Empty honour

This little passage from “A Heart Afire” demonstrates that just eleven words can fill your whole mind with things to think about!

“Of what use is the empty honour of an argument won?”

🙏🏼🕊🎶🎶

Blessings for your weekend everyone 🎶🎵🎼🕊

the empty boat

"A monk decides to meditate alone.

Away from his monastery, he takes a boat and goes to the middle of the lake, closes his eyes and begins to meditate.

After a few hours of unperturbed silence,

he suddenly feels the blow of another boat hitting his. With his eyes still closed, he feels his anger rising and, when he opens his eyes, he is ready to shout at the boatman who dared to disturb his meditation.

But when he opened his eyes,

saw that it was an empty boat, not tied up, floating in the middle of the lake ...

At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization and understands that anger is within him;

it simply needs to hit an external object to provoke it.

After that, whenever he meets someone who irritates or provokes his anger, he remembers;

the other person is just an empty boat.

Anger is inside me. "

Thich Nhat Hanh

La pensée de la semaine - Matthieu Ricard - la bile

La pensée de la semaine - Matthieu Ricard

La pensée de la semaine

Je ne m'irrite pas contre la bile
Ni les autres grandes causes de souffrance.
Alors pourquoi m'emporté-je contre les êtres ?
Ils sont, eux aussi, soumis aux circonstances [....].

Anger

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. ~ Mark Twain

Accepting fear

No Justice, No Peace | Tricycle

Ron Greenberg, a retired judge, says he’s learned to embrace silence and “not-knowing” in a job that demands fast answers and snap judgments. “Over and over I’ve heard prosecutors and judges say, 'I’ve heard that story before.’ But if you’ve heard it before, you weren’t listening.” Greenberg, who has practiced law for thirty-two years, eighteen of them on the bench, and whose meditation practice has been informed by vipassana training and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, ran an innovative court in Berkeley, California, dedicated to hearing drug cases involving defendants who are addicts. He would begin each session by dimming the courtroom lights and sitting in meditation for five minutes. The effect of this technique, he explains, helped defuse the tension that lawyers, defendants, and their families bring to the session.

Of course, tension, and even anger, are staples of the legal process. Many young law students view moral outrage as a wellspring for fighting injustice. At the Yale Law School retreats, says Goldstein, the roles of tension and anger were the most controversial. “I was trying to put forth the possibility that compassion for suffering might be a more productive and sustainable energy than anger at the injustice,” says Goldstein. “But there were many people who felt they needed righteous anger in order to be effective. One student said he was really cultivating anger, that he needed that energy as an antidote to his fear [of failing as a lawyer]. So we talked about accepting that fear, of getting okay with it as a way of freeing oneself from it, rather than using anger as a way to suppress it. This was the hardest notion to swallow.”

The habits of happiness | Matthieu Ricard - YouTube

The habits of happiness | Matthieu Ricard - YouTube

Minute 13:00, antidote and alternatives to obsession, to looking outwardly, to being hooked by triggers...
'Turn around the light to look within, then just return'....

lookng at anger, and it will vanish like frost in sunlight. ....as opposed to nurturing the anger by staring at the object of your anger.

from Stillwater Sangha of Minnesota - Thich Nhat Hahn

Don’t Always Trust Your Perceptions

Posted on July 14, 2016by StillWaterSanghaMN

Excerpt of “Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living” by Thich Nhat Hanh

Breathing in, I see myself as still water.
Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.

Near the mountain, there is a lake with clear, still water reflecting the mountain and the sky with pristine clarity. You can do the same. If you are calm and still enough, you can reflect the mountain, the blue sky, and the moon exactly as they are. You reflect whatever you see exactly as it is, without distorting anything.

Have you ever seen yourself in a mirror that distorts the image? Your face is long, your eyes are huge, and your legs are really short. Don’t be like that mirror. It is better to be like the still water on the mountain lake.

We often do not reflect things clearly, and we suffer because of our wrong perceptions. Suppose you are walking in the twilight and see a snake. You scream and run into the house to get your friends, and all of you run outside with a flashlight. But when you shine your light on the snake, you discover that it isn’t a snake at all, just a piece of rope. This is a distorted perception.

