<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Morality and Daily Life</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_category?p_l_id=&amp;mbCategoryId=10272</link> <description>A place to discuss all aspects of practice related to being in the world, speech, relationships and in general interactions and actions when "off the cushion".</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:43:00 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T00:43:00Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: Meeting darkness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602557</link> <description>Yes, since &amp;#034;beginingless time&amp;#034; the Buddha also mentioned how we have all been beheaded countless times during which the blood (if collected would fill the vast oceans many times over). It&amp;#039;s difficult to fathom the horrors that go on in this world, now and before and will surely come after as well.... and we have been both the perpetrators and the victims many times over.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, with that in mind, I wholeheartedly agree with Ajahn Brahm when he says the the most compassionate thing we can do for this world is to liberate ourselves. Spend time uprooting the defilements so that we won&amp;#039;t have to continue contributing to the ceaseless round of suffering so in evidence....&lt;br /&gt;Therefore as you say &lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I try to meet whatever arises be it pleasant or unpleasant. I try to experience life as it really is and as it happens.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a very good place to start and continue.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Many years ago I visited an &amp;#034;exhibition&amp;#034; at a hospital in Bangkok. Full of huge poster size pictures of people injured (from a variety of causes), sick/diseased or disabled. It was a real &amp;#034;gore fest&amp;#034;. It could be taken to be very depressing aspect of life OR viewed as just the way it is. Without becoming too morbid about it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A friend of mine has just returned from Burma. She was practicing very austere techniques of sitting with/through intense pain (she could sit lotus for six hours! or she was able to sit &amp;#034;Burmese style&amp;#034; crossed leg one in front of the other for 10 hours straight. Some of the Burmese there were sitting 16 hours!! From 1pm to 5am!!). Just her telling me about it made me sweat!!!&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, she said that she was able to &amp;#034;break through the pain barrier&amp;#034; as it were. The initial 3 hours or so could be worse than after 8 or 9.... And the pain would come and go. Excruciating at times. And then poof gone for a while only to be back later. I know extreme pain (longest I&amp;#039;ve ever sat was 3 hours and that was hell pain enough, I can&amp;#039;t even contemplate what she was getting up to). &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;She said that what she learnt the most from her 3 months there was how much we fear pain. The avoidance of pain physical or emotional governs so much of we as human beings try to do. She is beginning to see how so much of all this pain is in the mind. And how even with extreme physical pain we add to it so much mentally.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;My practice has been mostly around vipassana and samatha meditation. &lt;strong&gt;I know that I need to do some metta practice to balance out my practice&lt;/strong&gt; as a means to allowing the darkness in because I know that to live only in the light is to live in ignorance.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think that metta is a great practice to cultivate too.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enough said.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Piers</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 21:15:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602557</guid> <dc:creator>Piers M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T21:15:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Consciously staying between 3th and 4th nana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602485</link> <description>Hi &lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt; John,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I still have stifness in my neck, upper back and shoulders as I am writing this.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I started a lot of yoga in an intense training of six months when these issues arose (and itchiness and head pressures.. iron skull/octopus-on-head). I used and use Ray Long, MD,&amp;#039;s notes, which he freely gives online at BandhaYoga (I&amp;#039;m not any affiliate). Best wishes : )</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 19:01:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602485</guid> <dc:creator>katy steger</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T19:01:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Consciously staying between 3th and 4th nana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602481</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;John Power::&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;When I reach early A&amp;amp;P, the breath first goes fast and then it gets slower and slower, and then fast again and then slower, this cycle is a sign of early A&amp;amp;P. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eric M W&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yup, the breathing pattern is definite A&amp;amp;P.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I suggest you be careful. The A&amp;amp;P Event can come and zap you without warning, then you&amp;#039;re in the Dark Night whether you like it or not. If you really don&amp;#039;t want to deal with shittiness of the higher insight stages, the wisest course of action is to stop vipassana altogether and indulge in concentration states. If your mindfulness is high enough to hit early A&amp;amp;P, second jhana should be relatively easy for you to access, once you get the hang of ingoring the 3C&amp;#039;s.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When I first read MCTB, the descriptions of the Dark Night sounded frightening, so I decided that insight practice wasn&amp;#039;t for me at that time in my life. But, a little noting practice couldn&amp;#039;t hurt, right? Later that night, I had a hard time falling asleep, and then I had a vivid dream filled with bright lights and mythical content. Reality exploded. Since I wasn&amp;#039;t very familiar with the maps, I had no idea that anything important had happened. I hit the Dark Night and got my ass handed to me, and I&amp;#039;ve been dealing with the complex consequences for two years now. Trying to raise a family, work, and balance meditation is not easy. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Learn from my mistake.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hi Eric,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think I had some A&amp;amp;P experiences years and years back (mid 1990s) way before I ever did any meditation retreats (that was the speculation of a few here when i mentioned it like 4 or 5 years ago). But that was all v different phenomena to what I&amp;#039;ve had in more recent times:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I described in another thread some experiences of being on retreat such as seeing bright lights and really really wild and &amp;#034;violent&amp;#034; shaking, body contortions, twisting and general flailing about of the arms and head. Daniel pointed out A &amp;amp; P symptoms. What I neglected to mention was also exactly as described as in the breath speeding up rapidly or slowing down markedly and sometimes stopping altogether for quite a while (easily a minute plus sometimes). So, that was 1 &amp;amp; 1/2 years back on retreat and also on another retreat more recently. Plus these symptoms still occur daily off retreat.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve also experienced a lot of DN crap for years probably. This is unanswerable I guess because it&amp;#039;s so individual and depends on what anyone does or doesn&amp;#039;t do on or off retreat of course... Just makes me think thought as to how long can these A &amp;amp; P experiences can continue for?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On retreat it has gotten so hectic at times that a 1 hour sitting is a real work out! I&amp;#039;m a lot better at &amp;#034;controlling&amp;#034; it than I used to be but it&amp;#039;s still very much an effort.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Piers</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:58:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602481</guid> <dc:creator>Piers M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T18:58:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Consciously staying between 3th and 4th nana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602468</link> <description>Thanks Eric for your answer and advice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You said that after you crossed the A&amp;amp;P, you have been dealing with the DN for two years now.&lt;br /&gt;Now I think about it, I have crossed the A&amp;amp;P on at least two retreats and after both of the two I struggled with the DN.&lt;br /&gt;After my first retreat I thought that meditation only made me more anxious and fearfull (now I understand this is DN, before your post I thought that I was simply just a beginner meditator who didn&amp;#039;t have much wisdom at that time).&lt;br /&gt;After my second retreat I remembered having to struggle for one year, during that year I meditated a lot, especially off the cushion.&lt;br /&gt;During the third retreat I struggled with the DN (didn&amp;#039;t know the maps yet), the first day I couldn&amp;#039;t see clearly anymore but just went on(Dissolution). I quited at the fourth day (thinking I was meditating wrong, not knowing I was actually making progress). But after this retreat I didn&amp;#039;t remember struggeling with the DN. So now I am thinking, how come I didn&amp;#039;t experience DN symptoms after the third retreat?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PS: about a week ago I was walking in the sun with my jacket on and I experienced a very intense itch at several parts of my body. This remained for five minutes and I just stood still and observed it. I quess this wasn&amp;#039;t an A&amp;amp;P because I still have stifness in my neck, upper back and shoulders as I am writing this.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:11:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602468</guid> <dc:creator>John Power</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T18:11:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Consciously staying between 3th and 4th nana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602407</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;When I reach early A&amp;amp;P, the breath first goes fast and then it gets slower and slower, and then fast again and then slower, this cycle is a sign of early A&amp;amp;P. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yup, the breathing pattern is definite A&amp;amp;P.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I suggest you be careful. The A&amp;amp;P Event can come and zap you without warning, then you&amp;#039;re in the Dark Night whether you like it or not. If you really don&amp;#039;t want to deal with shittiness of the higher insight stages, the wisest course of action is to stop vipassana altogether and indulge in concentration states. If your mindfulness is high enough to hit early A&amp;amp;P, second jhana should be relatively easy for you to access, once you get the hang of ingoring the 3C&amp;#039;s.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When I first read MCTB, the descriptions of the Dark Night sounded frightening, so I decided that insight practice wasn&amp;#039;t for me at that time in my life. But, a little noting practice couldn&amp;#039;t hurt, right? Later that night, I had a hard time falling asleep, and then I had a vivid dream filled with bright lights and mythical content. Reality exploded. Since I wasn&amp;#039;t very familiar with the maps, I had no idea that anything important had happened. I hit the Dark Night and got my ass handed to me, and I&amp;#039;ve been dealing with the complex consequences for two years now. Trying to raise a family, work, and balance meditation is not easy. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Learn from my mistake.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:40:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602407</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T16:40:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Consciously staying between 3th and 4th nana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602295</link> <description>I am studying the insight nana&amp;#039;s through practising vipassana meditation and reading MCTB&amp;#039;s progress of insight.&lt;br /&gt;A few month&amp;#039;s ago I thought I was cycling through re-ob and early EQ in daily life but now I think it was 3C&amp;#039;s and A&amp;amp;P.&lt;br /&gt;I have been on retreat a few times but at that time I didn&amp;#039;t know the maps, that&amp;#039;s why I am now relating my meditation experiences with the maps. Although I find it a bit hard in daily life, because the experiences tend to be less intense and are of a longer duration, offcourse this depends on the effort that is made to be mindfull. I would have this stiffness in my neck, upper back and shoulders, and because I was so equanimous towards it, I thought it was early EQ. When reading MCTB&amp;#039;s progress of insight again, and especially reading the information about 3C&amp;#039;s and early A&amp;amp;P again, I realised that I was going back and forward between these two. Because I am in my last year of university and have to write a couple essays I think it is best to stay between these two and not cross the A&amp;amp;P. So the last couple of weeks it is like this: my neck, upper back and shoulders are stiff, then I am as mindfull as possible during the day and meditate one hour a day. Then I reach early A&amp;amp;P, the breath first goes fast and then it gets slower and slower, and then fast again and then slower, this cycle is a sign of early A&amp;amp;P. Because I don&amp;#039;t want to cross A&amp;amp;P, I intensionally don&amp;#039;t use much effort to be mindfull and then the next day or so, there is the stiffness in the neck, upper back and shoulders again. I want to cross the A&amp;amp;P and use the maps to navigate through the DN and investigate and learn from it all, I just think it is not smart to do that at this time. After I graduate I can go on retreat again and then investigate and learn from the insight nana&amp;#039;s with the MCTB&amp;#039;s maps with me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does anybody else consciously stays before the crossing of the A&amp;amp;P? And did anybody else went on retreat with MCTB&amp;#039;s maps in mind?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:42:37 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602295</guid> <dc:creator>John Power</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T14:42:37Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Meeting darkness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602260</link> <description>The photo of Omayra Sanchez has always haunted me. She was a Columbian girl who was killed in a 1985 volcano eruption. She was pinned in dirty water for three days, but rescue crews did not have the equipment to get her out. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;upload&amp;#x2e;wikimedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wikipedia&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2f;3&amp;#x2f;3b&amp;#x2f;Omayra_Sanchez&amp;#x2e;jpg"&gt;Photo in question&lt;/a&gt; (NSFL)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also-- &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;media&amp;#x2e;npr&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;assets&amp;#x2f;img&amp;#x2f;2012&amp;#x2f;12&amp;#x2f;16&amp;#x2f;conn_shooting_0022_wide-b9b87d112df7dbe808b91a7d9fb6da30789d8d44-s4-c85&amp;#x2e;jpg"&gt;this photo&lt;/a&gt; of children being led away from Sandy Hook after the shooting.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There was a quote somewhere attributed to the Buddha, saying that we have all cried oceans of tears during our time in samsara. Metta is a good practice, but the second brahma vihara, compassion, is also profound practice when seeing pictures like this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;May ____ be free of suffering. May ____&amp;#039;s suffering finally cease.&amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 13:08:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602260</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T13:08:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Meeting darkness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602214</link> <description>I was watching a compilation of car crashes on youtube earlier to help face my fear of driving.  There were some really bad fatal accidents in there, and it kind of just hit home that, one moment those people had been alive, and the next, they obviously weren&amp;#039;t.  It suprised me how much that mattered to me, as I&amp;#039;ve never been a very compassionate person.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The thing to realize, though, is that these feelings don&amp;#039;t really change anything in the world.  Those people are still dying of ebola whether or not you feel compassion for them.  People will still be dying every moment in horrible ways no matter how much you try to help.  So the best thing we can do, as human beings, is form ourselves into something that will not add to this pot of suffering.  Work within your own life to help the people you have access to.  When you feel angry or worried, remember that the world is suffering and use that to put yourself in perspective.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You do not need to feel bad about the world because feeling bad does not help the word.  We can live happily in spite of suffering and do our best to help when it is possible for us.  Kindness does not require despair. </description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 10:10:50 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602214</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T10:10:50Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Meeting darkness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602183</link> <description>I try to meet whatever arises be it pleasant or unpleasant. I try to experience life as it really is and as it happens. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Recently I viewed an image on the internet of a hospital ward in Africa. A ward for victims of Ebola. There was an accompanying article stating that the doors to the ward were locked to prevent the patients from leaving the room. The doors were opened only to allow for the removal of the corpses and the occasional spraying of the dying patients with chlorine. On the floor were two deceased persons lying in pools of urine. The person in the foreground was a young girl of perhaps 9 or 10 years old. She was wearing one of those colorful floral dresses proudly worn by African girls and women.   A trail of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. She lay on her side on the floor. I stared stunned at the image for a while and began to imagine the horror experienced by the girl in her final days. Alone, terrified, and no doubt in significant pain. I tried to hold the thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations as they flooded my awareness. And then I realised that the young girl’s experience is but a drop in an ocean of suffering in the world. I felt angry, fearful, hopeless, sad, and confused. I don’t want to live in ignorance of the suffering of others. I want to understand how to hold it. I want to become compassionate. