fear modulation, intuition, and morality.
July 30, 2022

1) The definition of shame and fear of harming: protectors of the world. 2) Two fundamental ideas as the foundation of the Dharma: the Law of Karma and the Principle of Ahimsa. 3) Understand shame and fear as guardians of the world by how they prevent us from performing harmful and unwholesome actions. 4) How the idea of non-self explains our interconnectedness with all other beings. 5) The nature of moral shame. 6) The nature of moral fear or dread. 7) The capacity to change our behavior. 8) The difference between consciousness and unconsciousness in Buddhist thought.
August 6, 2022

) Alobha or goodwill or non-greed and Adosa or non-hatred. 2) Defining greed as excessively strong desire, reprehensible or evil. A greed that leads to craving and clinging. 3) Differentiating between wholesome and unwholesome desires: the moral and ethical implications of our pursuit of desire. 4) The difference between a need and a want: learning how to find contentment in our lives and avoid the obsessive pursuit of pleasure. 5) Overcoming the power of expectations, a more subtle form of greed. 6) What does greed feel like in the body? What does non-greed feel like in the body? 7) How to work with greed with mindfulness, acceptance and understanding. 8) What is adosa or non-hatred? First, defining hatred: an intense hostility or aversion resulting from fear of injury. 9) The meaning of adosa: a complete acceptance of one’s self and others: a state of trust, openness and acceptance…a sense of unity with all other beings, similar to what a child feels as it enters the world and how a sense of separate self develops through conditioning. 10) Understanding the mind of a child as an expression of Buddha Nature. Adosa is fundamentally a feeling of our Buddha Nature. 11) Bringing the quality of awakening to our Buddha Nature into our lives.
August 13, 2022

1) Brief review of previous mindstates: confidence, mindfulness, shame and fear of harm, non-greed and non-hatred. 2) The qualities of the mind: composure, buoyancy, pliancy, efficiency, proficiency. The difference between composure and buoyancy, and pliancy, efficiency and proficiency. 3) Composure of mind: examples of an agitated, restless mind. 4) Attaining a sense of composure and peace through tranquility or concentration practice: the jhanic practices. 5) Understanding tranquility and peace as an elemental form of happiness. 6) Richard Davidson and his research on Gamma waves in meditators. The impact of meditation on producing gamma waves. 7) Buoyancy of mind: a lightness of mind and body and a sense of vividness and intensity, sleepiness and drowsiness. 8) The role of mental composure and buoyancy, not only as a measure of mental health, but also as a measure of intelligence. 9) How our mental health can impact our physical health.
August 20, 2022

1) What is a healthy mind? A mind that is pliant, efficient, and proficient that results from meditation. 2) Pliancy: a form of cognitive flexibility, an elasticity of mental factors and consciousness. 3) Appreciating the usefulness of habits but not getting stuck in them. The importance of flexibility and adaptability to the survival of the human species. 4) Pliancy as the quality of fluidity of mind. 5) Learning how to be flexible and adaptive in unfamiliar circumstances like traveling or the recent pandemic. 6) Understanding flexible thinking as the key to creativity…the role of intuition or cognitive flexibility. 7) Rigidity as a foundation for mental disorders and suffering. 8) How does meditation encounter resistance and rigidity? The power of noting. 9) Efficiency of the mind : where the mind and body work effectively without struggle or effort…the effective operation of any system to produce an outcome with minimal effort and minimal waste. 10) The effect of meditation on young students and in improving intelligence…. understanding fluid intelligence. 11) Maximizing fluid intelligence as we age through meditation.
August 27th, 2022

1) The sequential and cumulative nature of the mindstates as they evolve through successive stages as a result of meditation. 2) Review of pliancy of mind: a sense of cognitive flexibility. 3) Review of efficiency of mind: a mind and body working together with minimal effort and minimal waste. 4) Proficiency of mind: the ability to integrate our mental and physical capabilities to bring a sense of skill and mastery to our lives. 5) Mental proficiency and the sense of being in a state of flow. 6) Having a proficient mind and the definition of intelligence. 7) The power of meditation in helping us understand how our minds actually work and overcome mental blockages. 8) The effect of the meditation practice in building awareness of the body and the mind.
September 3, 2022