When we see things or listen to other people, we often don’t see clearly or really listen. We see and hear our projections and our prejudices. We are not clear enough, and we have a wrong perception. Even if our friend is giving us a compliment, we may argue with him because we distort what he says.

If we are not calm, if we only listen to our hopes or our anger, we will not be able to receive the truth that is trying to reflect itself on our lake. We need to make our water still if we want to receive reality as it is. If you feel agitated, don’t do or say anything. Just breathe in and out until you are calm enough. Then ask your friend to repeat what he has said. This will avoid a lot of damage. Stillness is the foundation of understanding and insight. Stillness is strength.

"If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. ~ Chinese Proverb

No Justice, No Peace | Tricycle

No Justice, No Peace | Tricycle

Ron Greenberg, a retired judge, says he’s learned to embrace silence and “not-knowing” in a job that demands fast answers and snap judgments. “Over and over I’ve heard prosecutors and judges say, 'I’ve heard that story before.’ But if you’ve heard it before, you weren’t listening.” Greenberg, who has practiced law for thirty-two years, eighteen of them on the bench, and whose meditation practice has been informed by vipassana training and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, ran an innovative court in Berkeley, California, dedicated to hearing drug cases involving defendants who are addicts. He would begin each session by dimming the courtroom lights and sitting in meditation for five minutes. The effect of this technique, he explains, helped defuse the tension that lawyers, defendants, and their families bring to the session.

Of course, tension, and even anger, are staples of the legal process. Many young law students view moral outrage as a wellspring for fighting injustice. At the Yale Law School retreats, says Goldstein, the roles of tension and anger were the most controversial. “I was trying to put forth the possibility that compassion for suffering might be a more productive and sustainable energy than anger at the injustice,” says Goldstein. “But there were many people who felt they needed righteous anger in order to be effective. One student said he was really cultivating anger, that he needed that energy as an antidote to his fear [of failing as a lawyer]. So we talked about accepting that fear, of getting okay with it as a way of freeing oneself from it, rather than using anger as a way to suppress it. This was the hardest notion to swallow.”

Shame as Manifestation of Greed, Hatred and Ignorance

Wondering if the feeling of shame is a manifestation of greed, hatred and ignorance.  Thinking of the article about Loving the Enemy,  of how the true enemy is within, not outside.


Felt Shame is a kind of self-directed anger?  The anger that I feel towards myself is another way of directing anger outward (except it is inward).


Something is not quite clear here.

You are Not Your Emotions

You are not your emotions

A fire reflected in a lake cannot burn the water. Neither can emotions
disturb the mind when you don't get involved in them. Don't identify
an emotion as your self. The fear or anger is not you, only and
impersonal phenomenon.

Mentally pull back from the emotion and turn
your awareness around to observe it. When in the grip of negative
emotion we tend to believe it will never end. But emotions are no more
permanent than thoughts.

With continued practice you'll find that you
only have to wait and any emotion, whether pleasant or unpleasant, is
bound to change.

–Cynthia Thatcher, from Just Seeing: Insight Mediation and Sense-
Perception (Buddhist Publication Society)

Anger: A Bigger Container

Tricycle's Daily Dharma: July 14, 2007

A Bigger Container

We can talk about "oneness" until the cows come home. But how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How? The pride out of which anger is born is what separates us.

And the solution is a practice in which we experience this separating emotion as a definite bodily state. When we do, A Bigger Container is created. What is created, what grows, is the amount of life I can hold without it upsetting me, dominating me. At first this space is quite restricted, then it's a bit bigger, and then it's bigger still. It need never cease to grow. And the enlightened state is that enormous and compassionate space. But as long as we live we find there is a limit to our container's size and it is at that point that we must practice.

And how do we know where this cut-off point is? We are at that point when we feel any degree of upset, of anger. It's no mystery at all. And the strength of our practice is how big that container gets. . . . This practice of making A Bigger Container is essentially spiritual because it is essentially nothing at all. A Bigger Container isn't a thing;  awareness is not a thing. . . .

--Charlotte Joko Beck