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My practice has been mostly around vipassana and samatha meditation. I know that I need to do some metta practice to balance out my practice as a means to allowing the darkness in because I know that to live only in the light is to live in ignorance. I would like to know how other people face and respond to the darker aspects of life and human nature. A reference to authors, videos, or personal responses from members of this forum would be great. With metta!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 07:56:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602183</guid> <dc:creator>Darin</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T07:56:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Re-evaluating Morality</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599928</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve been thinking about morality a lot lately. In particular, I&amp;#039;ve been trying to integrate insight practice and the implications of insight with morality. So here at the DHO, generally speaking, there is a particular tendency towards hardcore practice (obviously). Many post-path practitioners describe attaining path through merciless, hardcore noting of literally everything that enters into the field of perception. While I agree that this approach can bring on insights and path moments rapidly and effectively, there is a potential shadow side. That is, there seems to be a tendency for these types of meditators (or at least myself) to deal with problems by noting them away, reminding ones self that the sensations that make up any issue are subject to the 3 C&amp;#039;s, and that one ought to regard the situation with equanimity. This leads to an interesting question: is it always best to approach all situations as though one were practicing insight? During periods of intensive practice, it makes perfect sense to just keep noting and striving towards equanimity no matter what comes up, for sake of continuity of practice. But how hard should we bank on this approach? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In practicing this way, obviously one shouldn&amp;#039;t block out or exclude negative (or positive) sensations. One should alway be aware of potential shadow-sides, such as relaxing mindfulness when times are good but then trying to note one&amp;#039;s way out of negative experiencing, creating a complex where one simply regards mindfulness as a way to escape from negative experiences. But assuming one is practicing without preference or to the exclusion of sensations, and equanimity towards all possible scenarios, externally and internally, what is left for morality and conventional solutions to deal with?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For example, if you have relationships that are not perfect (so basically all of them), is one to express frustration, anger, dislike, and disagreement in a healthy way to try to make the scenario better, or is one to simply be as compassionate as possible while acknowledging all the feelings and thoughts that exist with equanimity and mindfulness? If one is able to exist compassionately and mindfully amidst contention and imperfections, barring functional impediments, what need is there to try to change the scenario? Is there a level of mindfulness and equanimity that makes the need to address minor situational frustrations and insignificant imperfections less? Obviously, there are things that just need to be addressed and dealt with, but at what point is it safe to just accept the things in life that give us minor inconvenience? At what point does attempting to modify your surroundings and relationships become something that demonstrates lack of equanimity and acceptance? At what point does practicing equanimity and acceptance in place of modifying your relationships and surroundings demonstrate overcompensation in the wisdom department and lack in the intrapersonal skills department?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I find myself practicing compassion towards others amidst contention, and a tendency to view things from an insight point of view. &amp;#034;This suffering is not occuring to any agent, so why should I attempt to modify the situation to get rid of non-personal, impermanent sensations?&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;Attempting to change this scenario is just a way in which I am reinforcing the notion of someone who is trapped within or receiving this &amp;#034; etc...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m curious to learn how others practice morality in the context of things they feel are unjust, ways they feel wronged, etc..., especially in context of how insight into impermanence and agencylessness have changed their practice of morality.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 19:48:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599928</guid> <dc:creator>Mind over easy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T19:48:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599726</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Chris J Macie:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;re Richard Zen (10/1/14 11:08 AM as a reply to Chris J Macie.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;I think Odysseus is another good example because he&amp;#039;s used in the &lt;strong&gt;Enneagram&lt;/strong&gt; and his trials represent all 9 types.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting tip. Can you point to what author / book goes into that parallel with Odysseus&amp;#039; trials?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;amazon&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;Complete-Enneagram-Paths-Greater-Self-Knowledge-ebook&amp;#x2f;dp&amp;#x2f;B00FL1HSTY&amp;#x2f;ref&amp;#x3d;sr_1_2&amp;#x3f;ie&amp;#x3d;UTF8&amp;#x26;qid&amp;#x3d;1412600090&amp;#x26;sr&amp;#x3d;8-2&amp;#x26;keywords&amp;#x3d;Enneagram&amp;#x2b;22"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Enneagram-Paths-Greater-Self-Knowledge-ebook/dp/B00FL1HSTY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1412600090&amp;amp;sr=8-2&amp;amp;keywords=Enneagram+22&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 12:55:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599726</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T12:55:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599642</link> <description>re Richard Zen (10/1/14 11:08 AM as a reply to Chris J Macie.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;I think Odysseus is another good example because he&amp;#039;s used in the &lt;strong&gt;Enneagram&lt;/strong&gt; and his trials represent all 9 types.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting tip. Can you point to what author / book goes into that parallel with Odysseus&amp;#039; trials?</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:51:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599642</guid> <dc:creator>Chris J Macie</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T09:51:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599639</link> <description>re Max (10/1/14 10:04 AM as a reply to bernd the broter.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;want to be absolutely clear on what you&amp;#039;re saying. &amp;#034;Metta for myself&amp;#034; means repeating &amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;May I be happy and peaceful&amp;#034;&lt;/strong&gt; (with some conviction) repeatedly for some alloted length of time?&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Lots of other good advice here, and references to the many excellent audios of metta meditations. (My favorite is one by Sharon Salzberg on a CD that once came with a Tricycle subscription.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would just add:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) a common sequence of phrases, used by many authors, runs:&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;may I be free from danger&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;may I be free from mental suffering,&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;may I be free from physical pain,&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;may I live with ease of heart, whatever comes my way in life&amp;#034; (this one from Sharon Salzberg)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Most authors encourage using what ever personal variations of words (for these basic ideas) that are most meaningful for one.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2) Note the phrasing &amp;#x2013; &amp;#034;may I be FREE FROM …&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It may be vague as to what &amp;#039;happy&amp;#039; might mean; when one is in the dumps, envisioning a positive state may be, by definition,  difficult, unavailable. Therefore, using the negative phrasing &amp;#x2013; &amp;#034;may I be &lt;strong&gt;free from&lt;/strong&gt;,&amp;#034; i.e.&amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;NOT beset by&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;#034; -- can be more vivid. One may be quite aware of lack of safety, mental anguish, out-and-out pain, or that nothing seems going right. A practical first step would be wishing, envisioning being relieved of those situations. When they ebb-away (with ernest, repeated practice), then the positive, the &amp;#039;happiness&amp;#039; and &amp;#039;peace&amp;#039; may emerge in terms that one might not have imagined (or vividly verbalized) when stuck back in the mire.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:48:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599639</guid> <dc:creator>Chris J Macie</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T09:48:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Buddhist Global Relief Annual Fundraiser</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597782</link> <description>Hi all,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is the time of year that Buddhist Global Relief (BGR) has their large fundraiser, an organization founded by the scholar-practitioner monk Bhikkhu Bodhi. You can also designate them as a charity on Amazon, if you like, and a percent of purchases goes to their work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can easily see how BGR alloates monies by just scrolling down any of  BGR&amp;#039;s web pages, where they have a pie graph of spending, https://buddhistglobalrelief.org. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Their specific fiscal records of spending are also easily available in a click so you can assess how they spend your donations: https://buddhistglobalrelief.org/active/financialInfo.html &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For example: here is their IRS Form 990 for 2013: https://buddhistglobalrelief.org/documents/FinancialDocuments/BGR_990_FYE_2013-06-30.pdf and in lines 14 and 15 of &amp;#034;Expenses&amp;#034; one can quickly see no salaries or benefits were given. This is a volunteer group.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;91% of their funds are directly applied to their projects, like &amp;#034;Making markets for women&amp;#034; in Bangladesh [1] and rice intensification.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here are the walk dates.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x20;New&amp;#x20;Roman&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;table&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #b9310e"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Helvetica&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Save the Date&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Ann Arbor, Mi&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sat. Sept. 27&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Escondido, CA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Thur. Oct. 23&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Houston, TX&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sat. Nov. 22&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Los Angeles, CA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sun. Oct. 26&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;New York, NY&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sat. Nov. 1 &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;San Francisco, CA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sat. Oct. 4&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;San Jose, CA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sun. Oct. 19&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Seattle, WA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sat. Sep. 6&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;St. Louis, MO&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sun. Oct. 5&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Willington, CT&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;Sun. Nov. 9&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I try to walk in NY, but may also make CT this year.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;_____&lt;br /&gt;[1] Relatedly, but not BGR, see also Nicholas Kristof&amp;#039;s article in the NYTimes of the effect to war and peace when women/girls around the world also are educated in secular core subjects (math, science, reading..)</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 20:19:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597782</guid> <dc:creator>katy steger</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T20:19:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597763</link> <description>UPDATE FOR EVERYONE:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Got the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy book from the library, looks useful.  Wil buy a copy soon that I can mark/take notes with.&lt;br /&gt;Finally gotta a little focus when I started to meditate.  &lt;br /&gt;Haven&amp;#039;t done the metta yet.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 19:25:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597763</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T19:25:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595627</link> <description>Those audios are a good place to start.&lt;br /&gt;If it&amp;#039;s possible, do a Metta retreat. That makes it so much easier to get the practice going.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Either way, consistent practice makes all the difference in my experience. When I&amp;#039;m consistent with practice, I get good effects. As soon as I start slacking and making excuses (which still happens after 9 months, but I keep getting back on track faster and faster), it&amp;#039;s no good.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would also second Richard&amp;#039;s advice about reading (and applying) the focusing book by Eugene Gendlin. It&amp;#039;s quite well-known; I found it in my local library, maybe you can, too.&lt;br /&gt;I mention that because often inner conflicts will arise as tensions or even physical pain.&lt;br /&gt;I sometimes switched to Focusing during a Metta session, when tensions became very strong, and I noticed that something wanted my attention.&lt;br /&gt;So in my experience, these two approaches complement each other.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 17:53:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595627</guid> <dc:creator>bernd the broter</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T17:53:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595618</link> <description>If you start with compassion, you can move to metta pretty easily.  For example, imagine someone suffering, then imagine them feeling better.  Maybe it&amp;#039;s a bit manipulative, haha, but it worked for me when I was trying to do metta.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, don&amp;#039;t forget that the point of the practice it to eventually find equanimity with things.  There are 4 brama vharas - compassion, loving-kindness (metta), sympathetic joy, and equanimity.  They always seem to be listed in that order in the suttas, which always gave me the impression that you move through them with the goal of finding equanimity.  It&amp;#039;s pretty easy to summon compassion if you see someone suffering, and from there it becomes pretty easy to feel kind towards them, then from there it becomes easy to be happy for them when they feel better, and then from there it&amp;#039;s easy to become completely benevolent towards them.  As you pile up different people in your thoughts, you kind of fade into a universal benevolence as you realize that, because you would feel compassion for anyone who&amp;#039;s suffering, and because everyone who might ever wrong you only does it out of suffering, you simply have no reason to feel malice towards anyone.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think this kind of imaginative practice is very powerful.  If you have feelings of guilt or shame that you can identify, treat it like a phobia and do some cognitive behavioral therapy on it.  I use negative visualization for those kinds of things.  For example, I have a fear of driving, so when I feel like this fear is bothering me, I will sit down and imagine myself getting into car accidents.  The goal is to expose yourself to the thing you&amp;#039;re afraid of in your mind, and face it calmly.  The first few times I run through it, my heart might jump a little, but each time I dismiss the reaction and start again with the intention to remain calm.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For feelings of guilt or shame about sex, you might imagine someone you respect, like a priest or a role model, walking in on you masturbating.  Haha, it sounds horrible, but you can actually change these thought patterns very quickly.  Just remember - you want to dismiss the habitual reaction of shame and just remain calm.  What you&amp;#039;re afraid of is your imagination, so you can face your imagination, let it do its worst, and realize there&amp;#039;s nothing really there that can hurt you.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 17:45:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595618</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T17:45:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595558</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Chris J Macie:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;Richard Zen (10/1/14 12:02 AM as a reply to Max. )&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;…Try to be The Man with No Name…&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can&amp;#039;t say whether Richard intended this sense, but &amp;#034;Man with No Name&amp;#034; can be seen as similar to the impersonal quality implied by that sense of immeasurable or unbounded depicted above. My impression of that film-persona used by Clint Eastwood is that that role perceived and acted in ways that could be seen as &amp;#034;impersonal;&amp;#034; fearless, clear-headed, resilient, because he clung to no particular agenda, and could discern and leverage on such weakness (tanha) in others. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #800080"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #b22222"&gt;Not Tao (10/1/14 1:17 AM as a reply to Max.)&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Cultivating unconditional happiness (as in, happiness for no reason) is a great way to cultivate both morality and responsibility. If you are happy for no reason, then no one can do anything to challenge this happiness.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Again, not to speak for &amp;#039;Not Tao&amp;#039;, but happiness &amp;#034;for no reason&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;unconditional&amp;#034; can be compared to the internally self-sufficient, not externally dependent bliss of the Jhanas. Whether the Clint Eastwood persona upheld the precept of &amp;#034;non-harming&amp;#034; might be questonable, but part of the allure of that persona (why one can&amp;#039;t help but like him a bit) relates to some sense of &amp;#034;morality and responsibility&amp;#034; that he imbodied on another level.