1) The characteristics of the five states of Composure, Buoyancy, Pliancy, Efficiency and Proficiency of mind. 2) The difference between Rectitude of Mind and Pliancy, Efficiency, and Proficiency. 3) Rectitude of Mind: bringing our life into consonance with a vision that embodies our values in life. A sense of straightness and moral correctness. 4) By what standard is moral correctness defined? Within the social, cultural or religious context that one finds one’s self. 5) What is the Buddhist standard for moral correctness? The concept of ahimsa and the law of karma. 6) The moral and ethical dimension of the Dharma that is revealed in a state of pure awareness: the state of pure mindfulness. 7) Seeing our true reality and our common humanity with all other beings…coming to a new understanding of self and other and a new system of morality and ethics based on ahimsa and the law of karma. 8) Learning how to be selfless in our lives: moving toward selfless action as a lifetime practice. 9) The difference between the definition of rectitude within the Buddhist context as compared to rectitude as defined within most other social, political, cultural, or religious systems.
September 10, 2022

1) Brief review of the 25 Beautiful Mindstates. 2) Speech, action, and livelihood: the three abstinences based on the principles of ahimsa and karma. 3) The three forms of wrong speech: false speech or tale bearing, harsh and malicious speech, and vain speech or idle chatter. 4) The reason people tell lies. Small and big lies and their karmic consequences. 5) Understanding how to bring mindfulness into our everyday lives through right speech. 6) Malicious speech: speech that causes disharmony or hatred. 7) The problem of bullying and abusive speech in society. The reasons for abusive speech: stress, low self-esteem, low access to education, and peer pressure. 8) Understanding harsh speech. Learning how to live with conflict in our lives. The five conditions for right speech: the right time, is it factual, is it gentle or harsh, is it helpful, and is it kind. 9) Learning how to catch ourselves with mindfulness before uttering harsh words.
17 September, 2022

1) What it means to evolve spiritually. 2) The difference between traditional spiritual characteristics and the development of our physical mental health. 3) The five “neurobiological” qualities: pliancy of mind, buoyancy of mind, and pliancy, efficiency, and proficiency of mind. 4) The result of the development of these mental qualities in terms of how we actually live our life through speech, action, and livelihood. 5) The reason for the pre-eminent importance of right speech: because it is a direct reflection of our thoughts, and leads to actions that have consequences in the world. 6) Harsh speech: living up to the high standards of the Buddha. How to resolve conflict without suffering. 7) The five conditions for appropriate speech: the right time, based on facts, is my speech gentle or harsh, are my words helpful, are my words kind. 8) How to avoid automatic and unconscious reactions to our emotions. 9) Vain speech or idle chatter: how to speak appropriately in conventional social situations. Learning to manage gossip in our lives. 10) Understanding sila as the training in the abstinences…seeing our life as a training to attain spiritual purity in our lives. 11) Seeing the world with wisdom or seeing the world through our conditioning.
24 September, 2022

1) Review of the 25 Beautiful Mindstates. 2) How thoughts, become speech, become actions that harden into habits and character: how the process of conditioning creates who we are. 3) Right action as articulated in the Five Precepts. To refrain from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and the taking of substnaces that cloud the mind. 4) the importance of contentment as a preventative to killing, stealing or lying. 5) What is right action: overcoming our inherent conditioning and habit patterns, overcoming automaticity and unconsciousness. 6) The power of mindfulness in showing how unconscious habit patterns can cause suffering… seeing the power of intentions. 7) Understanding intention as a link to our sense of personal agency and responsibility. 8) Learning how to practice right action in a world of greed, hatred, and delusion.
October 8, 2022

1) The definition of right action: The Five Precepts. 2) Description of the three major precepts, not killing, not stealing and sexual misconduct. 3) The importance of acceptance and contentment in one’s life. 4) The definition of right action as positive, wholesome, morally ethical action. 5) Right action as a natural manifestation of wisdom or the knowledge of meditation and the Dharma. 6) Right action as an expression of sila, morality and living harmoniously with all other beings. 7) Right action as a manifestation of mindfulness: the five mindfulness teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. 8) Right action as a manifestation of compassion: the words of the Dalai Lama. 9) The radical nature of the Buddha’s teaching in erasing the barrier between self and other. 10) Defining right action within the context of our understanding of spirituality. 11) How we understand “spirituality” in contrast to what the Buddha teaches about spirituality as a moral and ethical teaching about who we are and how we behave in the world.
15 October, 2022

