Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“Niramisa sukha arises from understanding the wider worldview of the Buddha and tilakkhana. One cannot be forced to calmness. Learning and grasping the Dhamma will bring progress.”
Oh, so I had it wrong: I thought I first had to calm down (mostly via moral living), then get niramisa (via formal sitting meditation), THEN I could start learning and grasping Dhamma. Alright, guess I still haven’t collected enough signposts yet. =)
Thank you.
I’ve spent probably 10 brain-scrambling hours reading PD today, revisiting some old ones, and found it’s probably not a good idea to go out of my way but don’t sweat it too much yet.
Starting out. Yeah. I’m still looking for the mundane Path, so you’re definitely right.
Thank you all for the helpful replies. =)
“one must not neglect seclusion and one must not forget to devote oneself to internal serenity of mind”
I’ve definitely got the seclusion thing down, probably way too much to the point of social dysfunction which is the main reason I’ve always been fretting so hard about how to ‘talk right’. But the latter I definitely need to work on, thank you for reminding me about less thinking & planning, more doing & calming down. But again I digress, sorry, navel-gazing & ‘OMG plz lookit mememe plzplzpkz’ is one of my ahem LEAST bad habits. =)
“The trouble with that is: who to?” Whomever you can, whenever you can. BUT– don’t frame it with Dhamma as that’ll probably make peoples’ eyes glaze over from the get-go. So, as I did with my sister over the phone earlier, start talking about morality, specifically “ways to be a ‘good person'”. Only you need to know you’re talking about Dhamma (I HOPE this doesn’t count as a lie of omission) but you can just drop in the likes of (surely all y’all with higher ‘levels of skill in Speechcraft’ can phrase these better =)” :
“I agree it’s fine to avoid needlessly killing bugs and cruelty to animals, just don’t neglect to abstain from cruelty to people: insults and hateful thoughts and whatnot”
“Lately I’ve been making a list of my bad habits focusing on of being less greedy, hateful/angry, and egoic/selfish, the least bad habits up top and working on improving them. Hey! Wanna join me in this project?”
Related: earlier I deleted hundreds of GB of pirated material (movies, music, PDFs, a quarter-million image files…) that I spent over 15 years accruing and meticulously organizing while thinking/saying that I’m transferring the merit of these good deeds to all beings. Hopefully it wasn’t a waste; I began because I was getting scared after reading about niraya and realizing how many nasty thoughts I’ve had throughout my life, and mostly just felt a burning-up in my face while doing so and for a good while afterwards. Sorry if I sound self-aggrandizing; I’m definitely not a sotapanna, not even close.