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(Thanx, Richard, for the impressive graphic. As I recall, that’s a the scene where he makes that other guy dig-up the money/treasure buried in the graveyard.)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;It was a good image of skillfulness.  He doesn&amp;#039;t have a carefree life.  He almost dies in the desert because of Tuco but he uses opportunity to stay alive. The funniest is when Tuco is beaten by the Bad guy to get information on the treasure and when Blondie is brought in he doesn&amp;#039;t bother with him &amp;#034;you wouldn&amp;#039;t talk anyways.&amp;#034; LOL! The point is that we have to deal with hateful people and metta is not appropriate in ALL situations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think Odysseus is another good example because he&amp;#039;s used in the Enneagram and his trials represent all 9 types.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 16:08:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595558</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T16:08:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595553</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;bernd the broter:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Yes, that&amp;#039;s basically it. I repeat just &amp;#034;May I be happy&amp;#034;, which feels simpler for me.&lt;br /&gt;There are different ways of doing it though. I like Bhante Sujato&amp;#039;s method, but there are others.&lt;br /&gt;I recommend listening to Bhante Sujatos audio instructions (which I linked to in my practice log or in the thread about his Metta retreat) to avoid misconceptions. I believe that much of what he&amp;#039;s saying is relevant for Metta practice even if you&amp;#039;re not practicing exactly according to his instructions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you don&amp;#039;t like the phrases, here are alternative ones:&lt;br /&gt;http://www.leighb.com/mettaphrases.htm&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do you have some consistent meditation practice by now?&lt;br /&gt;Many of the &amp;#039;traps&amp;#039; in Metta meditation are the same as in other kinds.&lt;br /&gt;So if you have some experience already, this should make Metta meditation much easier.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve got nothing consistent at this point.  By doing metta meditation consistently I&amp;#039;ll be popping a cherry.  Here&amp;#039;s the link I dug up from the old threads:  http://www.dhammaloka.org.au/downloads/itemlist/category/62-june-2011.html&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve got migraines and eye tensions a lot, that&amp;#039;s my main &amp;#034;blocker&amp;#034; or excuse as you could say.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:59:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595553</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T15:59:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595549</link> <description>Yes, that&amp;#039;s basically it. I repeat just &amp;#034;May I be happy&amp;#034;, which feels simpler for me.&lt;br /&gt;There are different ways of doing it though. I like Bhante Sujato&amp;#039;s method, but there are others.&lt;br /&gt;I recommend listening to Bhante Sujatos audio instructions (which I linked to in my practice log or in the thread about his Metta retreat) to avoid misconceptions. I believe that much of what he&amp;#039;s saying is relevant for Metta practice even if you&amp;#039;re not practicing exactly according to his instructions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you don&amp;#039;t like the phrases, here are alternative ones:&lt;br /&gt;http://www.leighb.com/mettaphrases.htm&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do you have some consistent meditation practice by now?&lt;br /&gt;Many of the &amp;#039;traps&amp;#039; in Metta meditation are the same as in other kinds.&lt;br /&gt;So if you have some experience already, this should make Metta meditation much easier.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:43:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595549</guid> <dc:creator>bernd the broter</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T15:43:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595532</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;bernd the broter:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;My experience summed up (more details on my practice log if you&amp;#039;re interested):&lt;br /&gt;Metta heavily reduces anger at yourself, with lots of beneficial and unexpected side effects.&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s not easy, but definitely worth it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Start with Metta for yourself.&lt;br /&gt;You will probably experience lots of anger at yourself, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean that Metta makes the anger worse.&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s just a step on the way.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I want to be absolutely clear on what you&amp;#039;re saying. &amp;#034;Metta for myself&amp;#034; means repeating &amp;#034;May I be happy and peaceful&amp;#034; (with some conviction) repeatedly for some alloted length of time?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for the suggestion and log.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:04:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595532</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T15:04:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595525</link> <description>My experience summed up (more details on my practice log if you&amp;#039;re interested):&lt;br /&gt;Metta heavily reduces anger at yourself, with lots of beneficial and unexpected side effects.&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s not easy, but definitely worth it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Start with Metta for yourself.&lt;br /&gt;You will probably experience lots of anger at yourself, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean that Metta makes the anger worse.&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s just a step on the way.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 14:57:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595525</guid> <dc:creator>bernd the broter</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T14:57:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595513</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Droll Dedekind:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Excessive guilt/shame is usually tied up with early sexual experiences and attitudes. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I recommend &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;libgen&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;book&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;md5&amp;#x3d;794e65369c201f4d2500209aa6d82b94"&gt;Pleasure by Lowen&lt;/a&gt;. I took &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;imgur&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;nKyhjee&amp;#x2c;cfx7Kod&amp;#x2c;sZ6jRiz&amp;#x23;0"&gt;a few screenshots&lt;/a&gt; of the chapter on Guilt, Shame, and Depression.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I want to validate your guess here. My childhood involved 16 years straight of relatively uninterrupted &amp;#034;Jesus Camp&amp;#034; and any masturbation I did or kissing of close girlfriends induced crying and extreme anxiety/guilt/shame up until about age 21.  I cried for about an hour and took a walk around the block the first time after I had sex.  I wouldn&amp;#039;t say I&amp;#039;m &amp;#034;over it all&amp;#034; now.  I&amp;#039;m engaging in full disclosure right now in hopes that you and others here will refer me to anything that might be helpful.  If I hold back I might not gain the full benefit of being on this forum.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 14:47:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595513</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T14:47:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595505</link> <description>Excessive guilt/shame is usually tied up with early sexual experiences and attitudes. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I recommend &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;libgen&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;book&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;md5&amp;#x3d;794e65369c201f4d2500209aa6d82b94"&gt;Pleasure by Lowen&lt;/a&gt;. I took &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;imgur&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;nKyhjee&amp;#x2c;cfx7Kod&amp;#x2c;sZ6jRiz&amp;#x23;0"&gt;a few screenshots&lt;/a&gt; of the chapter on Guilt, Shame, and Depression.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 14:42:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595505</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T14:42:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595451</link> <description>&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;re Max (9/30/14 10:00 PM)&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;I observed that I try to stop myself from experiencing &lt;strong&gt;too much pleasure&lt;/strong&gt; … And I fear becoming too &amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;unconditionally happy&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;#034; can lead to my becoming a sociopathic, moral monster.  I imagine I&amp;#039;d always have some empathy, but there are enough people I don&amp;#039;t like and I&amp;#039;ve had enough experiences of anger/rage/disgust that I know I need something like anticipated &lt;strong&gt;unhappiness and shame and guilt to constrain me&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;...&amp;#034;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Bear with me as I cite some mainline Theravadan teaching here, but I think it can relate here in practice.&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;Richard Zen (9/30/14 10:38 PM as a reply to Max. )&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;…Insight meditation reduces addictiveness and that in turn reduces stress…&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Many traditional teachers hold that G.Buddha&amp;#039;s teachings tend towards a &lt;strong&gt;balancing&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;insight&lt;/strong&gt;/ &lt;em&gt;vipassana&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;concentration&lt;/strong&gt; / &lt;em&gt;samatha &lt;/em&gt;practices, to help smooth out the rough edges (&lt;em&gt;dukkha&lt;/em&gt;) of everyday personal experience. Practically speaking, deep concentration, i.e. &lt;em&gt;Jhanas&lt;/em&gt;, provides an experience of pleasure, of happiness that is termed &amp;#034;blameless,&amp;#034; that is, it doesn&amp;#039;t incline to unskillful, damaging actions, thoughts, etc. It doesn&amp;#039;t depend on anyone or anything else, and in fact can provide satisfaction that outshines (with practice) the fleeting pleasures, happiness we tend to seek in external sensual things, or from other people. When strongly developed (inner pleasure/happiness), the alure of the latter (external, dependent pleasure/happiness) begins to fade. Trading candy for gold, it is said. This works (in my experience).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;BUT, developing strong concentrative ability can trigger dangerous psychological side-effects in people beset with excessive &amp;#034;stuff&amp;#034; (to use an MCTB term, and as abundantly documented in MCTB ). With or without such risk, concentration is best worked on with the help of good teaching. If one is reasonably balanced, psychologically, such help can be gleaned from books or dharma talks. If threatening stuff comes up too quickly, too strongly when approaching concentration, then skilled personal guidance is essential. And, contrary to much popular &amp;#039;dharma&amp;#039;, jhana is accessible to the vast majority of people (as, I recall, is also a point made clear in MCTB ).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As to the complementary interplay of insight and concentration practices, the former can be strenuous, exhausting, and the latter can provide a refreshing break, honing the mind to enhance insight, and bringing forth new bodily energies to facilitate plunging back into the hard work of insight investigation.This traditional combination of insight and concentration and helps build a sustainable, as well as progress-making practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s also not to say that some stages of serious practice don&amp;#039;t get into places that can&amp;#039;t be so readily smoothed out (A&amp;amp;P, Dark Night,…); the balanced practice skills sketched above are of benefit in many stages of path.&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;&amp;#034;…Strong metta practice can help you with hatred if you do it for a solid year or more...&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;Max (9/30/14 11:09 PM as a reply to Richard Zen)&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;…I avoided metta/loving-kindness books, I thought they would make my caretaking and boundary issues worse.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Metta practice could actually be a great tool for dealing with &amp;#034;caretaking and boundary issues.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is popularly called &amp;#034;loving-kindness,&amp;#034; but some teachers caution that &amp;#034;goodwill&amp;#034; (Than-Geof) or &amp;#034;benevolence&amp;#034; (Ven. Analayo) are perhaps better translations to work with, as &amp;#034;loving&amp;#034; is too close to, has strong associations with infatuation or affection (&amp;#034;pema&amp;#034;in Pali) and its all-to-common tendency towards personal craving and clinging.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The standard practice, as we know, is taught as stages of imaging and projecting warm feelings toward oneself, then benefactors, friends, neutral people, enemies, etc. And this practice is developmentally useful. The core teachings of G. Buddha, however, frame metta (and all the &lt;strong&gt;brahmaviharas&lt;/strong&gt;: including compassion, appreciation, equanimity) as &amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;immeasurable&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;#034;, or &amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;unbounded&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;#034; qualities of mind/heart. That is to say, after doing the standard practices a while (as Richard Zen points out above), one forms in the mind/heart a solid presence of goodwill that stands by itself &amp;#x2013; &lt;strong&gt;that isn&amp;#039;t bound by an agent &amp;#034;me&amp;#034; &lt;/strong&gt;that&amp;#039;s being loving, compassionate, etc. &lt;strong&gt;and is not bound by the image of another, recipient person&lt;/strong&gt; that it&amp;#039;s felt or projected towards. This is what I meant, above, as to helping with &amp;#034;caretaking and boundary issues&amp;#034; &amp;#x2013; self-less, unbounded goodwill simply radiates, doesn&amp;#039;t have to &lt;strong&gt;caretake&lt;/strong&gt; in any specific way, and &lt;strong&gt;boundaries&lt;/strong&gt; disappear. (&amp;#034;Radiates&amp;#034; not as something mystical or electromagnetic, but that others sense it, it feels safe -- in this sense it&amp;#039;s &amp;#034;contagious,&amp;#034; if you will.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When the mind/heart is immersed in such a state, it will naturally respond to whatever it encounters &amp;#x2013; other people, animals,… &amp;#039;all sentient beings&amp;#039; &amp;#x2013; and act in skillful ways embodying goodwill, compassion, etc. And, it&amp;#039;s a peaceful, pleasurable state to be in.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In fact &lt;em&gt;metta&lt;/em&gt; (and the other brahmaviharas) are listed among the traditional objects of one-pointed focus in the practice of deep concentration / Jhana, and in this context it is precisely this &amp;#034;immeasurable&amp;#034;,&amp;#034;unbounded&amp;#034; presence (&lt;em&gt;nimitta&lt;/em&gt;) that the mind/heart absorbs into, free of any sense of &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; as giver or &amp;#034;other&amp;#034; as recipient. This also works (as above, meaning in my experience).&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #008000"&gt;Richard Zen (10/1/14 12:02 AM as a reply to Max. )&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;…Try to be The Man with No Name…&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can&amp;#039;t say whether Richard intended this sense, but &amp;#034;Man with No Name&amp;#034; can be seen as similar to the impersonal quality implied by that sense of immeasurable or unbounded depicted above. My impression of that film-persona used by Clint Eastwood is that that role perceived and acted in ways that could be seen as &amp;#034;impersonal;&amp;#034; fearless, clear-headed, resilient, because he clung to no particular agenda, and could discern and leverage on such weakness (tanha) in others. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #800080"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #b22222"&gt;Not Tao (10/1/14 1:17 AM as a reply to Max.)&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Cultivating unconditional happiness (as in, happiness for no reason) is a great way to cultivate both morality and responsibility. If you are happy for no reason, then no one can do anything to challenge this happiness.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Again, not to speak for &amp;#039;Not Tao&amp;#039;, but happiness &amp;#034;for no reason&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;unconditional&amp;#034; can be compared to the internally self-sufficient, not externally dependent bliss of the Jhanas. Whether the Clint Eastwood persona upheld the precept of &amp;#034;non-harming&amp;#034; might be questonable, but part of the allure of that persona (why one can&amp;#039;t help but like him a bit) relates to some sense of &amp;#034;morality and responsibility&amp;#034; that he imbodied on another level.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(Thanx, Richard, for the impressive graphic. As I recall, that’s a the scene where he makes that other guy dig-up the money/treasure buried in the graveyard.)</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 10:30:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595451</guid> <dc:creator>Chris J Macie</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T10:30:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595324</link> <description>Cultivating unconditional happiness (as in, happiness for no reason) is a great way to cultivate both morality and responsibility. If you are happy for no reason, then no one can do anything to challenge this happiness. No one is a threat, so you will have no reason to feel malice. Also, an unconditional happiness would mean you are happy no matter what you&amp;#039;re doing, so there would be no reason to shirk responsibilities.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think I can understand where you&amp;#039;re coming from because I&amp;#039;ve been dealing with some anxiety about my work situation lately. I realized this anxiety was trying to coax me into working harder - like a kind of memory aid &amp;#034;I should be working...&amp;#034; always in the back of my mind. It actually stopped me from working hard, though, because it felt so awful. It can feel reckless to let go of those kinds of emotions, but you can rest assure they&amp;#039;re completely useless. Just do a simple test for yourself. Say to yourself, &amp;#034;Just for today, I&amp;#039;m going to let go of these emotional reminders and let myself be completely spontaneous - just to see how I react to things.&amp;#034; When I did that, I worked for 10 hours straight and then enjoyed some TV. It was just a great day. Giving up my trust in those negative feelings was pretty easy after that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you feel like you can&amp;#039;t be a good person without guilt - see how you respond if you forget about guilt for a day and just &amp;#034;be naked&amp;#034; emotionally around other people. Just like visiting nude beach - it&amp;#039;ll feel a little wrong at first, but after a bit you realize how free you can feel. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/pac_man.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 06:02:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595324</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T06:02:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595293</link> <description>1) It&amp;#039;s not the best time to express anger&lt;br /&gt;2) I shouldn&amp;#039;t be angry ever.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Definitely the first thought is more skillful.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 04:54:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595293</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T04:54:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595278</link> <description>In practice Metta is useful against people you hate because people you hate can live rent free inside your head. By forgiving them and wishing they weren&amp;#039;t insane you relieve your mind of the worry and that makes you more functional. Stress makes people less resiliant, more tired and less functional. In this world you can&amp;#039;t be a doormat and meditation doesn&amp;#039;t mean you have to. Buddhism is about skillfulness and if you have to use anger in a good way (because the beliefs are rational beyond your bias) then you&amp;#039;ll be fine. BTW believing that anger shouldn&amp;#039;t be there is just another aversion. Welcome the anger and think about the correct response beyond your current anger so it isn&amp;#039;t rash.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Try to be The Man with No Name and develop resiliance and be cool under fire and make proper decisions at the right time. Just asking &amp;#034;is this skillful?&amp;#034; is a good question to ask before you do something you might regret.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;pgcooper1939&amp;#x2e;files&amp;#x2e;wordpress&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;2012&amp;#x2f;07&amp;#x2f;the-man-with-no-name&amp;#x2e;jpg" /&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 04:42:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595278</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T04:42:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595246</link> <description>That&amp;#039;s honestly why I avoided metta/loving-kindness books, I thought they would make my caretaking and boundary issues worse.  You&amp;#039;ve given me the hope of possibly dealing with that.  The book you recommended is on the way, I&amp;#039;ll let you know what happens. Thank you.  I know I need to get really clear and specific about my dysfunctional beliefs to get through this.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 04:09:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595246</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T04:09:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595243</link> <description>Yes but that was because I didn&amp;#039;t check beliefs. When I saw that some selfish behaviours were actually responsibilities I could let go of the wrong beliefs and have the healthy ones. This is important in a world where ridiculous beliefs are fostered upon us by politicians, pop culture, friends, family, etc.  That&amp;#039;s why CBT books like the one I recommended to you are so helpful. How you think affects how you feel and how you feel affects what you do. Meditation can only be enhanced when there are proper beliefs that are sane.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;dQqSF8bQckI"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQqSF8bQckI&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 04:06:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595243</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T04:06:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595233</link> <description>Have you ever suffered from big self-loathing and self-depreciation?  Excessive caretaking? Could metta practice make that worse?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PS: Book is on the way.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:53:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595233</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T03:53:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595224</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Max:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Richard Zen:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I think this book will do you more good than most books:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;amazon&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-perfectionism-self-sabotage&amp;#x2f;dp&amp;#x2f;1841128007&amp;#x2f;ref&amp;#x3d;sr_1_2&amp;#x3f;ie&amp;#x3d;UTF8&amp;#x26;qid&amp;#x3d;1412133620&amp;#x26;sr&amp;#x3d;8-2&amp;#x26;keywords&amp;#x3d;CBT&amp;#x2b;Avy&amp;#x2b;joseph"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-perfectionism-self-sabotage/dp/1841128007/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1412133620&amp;amp;sr=8-2&amp;amp;keywords=CBT+Avy+joseph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks, I&amp;#039;ll grab it.  Please post anything else that comes to mind.  Anything about my line of thought you could critique/add to?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Insight meditation reduces addictiveness and that in turn reduces stress. It&amp;#039;s not likely to lead to you becoming a moral monster or a hedonist with less addiction.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The other book that can help with beliefs (because that&amp;#039;s what CBT is good at) is Focusing by Gendlin. It&amp;#039;s a little like meditation but not quite.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Strong metta practice can help you with hatred if you do it for a solid year or more.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:36:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595224</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T03:36:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595219</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Richard Zen:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I think this book will do you more good than most books:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;amazon&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-perfectionism-self-sabotage&amp;#x2f;dp&amp;#x2f;1841128007&amp;#x2f;ref&amp;#x3d;sr_1_2&amp;#x3f;ie&amp;#x3d;UTF8&amp;#x26;qid&amp;#x3d;1412133620&amp;#x26;sr&amp;#x3d;8-2&amp;#x26;keywords&amp;#x3d;CBT&amp;#x2b;Avy&amp;#x2b;joseph"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-perfectionism-self-sabotage/dp/1841128007/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1412133620&amp;amp;sr=8-2&amp;amp;keywords=CBT+Avy+joseph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks, I&amp;#039;ll grab it.  Please post anything else that comes to mind.  Anything about my line of thought you could critique/add to?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:23:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595219</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T03:23:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595211</link> <description>I think this book will do you more good than most books:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;amazon&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-perfectionism-self-sabotage&amp;#x2f;dp&amp;#x2f;1841128007&amp;#x2f;ref&amp;#x3d;sr_1_2&amp;#x3f;ie&amp;#x3d;UTF8&amp;#x26;qid&amp;#x3d;1412133620&amp;#x26;sr&amp;#x3d;8-2&amp;#x26;keywords&amp;#x3d;CBT&amp;#x2b;Avy&amp;#x2b;joseph"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-perfectionism-self-sabotage/dp/1841128007/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1412133620&amp;amp;sr=8-2&amp;amp;keywords=CBT+Avy+joseph&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:20:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595211</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T03:20:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Fear of happiness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595192</link> <description>This is definitely a morality being-in-the-world question.  I was doing some introspection and concluded that &amp;#034;x, y, z is bothering me&amp;#034; but it occurred to me that I deal directly with the question of conditional vs unconditional happiness, because when would not have some recent failure, disappointment, mistake, defect, personal imperfection to point to utilize as a reference point?  I observed that I try to stop myself from experiencing too much pleasure because I strongly believe that can lead to addictive and socially irresponsible behavior.  And I fear becoming too &amp;#034;unconditionally happy&amp;#034; can lead to my becoming a sociopathic, moral monster.  I imagine I&amp;#039;d always have some empathy, but there are enough people I don&amp;#039;t like and I&amp;#039;ve had enough experiences of anger/rage/disgust that I know I need something like anticipated unhappiness and shame and guilt to constrain me.  I want to hear your thoughts on conditional vs unconditional happiness and eudaimonistic/hedonic self-regulation.  Thoughts, comments, book recommendations, etc. highly welcome and encouraged.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:00:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5595192</guid> <dc:creator>Max</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-01T03:00:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The one belief I cannot shake - soulmates</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593075</link> <description>The idea of soulmates drove a very difficult time in my life, I suspect it was a key belief I didn&amp;#039;t want to let go of after A+P, which relied on the belief in a separate self known as &amp;#039;me&amp;#039;, which lead me to fight the teachings that the dark night had to offer. For me I had to attempt clinging to both of the ideas and trying to find that happiness I thought might be possible, happiness through finding the perfect partner who would make everything alright, in order to move beyond it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s one thing being told to kill the myth, its one thing knowing that you want to kill the myth, but if it&amp;#039;s there it&amp;#039;s there and the desire for it not to be there will only cause a tremendous amount of suffering. At times I found myself also thinking things like wanting to die, but from my perspective now the thing I wanted to kill was actually the egocentric self image I was attached to, ironic because I was clinging to it myself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now it&amp;#039;s one thing for me to say that, perhaps none of it is relevant to you, but perhaps it is relevant but knowing it makes no difference? Well things in this life are currently how they currently are, and any attempt to fight it only causes suffering. Allowing things to be how they are on the other hand allows time and space for the study of how things are. Maybe your head is confused, but that which witnesses the thoughts is able to see the confusion and the suffering, untouched by it, and in that seeing your brain has the opportunity to observe and learn. Beliefs can be explored even if they can not be directly changed by the conscious mind, and in time you will either find evidence to back up the belief or evidence that things are in reality a little different. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do not know what reality you will discover from your perspective. From mine, I found out that I am not a perfect human being, and there are no perfect human beings. I found out that we are all pretty clueless although we all try our best, and it is down to us to take responsibility for our own lives, our own actions, and our own learning and growing. It sounds like you are already doing that, I wish you the best of luck &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 18:48:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593075</guid> <dc:creator>Kenny Whitman</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-26T18:48:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591383</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m locking this thread.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Florian (mod)</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 14:59:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591383</guid> <dc:creator>Florian Weps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T14:59:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591373</link> <description>Sorry, no, I&amp;#039;m not a troll. I wrote those messages over and over again because they were meant to be read over and over again. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do not respect this type of behavior and have actually seen such thinking ruin innocent people&amp;#039;s lives, so I am here to say No and to hold her accountable. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I honestly do not understand what this big hooplah really is, in total seriousness, I&amp;#039;m wowed that respect for the forum at large isn&amp;#039;t touched on by our friend Jen here. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You think this is a troll? Please. I have seen real life feminist trolls ruin peoples real life lives. It&amp;#039;s not alright to just parade it around this place for those squirrel reasons.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;End of discussion. I am happy I am understood.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 14:37:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591373</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T14:37:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591368</link> <description>Thanks to the three of you. I feel concerned that I was too easy on Bill--he really was over the line. I think I was really responding to others who may have felt their position was being excluded. Bill is hardly the right spokesman for that position and angry rants that escalate are trolling. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In part I was thinking about a comment I heard on a recent retreat, from a psychologist. He said that anger is often given short shrift by Buddhists, and that people may mistakenly think repression is the answer to strong emotion. This, of course, is a losing strategy. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It may make sense to open a thread on anger and practice. In my own case, I used to be angry pretty much all the time; once one provocation lost its punch I&amp;#039;d find another. This practice has dialed down that reactivity to the point that I rarely get angry at all, and even then it blows over quickly. Fear is a different thing, unfortunately, but that&amp;#039;s not the point here, which is that I don&amp;#039;t think slapping down one&amp;#039;s own or another person&amp;#039;s anger is necessarily the best approach. But Bill was repeating the same rant over and over, and no one needs that. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks again, everyone.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 14:12:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591368</guid> <dc:creator>Jane Laurel Carrington</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T14:12:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591180</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let&amp;#039;s try to back up, quit pushing everyone&amp;#039;s buttons, quit responding when they are pushed if possible, and get back to helping people learn useful things they can do to explore these fascinating realms.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My apology was sincere and also an attempt to move things into direction you&amp;#039;re talking about above. I&amp;#039;m a bit dissapointed that it was used as an argument for proving someone&amp;#039;s point. Speaking of proving a point, my ego is going to have to be satisfied with what I&amp;#039;ve just said and nothing more.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ZedZ, I shar your opinion on the troll part. Either that or very angry meditator &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jane Laurel Carrington,&lt;br /&gt;Thank you for wisdom.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 07:49:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591180</guid> <dc:creator>ftw</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T07:49:05Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591031</link> <description>I think that people are quick to rise to the bait here on both sides and that calmness, tolerance, and politeness should be increased when possible.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I find all this drama to be very far from what I wish to see here. Where it is coming from, I can&amp;#039;t be certain. Obviously, it takes all sides to tango.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let&amp;#039;s try to back up, quit pushing everyone&amp;#039;s buttons, quit responding when they are pushed if possible, and get back to helping people learn useful things they can do to explore these fascinating realms.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 07:10:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591031</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T07:10:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591028</link> <description>Jane,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for this, it is good to have somebody with an honest and good intention to mediate between the different sides. However, I think/feel that your assessment fits only partially.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. I think Bill is a troll. Maybe he is Sawfoot&amp;#039;s current reincarnation. His join date is just one day after the other thread&amp;#039;s deletion, and he made posts only to this thread. He is way too agressive for a serious meditator. Yes, regular practitioners can be negative, argumentative, angry or&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; sometimes&lt;/span&gt; even outright agressive. But time after time (and typically increasingly more often as they progress) they also have moments of mindfullnes which lead to more measured and skillful behavior. Ranting about alleged feminist oppression for days is at best childish but certainly not skillful. And it is not representative of this site&amp;#039;s culture. Anyways, even if people did not explicitly distanced themselves from sexism that does not imply that they are sexists. Under the assumption that Bill is indeed a troll, his activity can be thought of as an attempt to insinuate that this is a bigot, opressive community.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2. As for Jen, I think her case is more about responsibility. She got strong DhO positions very quickly. She became the editor of MCTB2 (and as a result has special access to Daniel&amp;#039;s time) and now even a moderator. Even if her assessment that this is an opressive place is true one cannot change it that quickly and voluntarily. But I think that assessment is by and large not a good fit. She was insulted by one long time contributor at the heat of the other thread (which was itself a giant provocation of the community by Sawfoot) who later, in this thread, explicitly apologized to her.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jen,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I didn&amp;#039;t want to talk about you &amp;#034;behind your back&amp;#034;, so the above is also addressed to you - if this matters at all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Z&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ps. I&amp;#039;m a mostly read-only member, but I do &lt;strike&gt;lift weights &lt;/strike&gt;have a regular meditation practice which I feel often benefits from the DhO. That&amp;#039;s why I felt I should share my thoughts.