1) Brief review of 25 Mindstates. 2) The definition of Right Livelihood: living a balanced life. 3) Wrong livelihood: business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, business in poisons. 4) Understanding right livelihood as a vehicle for self actualization. Work that supports justice, equality, and ecological sustainability. Right livelihood as an expression of one’s sacred purpose in life. 5) Learning how to be compassionate in the workplace. 6) Finding meaning in work by separating productivity from income. Finding value in all forms of productive labor. 7) The Buddha’s teaching of earning and living and wealth: persistence, protection of one’s wealth, keeping good company, and balanced living. 8) How to manage wealth: remaining happy in one’s accomplishments; protecting one’s wealth; being generous in donating and supporting others. 9) Three forms of happiness: the happiness of accumulating wealth; the happiness of using one’s wealth in a meritorious fashion; the happiness of blamelessness or right action in building wealth. 10) How to cultivate right livelihood: right mindfulness; not clinging to self or me and mine; avoiding harm to one’s self and others; being blameless in thought and action. 11) The fundamental principles of ahimsa and the law of karma.
Oct. 22, 2022

1) The development of the mind states that lead to right speech, action, and livelihood. 2) The definition of right livelihood and wrong livelihood. 3) Developing an attitude of contentment or happiness with what one already has. 4) The great suffering in the world caused by our need to kill animals to eat. The consequences of our industrialized mass slaughter of animals for food. 5) Experiencing the consequences of eating an animal. 6) Finding peace and contentment through right livelihood. 7) Understanding the consequences of greed, hatred, and delusion for ourselves, our society, and our planet.
October 29, 2022

1) Speech, action, and livelihood, mental factors that result from the cultivation of the mind through meditation: a cumulative development from mental cultivation to how we behave in the world. 2) Finding a livelihood that connects how we behave with our spiritual evolution and how this is challenged by culture and changes in modern society. 3) The role of culture in defining our attitude to achievement in work: whether we emphasize highly individualistic and competitive values or more family or group oriented values. 4) Changes in contemporary American society: the fall in the American labor participation rate for young males, the decline of the role of men as primary breadwinners, and the social and political consequences. 5) Right livelihood as seen with the Judeo Christianic context. 6) Right livelihood in the Buddhist context as the arena where Absolute and Conventional Reality converge. 7) Understanding the crisis of identity and alienation in our population as a result of larger global trends and the consequences of these trends for our society.

5 November, 2022

1) Review of factors leading up to compassion: the flowering of the heart that arises out of right speech, action, and livelihood: the Wisdom Path. 2) The definition of compassion: the heart that trembles in the face of suffering. 3) The personal and social benefits of compassion. 4) Why it is difficult to practice compassion: the impact of aversion. 5) Two personal stories about compassion. 6) Understanding compassion not as a concept but as a practice in our lives. 7) Understanding the equivalence between seeing suffering in others and seeing suffering in ourselves: understanding the Four Noble Truths. 8) The foundation for understanding our common humanity: the idea of non-self, our interconnection with all other beings, and how compassion is the expression of our bond.

November 12, 2022

1) Understanding compassion as a practice. 2) Understanding the equivalence of compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. 3) How we fail to acknowledge our own suffering and in doing so fail to understand the teaching of the Four Noble Truths. 4) The far enemies of compassion: cruelty, emotional reactivity, demonizing others, and hostility. 5) The near enemies of compassion: complacency, seeing everyone as the same, and pity. 6) The role of mindfulness: the first component of compassion, the awareness of present moment experience. 7) How compassion facilitates self awareness of our own suffering.

