language chains

Language is not brilliant but it is more or less all we have by way of communicating with others (or, is 80% non-verbal?)

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connections

March 31, 2011
Tricycle Daily Dharma


The Illusory Nature of Phenomena


When we look around us, we can see that nothing exists in isolation, which is another way of saying that everything is interdependent. Everything depends upon an infinite number of causes and conditions to come into being, arise, and fall away moment by moment. Because they are interdependent, things don’t possess a true existence of their own.

For instance, how could we separate a flower from the many causes and conditions that produce it —water, soil, sun, air, seed, and so forth? Can we find a flower that exists independently from these causes and conditions?

Everything is so intricately connected, it is hard to point to where one thing starts and another ends. This is what is meant by the illusory or empty nature of phenomena.

Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche, "The Theater of Reflection"

whose reality counts

enoughness

Celebrating the concept of "enoughness", Silva (Rohan Silva, senior policy adviser to the prime minister) claimed that "the three pillars of the 'big society' are all consistent with Schumacher". These pillars are,

• the decentralisation of power;
• public service reform; and
• social community reform helping people to come together to work responsibly for the common good.

We have, said Silva, "an urgent sense of needing to embrace enoughness".

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beautiful

 Man's task is twofold, first "to fully develop oneself" and second, "to form one's relationship to other people – family, groups, one's countrymen, mankind – sensibly, ethically, or expressed quite simply, with joy." (Schumacher, 1948)

"We can, each of us," (Schumacher) writes, "work to put our inner house in order." The guidance for this task, he concluded, should not come from the state, or from science and technology, but from humanity itself, "the traditional wisdom of mankind".



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right might?

“How have the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” 2 Samuel 1:27  

???

approaches

There may be only one mountain top but there are endless approach roads and partial maps. (Clark, 2011)

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invisible realities

Free Yourself from Ego

Even if we have a well-organized outer life, it can be very difficult for us to find inner happiness because we can never be satisfied so long as we have not cut the attachments due to ego. There is no end to it — it wants more and more — without any limit.

The ego is insatiable. So it seems necessary to work on that, to free ourselves from ego, with the help of teachings, especially the Buddha's teachings ... (There) we will find all kinds of ways and means of developing peace both externally and internally.

- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Invisible Realities"

graceful blisters?

In life as in dance: grace glides on blistered feet. (ALICE ABRAMS)

No pain, no gain.

The devil finds work for idle hands to do.

Arising and Passing

February 15, 2011, Tricycle Daily Dharma
Arising and Passing
Whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, gross or subtle, every sensation shares the same characteristic: it arises and passes away, arises and passes away. It is this arising and passing that we have to experience through practice, not just accept as truth because Buddha said so, not just accept because intellectually it seems logical enough to us. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux, and learn not to react to it.

—S.N. Goenka, “Finding Sense in Sensation”