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 06:54:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591028</guid> <dc:creator>Zed Z</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T06:54:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591024</link> <description>Hi Jane,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jane Laurel Carrington:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I need to add that I am having trouble getting messages from people, especially as I used to have another account here with a different email and picture. Both accounts have the same name. I didn&amp;#039;t plan it that way, but it just happened. I don&amp;#039;t know the password for my old account either! Sorry. Maybe Daniel and I can fiddle with it and get it straightened out sometime. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I disabled your alternate account so it no longer shows up in the messages form.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Simon</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 06:45:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5591024</guid> <dc:creator>Simon Ekstrand</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T06:45:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590962</link> <description>I need to add that I am having trouble getting messages from people, especially as I used to have another account here with a different email and picture. Both accounts have the same name. I didn&amp;#039;t plan it that way, but it just happened. I don&amp;#039;t know the password for my old account either! Sorry. Maybe Daniel and I can fiddle with it and get it straightened out sometime. </description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 05:35:42 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590962</guid> <dc:creator>Jane Laurel Carrington</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T05:35:42Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590958</link> <description>On the other side, though, sometimes people are out of line. Honesty means we call them out. People can get into a contest over who has the right to silence whom. One person has told Bill to cool it. He finds it impossible to stop, though, because he isn&amp;#039;t getting what he wants, which is an acknowledgement of what may be right in his position. Under the current circumstances, I don&amp;#039;t expect Jen to provide that. So here is what I&amp;#039;ll say:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Bill, if Jen is in her way demanding a safe place for her (and other women) to discuss practice, then you get to do the same. What is conducive to safety? There need to be some filters on what people get to say. Who decides, and who decides who decides? You are willing to allow people to label bad behavior as long as people don&amp;#039;t attribute it to sexism. Can you, though, imagine any circumstance at all where a person&amp;#039;s comment might be justifiably labeled as sexist? Have you ever seen such comments here? I personally have not, but I haven&amp;#039;t read everything by a long shot. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jen, if you want to embark on a campaign to change the culture here, what do you envision doing? Is there a point at which such a campaign might end up doing more harm than good? The men who are participating on this forum have as much right as the women to express themselves. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I guess this is it for now. Peace be with you. </description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 05:23:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590958</guid> <dc:creator>Jane Laurel Carrington</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T05:23:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590945</link> <description>What is the &amp;#034;correct&amp;#034; response in this situation? What is the compassionate response, one that honors what is real and true? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jen, you have clearly acknowledged that you wish to change the culture of this forum. You perceive it as male dominated, not a fully safe place for women to express themselves. I am at something of a disadvantage because I did not read the original thread, only this one. But people have been spelling out their positions here, and this is how I read yours. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Bill, you are expressing anger at what you believe is a dangerous and polarizing position on Jen&amp;#039;s part, one that could harm the forum&amp;#039;s true purpose. You also resent Jen&amp;#039;s seizing the moral high ground, as far as I can tell. You strongly desire that Jen cease and desist her dangerous agenda. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I might begin by asking whether the forum does in fact tolerate or even encourage sexist behavior in some of its participants, or whether it is by virtue of its demographic intimidating to women. The next question might be whether it&amp;#039;s appropriate for anyone who believes it does some or all of these things to try to change it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ll begin with the first question. I think it essential that people feel free to be themselves as we talk about stuff that is inevitably personal and way out of the mainstream. There tends to be a lot of aggressive energy here, people getting in each other&amp;#039;s faces. We need to be able to hash stuff out and let people do that. I would not want to see anyone make it her mission to change this. Aggressive energy may be intimidating to some lurkers, some female, others male. But to say that it should change in order to make this place more hospitable to women is unfair to both men and women. A woman is, first and foremost, an adult. If adults are intimidated by a particular culture, they are free to go elsewhere, or maybe examine their fear and use it as an opportunity for self-inquiry. </description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 05:05:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590945</guid> <dc:creator>Jane Laurel Carrington</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T05:05:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590905</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Wow!  You are engaged in name calling now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Since you are so upset, Bill, and I&amp;#039;m done with conversing with you, why don&amp;#039;t you take up your problem with the other mods or the owner?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t see a single instance on here I &amp;#034;engaged in name calling&amp;#034;. You want to tergiversate and ignore the important substances that fall under this discussion? I bring these serious concerns up and these are the only measures of yourself you respond with?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You are just representing your kind, or, wait, are you not?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 02:44:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590905</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-24T02:44:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590235</link> <description>&lt;strong&gt;Bill,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enough.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Florian (mod)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Bill Glamdring:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;... &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:14:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590235</guid> <dc:creator>Florian Weps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T18:14:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590182</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hi, BCDEF. I&amp;#039;m not the one who deleted or is deleting them. Daniel is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Ah ok, thanks for clarifying. </description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:06:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590182</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T17:06:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590143</link> <description>I don&amp;#039;t think this thread is hijacked because we are talking about what is victimization and what is not and trying to get it straight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A hijacking example would be someone with a Powers practice thread that is personal and a skeptic like me comes in and says &amp;#034;Hey how can you believe such bullshit? Are you crazy?&amp;#034;  That&amp;#039;s hijacking.  Most threads like this are quite open but practice threads usually are more for encouragement and advice on improving practice on the goal the OP is aiming at.  Having a Battleground thread makes sense for debate topics and works well. Trying to discourage people from their goals should be more in the Battleground threads than a practice thread.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The closest thing to hijacking that&amp;#039;s occurred with regularity is when the Buddhism vs AF thing was going on. It was mainly as a proselytizing wave that hijacked some threads.   This has pretty much died down now that a lot of people who supported it are distancing themselves from it.  It&amp;#039;s more a hybrid practice here with Richard disowning what people do here with his practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now we have a Powers wave so keeping things clean and neat is better. I would like to see Daniel&amp;#039;s subjective reports on his powers practices but we shouldn&amp;#039;t be interrupting it with discouragement.  There should be a Battleground thread where someone posts a thread &amp;#034;I don&amp;#039;t believe in Buddhist Powers and here&amp;#039;s why.&amp;#034;  Those who want to engage can do so and those who don&amp;#039;t want to can continue their practices.  Most practices are threads are Concentration/Metta/Insight so I don&amp;#039;t find the disruptions as bad as I&amp;#039;ve seen in other forums.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You want to know about Gaslighting? &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/laugh.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Gaslighting"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gaslighting&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;gas-lighting&lt;/strong&gt; is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity. Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;The term owes its origin to the play &lt;em&gt;Gas Light&lt;/em&gt; and its film adaptations, after which it was coined popularly. The term has been used in clinical and research literature.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;upload&amp;#x2e;wikimedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wikipedia&amp;#x2f;commons&amp;#x2f;thumb&amp;#x2f;2&amp;#x2f;23&amp;#x2f;Gaslight_1944_trailer&amp;#x25;283&amp;#x25;29&amp;#x2e;jpg&amp;#x2f;275px-Gaslight_1944_trailer&amp;#x25;283&amp;#x25;29&amp;#x2e;jpg" /&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 16:23:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590143</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T16:23:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590108</link> <description>AS IF I have been telling YOU to leave. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can not tell that I am only talking about your feminist ideology? This is not the place for it. This is not okay. You think you are &amp;#034;Right&amp;#034;? Please. You got a whole thread censored because you can&amp;#039;t distinguish between nonsense triviality and something that&amp;#039;s actually important!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And you do not respect the forum. You demand the forum cater to you. You do not say &amp;#034;oh, yeah, I can respect the forum and the people here and keep discussion non politicized over meaningless trivialities&amp;#034;. You don&amp;#039;t say this, you say &amp;#034; I am not leaving &amp;#034;.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is not okay to bully people and turn everything into a female space in which you may object to absolutely anything Just Because, regardless if it was even a problem or intent in the first place.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And YES this thread HAS BEEN hijacked, and it was hijacked by YOU and your FEMINIST POLITICAL AGENDA. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s not okay to shame everyone into being nice to you Jen. It is not okay to censor the forum in the way you have done.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seriously: what are we even talking about! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You have even yourself said that you were not offended! That you didn&amp;#039;t personally care!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You have not said all you will say about it, you have just taken a bully role and ignored the nuances of all the potential participants here. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For the last time there is nothing sexist about this forum and it is not okay to censor the forum thanks to meaningless trivialities.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You have not &amp;#034;said all you have to say&amp;#034;, you have haughtily ignored us and  just decided you&amp;#039;re right without consideration for others.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do not delete this thread. You can not just delete anything you do not like. </description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:30:40 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590108</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T15:30:40Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590103</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;About hate speech--I&amp;#039;ve definitely seen a couple of posts here that fit the legal definition. Those threads have just in the past few days been deleted, or are in the process of being deleted.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh. I&amp;#039;m actually a moderator as well. I don&amp;#039;t know if I necessarily agree about deleting those threads without notice. That being said the site rules on what mods do with what process and notifying whom are remarkably non-existent.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:26:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590103</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T15:26:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590065</link> <description>Excuse you? This is not apeshit but a measured response to the zeitgeist of the times, but thanks for diminuating my response. It&amp;#039;s proving to be the only thing we can expect from you out of this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You do not respectfully disagree with me. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not an attempt to subterfuge the system and tilt it in my favor. It is a direct declaration from me to you which you insist to interpret in all the nefarious Big Brother ways. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You please take a break. You consider yourself and your callow feminist ideology. I have no idea why you think it is meaningful to show me the ropes of administration. You are merely ignoring a declaration I am making from myself to you, without regards for me and others. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Like I said, if you can not distinguish between trivial matters and those that actually deserve attention, then nothing can be done for you. The only reason you got an apology is because you bullied it up and made a huge stink about it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You say &amp;#034;How realistic is it that my entire experience on this site is ruined by your one comment above?&amp;#034; Please. Please. How realistic is it? I do not want to find out. Therefore my response to this posting. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do not want to find out. So I say take your callow feminist ideology away and do not hold this site hostage because of it. If you can&amp;#039;t respect that, then what the fuck are we talking about?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think that is pretty clear. It is a memorandum from me to you. You are just choosing to interpret it as a greater struggle, and you are ignoring everyone but your self in this. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take your callow feminist ideology and leave.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a site for discussing practice, and I value it. Take your callow feminist ideology and leave. I have no interest in seeing what feminist elan will do to a what is basically a sanct environment of discourse and views. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Would you like me to make the retarded declaration that YES it is obvious I am being highly reactive, but then say that NO it is that I am being highly RESPONSIVE? Please. Trivial minutia that means nothing. You can not grok the underlying meaning/importance of my communications? Please, Jen, do you not understand the world is bigger than you? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get away from this site with feminism. Do not harrass it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please. Get out with your extreme analysis. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is not &amp;#034;territory&amp;#034; it is UTILITY. This site is a valuable utility to us all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Keep your feminism away from it.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:39:20 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5590065</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T14:39:20Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589875</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Richard:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;For enforcing rules in forums the best practices I&amp;#039;ve seen are as follows:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Close threads that are off-topic/useless that have nothing to do with Buddhism/psychology/self-help/stress reduction. For example some political topics that are controversial and have NOTHING to do with Buddhism are prime for trolling. In fact when you read trolling manuals on the net (yes they are there :lol&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; they tend to bring up sore topics in politics because they know that people hold strong emotional views about them and can&amp;#039;t resist weighing in which feeds the cycle. If people want to talk about a whole bunch of off-topic things there are 1,000s of forums that can satisfy this.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;Ban trolls. This doesn&amp;#039;t mean banning people who have a vigorous debating style. It means when it&amp;#039;s obvious that someone is just trying to get a rise out of people then they should be banned. They could always be reinstated if they desire to follow the rules. Maybe do a 2 strikes you&amp;#039;re out rule. Whatever the mods think is appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I think some of these things are in place but are lax because most people follow these obvious rules.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;My favorite times on this website is when there&amp;#039;s an increase of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;transcendental dependent arising&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; of posting in practice journals and interesting posts where people are trying to grasp more advanced areas and move forward in their practice. It sucks when there are few practice journal posts and the most popular topics are debating boring off-topic things.