November 19, 2022

1) Mudita: a pure joy in the well being of others, a joy unadulterated by any form of self interest. 2) The far enemy is envy or jealousy. 3) Rejoicing in the good deeds of others and sharing in the merit of those good deeds: the concept of spiritual merit. 4) The fundamental basis for mudita is our understanding of our basic interconnectedness in our human journey. 5) Trying to understand how it feels to feel jealousy or envy in the body and how it feels to feel joy in the happiness of others. 6) Understanding the role of conditioning in our lives in influencing our ability to feel compassion, love, and sympathetic joy. 7) Being able to feel joy for others depends on our ability to feel joy within ourselves. 8) Mudita as a form of generosity of spirit. 9) Why is it so difficult to feel happiness for the good fortune of others? 10) How to cultivate joy in our lives. Learning to appreciate our own qualities and find joy in our actions of kindness and empathy. Understanding the importance of gratitude and appreciation as a source of joy. 11) The relationship between sympathetic joy and lovingkindness and compassion. 12) Mudita as a form of concentration meditation. 13) Finding joy in our own lives as a foundation for finding joy in others. 14) Understanding the bliss that comes from direct contact with existence.

December 10, 2022

1) Definition of Metta: a sincere wish for the well being of others without any sense of self interest. 2) The Karaniya Metta Sutta: Buddha’s original statement on Lovingkindness. 3) The three parts of the Metta Sutta: the application of Metta in daily life, the cultivation of Metta through meditation, and the expression of Metta through all our human activities. 4) The concept of spiritual merit and how Metta brings our merit to fruition in our lives. 5) How Metta influences our behavior in terms of our psychology. 6) How, by loving others, we free ourselves of negative, hateful emotions. How spiritual “cleansing” allows us to truly love others and by loving others, we benefit ourselves. 7) The near and far enemies of Metta. 8) The methods of meditating on Metta: Radiating Metta to people and radiating metta to places. 9) The blessings that Metta bestows upon us. 10)The disparity between the Buddha’s teachings and the conditions in today’s modern world.

December 24, 2022

1) Definition of equanimity. 2) The six forms of equanimity according to the six sense doors. 3) The role of conditioning in biasing how we respond to our experience and the role of equanimity in freeing us from our conditioning. 4) The difference between the equanimity of a householder and a renunciant or monk. 5) Equanimity as an enlightenment factor. 6) The five factors that lead to equanimity. 7) Equanimity about formations: equanimity through the understanding of dukkha, anicca, and anatta. 8) Understanding how karma operates in an impersonal way and, therefore, why there is no “self” responding to our experience.

December 31, 2022

1) Brief review of the 25 Beautiful Mindstates. 2) What means to afhieve equanimity in our lives. 3) Equanimity as a culmination of the concentration practices and the journey through the sixteen stages of awakening. 4) Equanimity as the culmination of the four Brahmaviharas. 5) Equanimity as a state that embraces all phenomena and is free from bias or prejudice and operates through all our six sense doors. 6) The importance of conditioning on how we perceive reality and how we define our self. The distinction between the arahant and the householder. 7) Equanimity based on the knowledge of impermanence and suffering. 8) Equanimity as one of the Seven Factors of Awakening. 9) The nine insight knowledges leading to the experiential understanding of impermanance, suffering and non-self. Understanding the impersonality of karma and the absence of self. 10) Understanding the implications of non-self and the possibility for peace in this world.

January 14, 2023

1) Why equanimity is the culmination of the four brahmaviharas: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. 2) Why equanimity represents the epitome of spiritual wisdom: understanding the concepts of karma and non-self. 3) Understanding sankaras: what is a karmic formation? What is the role of conditioning. 4) If all our behavior is based on our conditioning, who is the agent of our actions? What is the pathway to freedom? 5) How our life depends not on what happens to us but on how we respond to our experience. 6) Understanding the impersonal nature of the karmic forces controlling us and the absence of a permanent “self”. Final liberation as the liberation from karma. 7) How ignorance drives us from lifetime to lifetime. 8) How we can see suffering as our friend and our teacher. 9)The wages of suffering in the world today.