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for sharing your views on what should be enforced. It is interesting to me that you define &amp;#034;on topic&amp;#034; as &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;#034;psychology&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;stress reduction,&amp;#034; not to mention &amp;#034;Buddhism,&amp;#034; which I went ahead and mentioned anyway. Is Morality Training &amp;#034;on topic&amp;#034;? Or is it &amp;#034;off topic&amp;#034;? This is a hard one, isn&amp;#039;t it? Because anything and everything &amp;#034;political&amp;#034; can be seen as part of &amp;#034;daily life&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;morality,&amp;#034; no? Ethics and &amp;#034;politics&amp;#034; with a little &amp;#034;p&amp;#034; are often indetinguishable.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I don&amp;#039;t think Daniel regards this as a site dedicated to &amp;#034;Buddhism.&amp;#034; I suggested that he create a section for discussing the intersections of culture and Buddhism (ie, &amp;#034;Mushroom Culture&amp;#034; and other subtopics), and he did, but he wouldn&amp;#039;t use the word &amp;#034;Buddhism&amp;#034; to name it. He considers this a site about &amp;#034;meditation,&amp;#034; no matter what tradition that comes from. So is TM discussed here, too? And why do we have a section on Morality and Daily life if the site is about &amp;#034;meditation&amp;#034;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It gets messy, does it? So how can we decide what is &amp;#034;off topic&amp;#034; and gets shut down? There are dangers in including and in excluding. It is really very morally tricky.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for closing off-topic threads and banning trolls, has that occurred here, or are you speaking of other sites you have been on? I&amp;#039;m not sure (yet) who all the moderators are here, but my understanding is that some are very busy and sometimes go quite a while without visiting. There doesn&amp;#039;t seem to be a lot of coordination. And the &amp;#034;rules&amp;#034; are far from clear on the portal. I think it is problematic, as I&amp;#039;ve said, to say a rule for speech acts here is that the member must have a meditation practice. Not discoverable, not enforceable. I think more to the point are the speech acts themselves. What is fine, and what crosses some line?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trolls . . . yeah, a big problem. So, should the moderators just observe some definitions of trolling behavior and then watch for patterns that fit? And then ban the person by consensus or vote among the mods?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;If Daniel wants a wide area of conversation then creating more off-topic (non-practice related) threads is necessary. How about a Scientific Materialist Thread?  Closing topics is something I&amp;#039;ve seen in other forums. They usually look at the topic and see if it&amp;#039;s an issue designed for insults and hatred and close it. Sometimes they close it because it isn&amp;#039;t interesting. This would be in situations where any sane breathing human can tell it&amp;#039;s an uninteresting topic. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve also seen in forums the ability to take multiple threads and put them together because they are about the same topic.  That may be more difficult for threads from different posters asking the same diagnostic questions &amp;#034;Is this the AP? Is this Stream Entry?&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Your description of banning trolls by consensus based on well known trolling behaviour is exactly what you need because this stuff is out there for people to study, and they study it and partake of it in all forums. Narcissists LOVE this stuff:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;wikihow&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;Be-a-Troll"&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Troll&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What crosses the line? I think hate speech that you would see as hate speech in any other legal situation. That&amp;#039;s rare and I&amp;#039;ve not seen that on this site but it&amp;#039;s a no brainer.  Racism/sexism/homophobia/libel/personal stalking/gaslighting.  Again it has to be obvious before a ban and sometimes a harsh warning is what moderators do and people change their behaviour.  The ones that persist are usually banned and then allowed to return if they change their behaviour. Sometimes they are banned again and should stay banned because it&amp;#039;s obvious they won&amp;#039;t change their behaviour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think keeping a section on the powers will have to be there because it is in Buddhism and Magick is in other traditions. &lt;strong&gt;I think it&amp;#039;s pointless to interrupt someone&amp;#039;s thread unless both parties want to engage and that&amp;#039;s the purpose of the thread.  If someone is hijacking a thread (especially a practice thread) and attacking the person&amp;#039;s views then I would look at that as trolling.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Though this thread was very hard to resist for me &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/laugh.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;2536831"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2536831&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The morality and daily life area is a part of Buddhist Sila so that makes sense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hopefully that&amp;#039;s helpful in someway.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Richard</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 04:50:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589875</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T04:50:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589858</link> <description>I also have a problem with gender relations being brought up here unless it is absolutely necessary. It is a sensitive subject for all genders and I don&amp;#039;t think this is the place to solve them.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 04:34:04 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589858</guid> <dc:creator>Trial And Error</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T04:34:04Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589854</link> <description>If you did not think in such black and white terms you would notice that there is actually something important and significant here that matters for people, like having this forum, and instead, you are fancifully making it so it&amp;#039;s all about you and your female narrative, ignoring any consequences you might have, ignoring the effects it could have on the people who use this forum, ignoring everyone but yourself and your narrow ideology. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Stay away from this forum with your feminism. There is no oppression here. Women can come and talk about their practice if they have a practice, no one will stop them, and people will say what they know to say.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That is all. Your quasi oppression and claims that I am oppressing you belay nothing but your insensitivity towards others.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get out with this feminist ideology. It is not okay to project this onto innocent bystanders.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 04:31:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589854</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T04:31:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589846</link> <description>No. It&amp;#039;s not funny. There is absolutely nothing funny about this and your arrogance stemming from something that was trivial and superficial. All of this &amp;#034;cognitive dissonance&amp;#034; is purely manufactured by you and has no substance in reality.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is no effort to contain or curb you. There is no sexist discrimination going on. This is a stupid illusion on your part, especially in this particular circumstance. It is not okay to parade yourself around and happily turn everything you encounter into a female space.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I reiterate myself again: This is a forum for practicing. Not some a female acceleration program. Get out of here with your claims of patriarchy and victimization. It simply does not exist.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do not tolerate you telling us that we are sexist pigs. It is simply unnacceptable. You have a preremptory, pretentious beliefs that this is the case, that everything here is a woman&amp;#039;s issue.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No: This is a forum for discussing practice. You just waltz around claiming that the world is a certain way without regard for the feelings of other people, Get Out.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not acceptable. Your narrow black and white thinking is just Not Acceptable. And more so: it is not acceptable for you to hold this place hostage just because you want everything to be about women&amp;#039;s rights. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leave us alone. Mind your own business. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get out if you feel absolutely compelled to foist feminist theory over the smallest reaction. Nothing can be done for you if you can not distinguish triviality from things that are actually significant to speak about. Get out with your feminist theory. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Your resposne that you&amp;#039;ve &amp;#034;heard&amp;#034; me and you &amp;#034;reiterate&amp;#034; is primitive. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do you not realize what you are doing? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leave other people alone. Stop bullying and shaming and intimidating with your feminist ideology. Get out with your feminist ideology. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Your 100% black and white responses to me are proof that you actually think this way, when I say you are not allowed to hold this forum hostage for your feminist ideology, you just unbuckle your belt and let it all hang out. This is ridiculous. There is actually something at stake here: a forum, and you crassly make a feminist oppression issue over unintelligible banter.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not okay. Get out with your feminist delusions that have no regard for other people. </description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 04:20:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589846</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T04:20:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589373</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Richard:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;For enforcing rules in forums the best practices I&amp;#039;ve seen are as follows:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Close threads that are off-topic/useless that have nothing to do with Buddhism/psychology/self-help/stress reduction. For example some political topics that are controversial and have NOTHING to do with Buddhism are prime for trolling. In fact when you read trolling manuals on the net (yes they are there :lol&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; they tend to bring up sore topics in politics because they know that people hold strong emotional views about them and can&amp;#039;t resist weighing in which feeds the cycle. If people want to talk about a whole bunch of off-topic things there are 1,000s of forums that can satisfy this.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;Ban trolls. This doesn&amp;#039;t mean banning people who have a vigorous debating style. It means when it&amp;#039;s obvious that someone is just trying to get a rise out of people then they should be banned. They could always be reinstated if they desire to follow the rules. Maybe do a 2 strikes you&amp;#039;re out rule. Whatever the mods think is appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I think some of these things are in place but are lax because most people follow these obvious rules.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;My favorite times on this website is when there&amp;#039;s an increase of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;transcendental dependent arising&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; of posting in practice journals and interesting posts where people are trying to grasp more advanced areas and move forward in their practice. It sucks when there are few practice journal posts and the most popular topics are debating boring off-topic things.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for sharing your views on what should be enforced. It is interesting to me that you define &amp;#034;on topic&amp;#034; as &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;#034;psychology&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;stress reduction,&amp;#034; not to mention &amp;#034;Buddhism,&amp;#034; which I went ahead and mentioned anyway. Is Morality Training &amp;#034;on topic&amp;#034;? Or is it &amp;#034;off topic&amp;#034;? This is a hard one, isn&amp;#039;t it? Because anything and everything &amp;#034;political&amp;#034; can be seen as part of &amp;#034;daily life&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;morality,&amp;#034; no? Ethics and &amp;#034;politics&amp;#034; with a little &amp;#034;p&amp;#034; are often indetinguishable.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I don&amp;#039;t think Daniel regards this as a site dedicated to &amp;#034;Buddhism.&amp;#034; I suggested that he create a section for discussing the intersections of culture and Buddhism (ie, &amp;#034;Mushroom Culture&amp;#034; and other subtopics), and he did, but he wouldn&amp;#039;t use the word &amp;#034;Buddhism&amp;#034; to name it. He considers this a site about &amp;#034;meditation,&amp;#034; no matter what tradition that comes from. So is TM discussed here, too? And why do we have a section on Morality and Daily life if the site is about &amp;#034;meditation&amp;#034;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It gets messy, does it? So how can we decide what is &amp;#034;off topic&amp;#034; and gets shut down? There are dangers in including and in excluding. It is really very morally tricky.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for closing off-topic threads and banning trolls, has that occurred here, or are you speaking of other sites you have been on? I&amp;#039;m not sure (yet) who all the moderators are here, but my understanding is that some are very busy and sometimes go quite a while without visiting. There doesn&amp;#039;t seem to be a lot of coordination. And the &amp;#034;rules&amp;#034; are far from clear on the portal. I think it is problematic, as I&amp;#039;ve said, to say a rule for speech acts here is that the member must have a meditation practice. Not discoverable, not enforceable. I think more to the point are the speech acts themselves. What is fine, and what crosses some line?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trolls . . . yeah, a big problem. So, should the moderators just observe some definitions of trolling behavior and then watch for patterns that fit? And then ban the person by consensus or vote among the mods?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hi Jenny,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m trying to chat with you but the chat isn&amp;#039;t working and it deleted a shitload of messages LOL.  I need your email address so I can paste what I wrote. This chat system needs some TLC.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 03:13:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589373</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T03:13:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589317</link> <description>IF you can not stand to participate without foisting about feminist theory, then yes, get out. Thank you for recognizing the value of this place as a forum for practice. </description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 03:01:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589317</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T03:01:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589081</link> <description>Please. For being so well versed you should be able to put two and two together. It is referring to feminist theory. This is not a discussion grounds for feminist theory, and it is not okay to wrap everything in shrink wrap because of completely superficial appearances. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get out. Get out of here with your feminist theory.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a forum for practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I value this forum as a forum for practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is a forum for practice. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Respect this and leave with your feminist theory. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Women are welcome to come and talk about their practices. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I value it. Do not fuck with it by broad sweeping generalizations that have no root in fact.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is just a forum for practice. Just participate in it as a forum for practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I VALUE it as such. It gives actual value to my life. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do not hold this hostage because of feminist theory and flimsy superficial appearances. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you. If you think this is an over reaction, you need only pay attention. My trust with your feminist type has worn thin, and I am making this clear:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a forum for practice. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you for your participation.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 02:20:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5589081</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-23T02:20:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588790</link> <description>Yes: It is not and never was a sexist thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please remember this is a forum to discuss practice.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:47:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588790</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-22T16:47:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588787</link> <description>Well, my coworker and a good friend who is also nice looking btw (yep she&amp;#039;s a woman) is my only dharma friend. We talk a lot about spirituality in general and exchange ideas on this and that. It&amp;#039;s fun since it&amp;#039;s like we&amp;#039;re having this little sectret nobody else knows about. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;She&amp;#039;s into yoga and I&amp;#039;m into insight meditation. &lt;strong&gt;She has goals&lt;/strong&gt; in meditation too but is to afraid to reach them at this point. Meditation scares her (ghosts and expansive - &amp;#034;no body&amp;#034; feeling after only couple of minutes). I hope our conversations bring here at least micrometer closer to her goals.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Regards,&lt;br /&gt;ftw&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PS:&lt;br /&gt;Jen, for what it&amp;#039;s worth I apologize if my words were to harsh. Clearly your post about 3T blew the roof off for me. It was a first sec respond and maybe I should have used more appropriate language despite being in battleground section. But that was the way I felt at that point(not going into details here). My reaction would be the same if you were of opposite sex. Please don&amp;#039;t turn this into sexist thing. There really is no need for that. Believe me. I felt a lot of empathy for you when you joined the forum and opened up in your thread. Some of the participants didn&amp;#039;t really help to say the least. &lt;br /&gt;Anyway, there&amp;#039;s approx 6 hours of meditation practice between that incident and now. Let&amp;#039;s just say there was a lot of distraction to my concentration practice. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; Clearly I have tons of work to do too. ;-) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;with metta</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:36:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588787</guid> <dc:creator>ftw</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-22T16:36:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588783</link> <description>Yes. Please. When we consider the total volume of women I&amp;#039;ve conversed with about practice, rather than just those interested in meditation, it&amp;#039;s 99.9% who think it&amp;#039;s weird or don&amp;#039;t care at all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I just want to say, before this leaves and never comes back (about which I just could not give birth to a large enough shit about why that should happen) that the way you just announce this and expect everyone to cater to this point of view absolutely and unequivocally is just disturbing.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:24:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588783</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-22T16:24:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588775</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hi, Richard. So you saw that mess last night. . . . &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/wacko.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;You can see that hierarchies can exist in any culture or system that involves at least 2 mammals. This includes anywhere where there is Buddhism, (including this site). People need to expect this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yeah, this pretty much goes without saying. I went to grad school for 10 years and literary theory was all about deconstruction and New Historicism. So this knowledge has been quite conscious for me for a long time, longer than I&amp;#039;ve been a Buddhist by far. I identified as a feminist for a long time, and, in many conventional and philosophical/theoretical respects, still do. Heirarchy  is actually built into our languages, our signifcation systems, our laws. No way around it, so one must deal with it, with oneself, with the other. It is difficult necessary work. Morality is never mastered.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;There&amp;#039;s a healthy area of competition where certain people should be leaders and others followers but this can be tenuous when people become &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;addicted/used to&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; the power and they lose the virtues that got them there in the first place.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;In the case of patriarchy, I&amp;#039;m not sure it is completely accurate to say &lt;em&gt;virtues&lt;/em&gt; got men dominant over women in the first place. I think women historically were disempowered and are so even today, although perhaps more subtlely than when they couldn&amp;#039;t even own property, merely because of the brute physical strength of men.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The lack of presence of women on this site in and of itself should, at least I would &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt;, prompt all the men here to ask themselve what implictly or overty is going on here that makes women unwelcome. Why is this question not spoken out loud and discussed, like, at all? All these other ways you guys are mentioning of reverting this elephant-in-the-room question to what any individual practitioner should be working on within herself, via dharma practice, is, from an important conventional-world perspective, an avoidance of a sociopolitical question that is going to have effects even if everyone here goes on pretending that it won&amp;#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;To me the moderators should keep it about practice on this site (including materialist vs. religious views) so it remains interesting and multiplicity can surivive.  That&amp;#039;s all I would expect.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I communicated with Daniel in the middle of the night last night (3:30 a.m., to be precise). He pointed out to me that when this site works well it tends to be on threads that discuss the practice. When problems erupt, it is almost always on a thread discussing topics other than practice. Sawfoot apparently has no practice to discuss, so his threads seem to be hotbed of wedge politics, if you will allow the mixed metaphor.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When you say the moderators should keep it about practice (including materialist verus religious views), I&amp;#039;m unsure what you mean. Do you mean that scientific materialist naysayers should be able to assert and discuss that worldview so long as they have a meditation practice? I&amp;#039;m just wondering what criteria for participation you specifically have in mind. These are important considerations. I think that the guidelines are currently too vague and need some clarity and specificity. That&amp;#039;s why I&amp;#039;m asking. What is okay here? What is not? If we require members to have a &amp;#034;practice,&amp;#034; what kind of practice? I know Buddhists who almost never meditate but spend a lot of energy in morality training. Is that &amp;#034;practice&amp;#034;? Or is this purely a formal-meditation discussion forum? And how do we know whether someone has a meditation practice? How do we patrol and enforce such a weird behaviorial requirement? So, although I agree that when discussions stick to the goals of the site matters go well, how can &amp;#034;you must have a practice&amp;#034; be an enforceable requirement for speech acts?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think, more to the point of behavioral expectations, there needs to be a list of unacceptable speech acts, definitions/examples of them, and an objective schedule of consequences. And a stated appeal process. Clarity, honesty, and consistency in enforcement, in my experience as an instructor, are always healthful in policies meant to govern a discourse community.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;One thing I would like to dispel is that men here don&amp;#039;t want women to show up. I haven&amp;#039;t seen any overt posts that assert women aren&amp;#039;t allowed.  I want women to know this stuff and benefit from it. There have been some great women meditators but in a lot of arenas women also have a lack of interest in meditation (especially when the limited emotion models are talked about).  I&amp;#039;ve talked to women at work about it that weren&amp;#039;t interested just the same as many men who aren&amp;#039;t interested. Also some people plainly say &amp;#034;screw you I love my emotions and desires GO AWAY!&amp;#034;. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/smile.gif" &gt; That&amp;#039;s a valid point of view as well.  I think people who have healthy habits and a successful life are much less likely to want this practice than someone who has a screwed up life and lots of unhealthy habits. There is a good chunk of the population that doesn&amp;#039;t need cognitive therapy and meditation. I believe everyone could learn to optimize things more with these practices (positive psychology/working with intentions/further reduction of stress) but unless there is a deep need people won&amp;#039;t be searching for it. Basically anyone who has addictions/depression could benefit from this practice and should try it, but because of a lack of awareness and because of an association with a religion &lt;strong&gt;people are skittish&lt;/strong&gt;. Look at how many lurkers there are &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/laugh.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On materialism, yes I want scientific naysayers who have a meditation practice (me in the case of debatable parts of The Powers) should be allowed.  Buddhism isn&amp;#039;t mainly about the powers but about &lt;strong&gt;reducing dukkha&lt;/strong&gt;. So as long as people want to reduce dukkha they should be welcome. There&amp;#039;s also a practical element in that spreading practices that reduce dukkha to more and more people would require that views which are political/social/scientific should have no bearing on the practice. This is because &lt;strong&gt;clinging&lt;/strong&gt; to views is the problem. &lt;strong&gt;Having&lt;/strong&gt; views isn&amp;#039;t a problem. Right view and inherent existence/cause and effect should be applicable to many people&amp;#039;s beliefs and from surveying many meditation teachers, authors etc, they have their own political/social/economic beliefs just like anyone else and may have had them before they meditated.  Clearly they are okay with their views and only if they secretly cling to them is there a conflict in the practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For enforcing rules in forums the best practices I&amp;#039;ve seen are as follows:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Close threads that are off-topic/useless that have nothing to do with Buddhism/psychology/self-help/stress reduction. For example some political topics that are controversial and have NOTHING to do with Buddhism are prime for trolling. In fact when you read trolling manuals on the net (yes they are there :lol&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; they tend to bring up sore topics in politics because they know that people hold strong emotional views about them and can&amp;#039;t resist weighing in which feeds the cycle. If people want to talk about a whole bunch of off-topic things there are 1,000s of forums that can satisfy this.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Ban trolls. This doesn&amp;#039;t mean banning people who have a vigorous debating style. It means when it&amp;#039;s obvious that someone is just trying to get a rise out of people then they should be banned. They could always be reinstated if they desire to follow the rules. Maybe do a 2 strikes you&amp;#039;re out rule. Whatever the mods think is appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;I think some of these things are in place but are lax because most people follow these obvious rules.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My favorite times on this website is when there&amp;#039;s an increase of &lt;strong&gt;transcendental dependent arising&lt;/strong&gt; of posting in practice journals and interesting posts where people are trying to grasp more advanced areas and move forward in their practice. It sucks when there are few practice journal posts and the most popular topics are debating boring off-topic things.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:57:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588775</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-22T15:57:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588758</link> <description>Are you seriously bringing feminist theory into this? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not a forum for feminist theory. Why would you do anything like that?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a forum for practice. I will tell you right now why there aren&amp;#039;t more women here, it&amp;#039;s because 95% of the time I talk with women about practice, they actually find the idea of a goal oriented practice weird, and aren&amp;#039;t interested in meditation as anything more but a general stress reductive. So they don&amp;#039;t come.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please get out with this nonsense. Please leave with this nonsense. You can not demand that everything be covered in protective padding because of some negligent, unintelligent rambling.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Women will come to participate in this forum when they actually have a practice to participate about. We do not do anything that deters them.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:21:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588758</guid> <dc:creator>Bill Glamdring</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-22T15:21:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588425</link> <description>Boy this entire Sawfoot thing has gone out of control but sadly it&amp;#039;s predictable and the reality of serotonin is everywhere.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5005983"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5005983&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;Getting respect feels good because it triggers serotonin. The good feeling motivates you to seek more respect, and that promotes survival. You may say you don&amp;#039;t care about getting respect, but you can easily see this dynamic in others. In the animal world, getting respect clearly promotes an individual&amp;#039;s DNA. They&amp;#039;re not thinking about genes, of course. Mammals seek social dominance because serotonin makes it feel good.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All living creatures have serotonin, even amoeba.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;In mammals, serotonin is the good feeling of having secure access to food or other resources.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social dominance is the calm, secure feeling that your needs will be met.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nice people, don&amp;#039;t talk about the competition for resources in nature. In polite society, it&amp;#039;s forbidden to acknowledge that social dominance feels good. But everyone has a brain that longs for the good feeling of serotonin. Everyone can see this motivation in others. You don&amp;#039;t have to push your way to the top, you just need to feel that the resources you need to survive are secure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You may get annoyed when you see others trying to secure their position. But when you do it, you think, &amp;#034;I&amp;#039;m just trying to survive.&amp;#034;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;How we feel in social dominance has a lot to do with our expectations and perceptions.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We tell ourselves status doesn&amp;#039;t matter and everyone is equal, but each brain keeps track of how it stacks up against others. Expectations build from experience, making people sensitive to slights. Happy chemicals flow when our expectations are exceeded. When our expectations are disappointed, we perceive it as a threat.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyone wants to be special. When you see others being special, you say you want equality. When someone gets ahead of you, &lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;your cortisol starts flowing&lt;/span&gt;. It&amp;#039;s easy to see this in others, especially those you dislike. It&amp;#039;s hard to see it in yourself, but the universality of this urge is apparent when you know how animals strive to be special.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Build pride in something you&amp;#039;ve done once a day. This can avoid extremes of constant approval seeking or dejected cynicism.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When mammals gather, they try to dominate each other. There is frustration in both the dominant and subordinate positions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The dominant position is the &amp;#034;hot seat&amp;#034; and the responsibilities can create worry.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Being subordinate relieves you of the &amp;#034;hot seat&amp;#034; but can be a problem when dominant people make decisions on your behalf.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Try and enjoy the positive side you are on depending on which status you have because it can change throughout your life.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Take quiet satisfaction on the subtle influence you have on the world.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Find ways to leave a legacy even if it&amp;#039;s small.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;You can see that hierarchies can exist in any culture or system that involves at least 2 mammals. This includes anywhere where there is Buddhism, (including this site). People need to expect this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Examples where I see this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between family members&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between neighborhoods&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between schools&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between companies&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between management and line employees&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between cities&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between regions&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between neighboring countries&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between classes&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Left wing vs. Right wing parties&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Special interest groups vs. the majority&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Revolutionaries vs. Old Guard&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Younger Generations vs. Older Generations&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between different psychology types &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Men vs. Women&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Marginalized cultures vs. Mainstream cultures&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Rivalries between races/cultures/sexual orientation&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Healthy vs. Unhealthy&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Deemed intelligence vs. deemed unintelligence&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Did I miss any?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;There&amp;#039;s a healthy area of competition where certain people should be leaders and others followers but this can be tenuous when people become &lt;strong&gt;addicted/used to&lt;/strong&gt; the power and they lose the virtues that got them there in the first place. This creates a flux where leadership has to change.  That&amp;#039;s why I like the symbol of the ring of power in Lord of the Rings. As soon as you gain absolute power you get corrupted by it. Smaller forms of power can still have a corrupting affect.  It&amp;#039;s pretty clear that this is so pervasive it&amp;#039;s not going anywhere. I can see it when those who were mere employees moved to management positions.  Their behaviour altered almost instantly.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The best place is to focus on your own behaviour and see if you&amp;#039;re adding to the problem or not, because that is a difficult business enough to be mindful of.  Just noting my greed/aversion shows that it constantly pops up whether it&amp;#039;s acceptable or not.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To me the moderators should keep it about practice on this site (including materialist vs. religious views) so it remains interesting and multiplicity can surivive.  That&amp;#039;s all I would expect.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:09:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5588425</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-22T00:09:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5587987</link> <description>I guess it does sound like that rhetoric. And it probably gets easier to say these things the higher up you are on the social ladder.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do think the victim identity is present as soon as someone says that something &amp;#034;should or must stop&amp;#034; reguardless of whether that thing is illegal or not (in fact believing that something that is shouldn&amp;#039;t be is identical to what i mean by the victim identity).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The causes that bring about such laws aren&amp;#039;t as simple as being just a codification of the beliefs of that particular victim identity, perpretrators and victims are both required for such crimes and for such laws to arise.