21 January, 2023

1) Equanimity as the resolution of the question of karma and anatta or non-self. 2) The nature of sankhara or karmic formation as a process of cause and effect beginning with our thoughts and rippling out into the world. 3) So what are our thoughts? Thoughts are responses to our experience based on our conditioning. 4) But all of the conditioning influences in our life are impersonal. So, where is the “self” in terms of what we think and how we respond to our experience…that is the definition of “non-self”. 5) The illusion of self in terms of how we think that what we think is who we are. 6) But, if I am only my thoughts and my body which is non-self, who am I? 7) Who I am is the capacity for pure conscious awareness itself. That is the difference between pure conscious awareness and thinking? 8) Pure conscious awareness as basically mindfulness. 9) Prapanca, or the tendency to proliferate our thoughts around our experience. 10) What is the difference between thoughts and emotions? How are human beings different from animals? 11) How do we see the difference between thoughts and emotions, and what does it mean for awakening? 12) The role and purpose of meditation. 13) Understanding equanimity as the true gateway to final awakening.

28 January, 2023

1) Equanimity as the peace that comes from wisdom and understanding. 2) Understanding the relationship between absolute and conventional reality in our lives. 3 ) Understanding the process of karma, how it conditions how we respond to our experience, how we think, and our tendency to identify with our thoughts as our self….the illusion of self. 4) If there is no self, then who are we?….the capacity for pure conscious awareness. 5) Seeing experience clearly and seeing how the mind proliferates around our experience…how we suffer. 6) Equanimity as a feeling…neither pleasant nor unpleasant. How mindfulness helps us from being caught up in the cycle of desire and aversion. 7) How not to get attached to equanimity. 8) Equanimity as the culmination of the four jhanic stages. 9) The knowledge of the Buddha: the knowledge of the recollection of past lives, the knowledge of the arising and passing of all things, the end of greed, hatred, and delusion. 10 The mutual interaction between mindfulness and equanimity leading to final awakening.

February 11, 2023

1) The definition of wisdom: the ability to exercise judgment and good sense. The difference between wisdom and intelligence. 2) Wisdom in the Buddhist context: the ability to see the consequences of our actions and act accordingly. 3) The difference between the experiential realization of the teachings as distinguished from the theoretical knowledge of the teachings. 4) The three stages of wisdom: 1. theory, learning the doctrine; 2. reflection, assimilating the teaching; and 3. realization, personally experiencing the teaching through meditation. 5) How mindfulness links all these three stages together. 6) How mindfulness works to see thoughts as thoughts, dis-identify with our discursive thinking and see the karmic framework in which our thoughts occur. 7) Seeing craving, aversion, ignorance. Seeing our suffering and opening to the desire for liberation.

18 February, 2023

1) Review of the 25 Beautiful Mindstates. 2) The difference between intelligence and wisdom and the three stages of attaining wisdom. 3) What is the opposite of wisdom…ignorance. 4) The lack of conscience or concern for the moral and ethical implications of our actions. 5) The karmic chain of wrong view, wrong intention, wrong action, and wrong livelihood leading to wrong effort and mindfulness…the path to suffering. 6) Wisdom as the culmination of the Eightfold Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths. 7) The eight path factors: the wisdom factors, the virtue factors, and the concentration factors. 8) Right view as a mind initially lacking understanding and wisdom leading to a mind that can acknowledge suffering in our lives. 9) Right view as the understanding of the Four Noble Truths. 10) The process of recognizing and overcoming wrong view in our lives. 11) What is the source of wrong view? How does it drive our lives and keep us in ignorance?

25 February, 2023

1) Right view as the embodiment of the Four Noble Truths. 2) Right intention is the intention to abandon all wrong views, clinging and craving, and all that leads to suffering in the world. 3) The symbiotic relationship between right view and right intention. 4) A sharing of the fundamental concepts of the Dharma in a common sense sort of way. 5) The power of karma as a process of cause and effect and as an energy that moves through our lives. 6) The power of thoughts: how karma manifests in our mind as our thoughts and how these thoughts create a filter through which we view reality. 7) How our identification with our thoughts create a false sense of self. 8) The power of awareness to cut through the veil of illusion and that touches to the very nature of experience itself. 10) The Scylla and Charybdis of pleasure and pain. 11) The balance between our lives in the conventional world and our connection with the absolute in the world. 12) Summary of the major concepts of the teaching.

March 4, 2023