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;edit:&lt;br /&gt;im questioning whether it was a good idea to make this post in the first place... it is probably not the most skillful way to say what i am trying to say and it is probably not the most skillful time to say it.&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2014 08:45:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5587987</guid> <dc:creator>Adam . .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-21T08:45:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>victim identity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5587934</link> <description>The &amp;#034;sawfoot thread&amp;#034; kind of inspired me to write something - wow did I write a lot... oops&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think bullying and &amp;#034;being bullied&amp;#034; are very similar. If you are the bully you are putting people down to make yourself feel &amp;#034;bigger&amp;#034;, that&amp;#039;s pretty simple. If you are the bullied you are still making yourself feel bigger &amp;#034;I am the ignored one, the abused one, the righteous one.&amp;#034; If those who are bullied don&amp;#039;t get enough sympathy or get tired of ruminating about the unfairness of it all, then sometimes they do really drastic things to upset the status quo. Those who benefit from the status quo because things are going well for them often reinforce the idea that the bullied are helpless, righteous victims and the bullies are nasty people who hold all the responsibility to change. This is just a shallow display to prevent those who are bullied from becoming active rather than passive victims. If you tell people they are righteous and that those oppressing them should be the one to change those who are bullied will just keep living as they have been and nothing will change (thus achieving the goal of that false sympathy).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I remember in highschool there was this one kid who got bullied alot. He would ask questions in class to show how smart he was and he gave off the air of being above everyone else. One day at lunch a friend of mine threw salad in his hair. He didn&amp;#039;t come to school for a few days and it was rumored he had threatened to kill himself. This event led to his mother becoming extremely upset with the school and eventually to an assembly being held in which the narrative was basically that people should be nice to each other an that the bully had broke that rule and was a terrible person for doing so. The logic seems airtight from that perspective.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As I said however the &amp;#034;bully&amp;#034; in this case was a friend of mine, I remember him as being one of the nicest, coolest people I&amp;#039;d ever met. In that moment when he put the salad in the kids hair, the kid was really asking for it, talking loudly in a know-it-all voice weedling people with little comments intended to get a reaction and also sometimes making fun of othered &amp;#034;bullied&amp;#034; people. So who caused the salad being dumped on the kids head leading to him feeling that he was left out and a victim to the point of him wanting to kill himself? It is very one sided and blind to say that it was solely the fault of the bully.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Was it helpful to have the assembly where the bully was blamed and the bullied was put on a pedestal? It probably kept the bullied person from becoming desparate for a little while longer. But it didn&amp;#039;t make him fit in or be part of the group like he *claimed* to want. If he really wanted to be part of the group he would have acted like everyone else. Instead he wanted to play the victim card, remain righteous and special, and remain an outcast. After that event people were superficially nice to him and he pretended that people being superficially kind made him happy. In reality it probably just kept making him feel like a misunderstood outcast who people just pretend to like, and he probably told himself constantly that he wanted things to be different. It probably seemed 100% like real pain but it was really just a shallow display like the confidence of the bullies or the sympathy of the sympathizers. All the worlds a stage and all the men and women merely players right? I don&amp;#039;t really understand why people (including myself) keep the play going. I think the victim identity is probably the most fundamental one that all identities share, otherwise why would we keep perpetuating this world of suffering.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think this is a huge part of what awakening is - realizing that nothing can control you or influence you directly. Events can&amp;#039;t make you unhappy but choosing to argue against their existence (or perhaps more accurately, believing that you don&amp;#039;t want them to be happening) can.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2014 07:38:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5587934</guid> <dc:creator>Adam . .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-21T07:38:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577993</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Thank you, Mark, for engaging in this conversation. You&amp;#039;ve given me a lot to think through, which I&amp;#039;ll do for a while instead of hastily replying. Besides, I&amp;#039;ve become quite busy. . . . &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hi Jenny, it was a very worthwhile chat for me - thanks. Motivated me to look more into improving morality off the cushion. </description> <pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2014 18:54:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5577993</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-07T18:54:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576902</link> <description>It seems like there are different levels to view this issue on.  Here are two:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) The global/cosmic level where killing happens on epic scales, but not necessarily with intention, but out of need for the system to operate.  In this case, incidental killing can&amp;#039;t really be considered wrong; maybe just unfortunate in some cases.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2) The being-trying-to-attain-enlightenment level, where someone is trying to cultivate purity of mind through right action right speach and right livlihood.  Incidental killing will still occur, but this being will avoid intentional killing because it developes mental turmoil and is not conducive to enlightenment.  At some point (as in Bill Hamilton&amp;#039;s case) he/she may feel that occasional intentional killing is somehow okay.  (Maybe killing a mosquito while doing insight meditation).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Personally, I try not to kill whenever possibly.  Removing a spider or wasp vesus killing it makes me feel less conflicted and might just make an iota of difference in my meditation.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-T</description> <pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2014 13:29:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576902</guid> <dc:creator>Teague</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-04T13:29:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576827</link> <description>Say an ignorant man left destruction in his path wherever he went, yet had no idea of this and no intention to cause it. Consider the point of view of those destroyed and those who cared about those who were destroyed. Is their some solace for them in the knowledge of his ignorance? Is their suffering somehow reduced by it? Was the destruction somehow less by blindness? Is he more or less likely to keep destroying things by lack of insight into what he is doing?</description> <pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2014 06:43:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576827</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-04T06:43:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576815</link> <description>Daniel, yes, but see above: None of the things you mention involve intent to harm, right?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny</description> <pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2014 06:01:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576815</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-04T06:01:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576509</link> <description>Just remember, it is basically impossible to grow and harvest and transport even grains and vegetables without killing zillions of beings. Death and life are part of the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the oxygen cycle, etc. This is inescapable.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 08:03:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576509</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-03T08:03:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576403</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eric M W:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Related to this example, isn&amp;#039;t the Buddhist attitude towards meat a little odd? Bikkhus are allowed to eat meat as long as they don&amp;#039;t kill it, obviously, and as long as the animal is not killed specifically for their consumption. But this policy always assumes that there is someone else to do the dirty work, a hunter or butcher to get all the bad karma so bikkhus don&amp;#039;t have to. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What if every butcher, hunter, and fisherman in India decided to become bikkhus? This seems like wonderful news, but now there is nothing to eat.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think someone brought this up, but the reason for allowing meat is isn&amp;#039;t because monks really like it.  The bikkus (ideally) aren&amp;#039;t going out with their begging bowl thinking &amp;#034;man, I hope I get some meat today.&amp;#034;  They go out and take whatever they get.  If a householder puts meat in their bowl and the monks turned their noses up, then the householder would be offended and maybe stop giving food.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If every butcher, hunter and fisherman decided to become bikkhus, then you wouldn&amp;#039;t hear a peep from the monks; they would just eat rice, daal, aloo palak, biryani, saag, naan, paneer, kheer, samosa, jalfrezi, chana masala,   Mmmm... what was I talking about?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 02:21:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576403</guid> <dc:creator>Teague</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-03T02:21:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576380</link> <description>&lt;strong&gt;Eric:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;But let&amp;#039;s take another example, one that happens all the time. Say you go hiking in the north woods, in winter. You get lost. You manage to find shelter and water, but the time for wild edibles is long past. Hours turn into days. If you don&amp;#039;t fish or hunt, you will starve. Is it &amp;#034;bad karma&amp;#034; if you go out and kill another being for food? You certainly aren&amp;#039;t being malicious, you only want to survive.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In a word, no. My understanding from the teachings I had at a Tibetan center I used to attend was that, no, you have to do what you have to do for your and your family&amp;#039;s health.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Related to this example, isn&amp;#039;t the Buddhist attitude towards meat a little odd? Bikkhus are allowed to eat meat as long as they don&amp;#039;t kill it, obviously, and as long as the animal is not killed specifically for their consumption. But this policy always assumes that there is someone else to do the dirty work, a hunter or butcher to get all the bad karma so bikkhus don&amp;#039;t have to. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;What if every butcher, hunter, and fisherman in India decided to become bikkhus? This seems like wonderful news, but now there is nothing to eat.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I agree: It is very odd. That&amp;#039;s why, in my original post, I talked about my becoming aware that, even though I won&amp;#039;t kill a cockroach, I&amp;#039;ll contrive, through helplessness, to get my husband to kill it for me. Somehow, this seems even worse than if I killed the bug myself, because I&amp;#039;m being dishonest and I&amp;#039;m leading my spouse into killing (not to mention basically effecting the killing of the bug indirectly). It is all problematic, no?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 01:33:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576380</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-03T01:33:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576064</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m surprised no one here has discussed the necessary four elements of karma and how that translates into a definition of &lt;em&gt;killing&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;br /&gt;Object&lt;br /&gt;Action&lt;br /&gt;Completion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m talking about intention to kill a sentient being, taking action specifically to fulfill that intention, and then watching the fulfillment of that action (the dying of the being before one). Without this chain, we don&amp;#039;t have killing in the Buddhist precept sense. There are a lot of red herrings on this thread!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Alright, so this is more interesting. A lesson I&amp;#039;ve learned lately is that the intent behind our actions is more important than the actions themselves. How compassionate are our actions? How much lovingkindness is behind them? How selfless are they? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If I&amp;#039;m driving down the road, squishing frogs and bugs and whatnot, I&amp;#039;m not necessarily doing anything &amp;#034;wrong&amp;#034; if it isn&amp;#039;t my intention to do so. I just want to get from point A to point B, and I certainly don&amp;#039;t mean to hurt any beings on my way there. Thus, even if I squish a bug, no bad karma is created, because there&amp;#039;s no ill-will behind my intent.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But let&amp;#039;s take another example, one that happens all the time. Say you go hiking in the north woods, in winter. You get lost. You manage to find shelter and water, but the time for wild edibles is long past. Hours turn into days. If you don&amp;#039;t fish or hunt, you will starve. Is it &amp;#034;bad karma&amp;#034; if you go out and kill another being for food? You certainly aren&amp;#039;t being malicious, you only want to survive.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Related to this example, isn&amp;#039;t the Buddhist attitude towards meat a little odd? Bikkhus are allowed to eat meat as long as they don&amp;#039;t kill it, obviously, and as long as the animal is not killed specifically for their consumption. But this policy always assumes that there is someone else to do the dirty work, a hunter or butcher to get all the bad karma so bikkhus don&amp;#039;t have to. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What if every butcher, hunter, and fisherman in India decided to become bikkhus? This seems like wonderful news, but now there is nothing to eat.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:46:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5576064</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-02T00:46:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5575978</link> <description>Thank you, Mark, for engaging in this conversation. You&amp;#039;ve given me a lot to think through, which I&amp;#039;ll do for a while instead of hastily replying. Besides, I&amp;#039;ve become quite busy. . . . &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jenny</description> <pubDate>Mon, 01 Sep 2014 20:43:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5575978</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-01T20:43:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574347</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jen Pearly:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I&amp;#039;m guessing we are all willfully blind to many things - not to pick on you but you probably didn&amp;#039;t &amp;#034;think&amp;#034; about all the insects being killed by driving a car. It is however clear to 3rd parties that you have no excuse in regards to your responsibility for the resulting insect deaths. Now you may not have felt bad (self alert) about it but that does not seem a reasonable criteria for morality.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t drive a car in order to kill beings; I drive a car to get to work to support myself and my family. In Buddhist precept terms, this is not karma for killing. It doesn&amp;#039;t fulfill intent to harm, and it does fulfill protection of my family by the means available to me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;Perfectly undestandable position Jen. But you do have a choice to not kill all those insects. It would require making compromises in your life that you don&amp;#039;t want to make. I would not want to make them either! Most people are ignoring a lot of things that break the precepts e.g. funding wars (paying taxes) &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Intention is an interesting idea - I tend to associate intention with self. It is committing an act consciously. If we have faith in what the Buddha taught (or are awake, it seems) then we realize . . .  that there is no self. That means that intentions are NOT only the decisions we consciously acknowledge. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not following a logic here at all. First, I don&amp;#039;t think it is completely accurate to say that the Buddha taught that we have no self. In terms of the moral training, and even in terms of wisdom training, we certainly do exercise a self. (See the chapter on &amp;#034;No Self vs. True Self&amp;#034; in MCTB.) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;I&amp;#039;m learning and not a teacher - a recipe for bad explanations, sorry. May also just be flat out wrong!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I should have written no-self instead of &amp;#034;no self&amp;#034;. I&amp;#039;ll try to reword what I wanted to say. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We may be aware of some intentions and unaware of others. Some of the intentions we are aware of will be latched on to by the &amp;#034;ego/self&amp;#034; and we project &amp;#034;my intentions&amp;#034;, we may choose not to own some of them too e.g. &amp;#034;X made me do it&amp;#034;. Intentions that are unconscious (the latent tendencies in buddhism) still lead to actions that are mine (I and others suffer the consequences). So I think we can use the buddha&amp;#039;s teachings to see that moral responsibility includes those unconcsious intentions. For example I&amp;#039;m not as compassionate as I &amp;#034;should&amp;#034; be, but it is not a conscious intention on my part to be uncompassionate, still I&amp;#039;m better off realizing that I should change the latent tendencies - thereby owning the ugly bits that my ego/self often tries to hide.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Moreover, having &amp;#034;no self&amp;#034; means we are somehow personally responsible in the here and now for intentions we are unaware of . . . how? If we are unaware of an &amp;#034;intention,&amp;#034; then in what realm of consideration or by what definition can it be said to be intention at all? I get that you are talking about legal concept of neglect, but in the case of neglect, there has to be a codified standard of behavior (statutes, case law) first and the person&amp;#039;s willful and reckless disregard for that standard when acting in the world. The Buddha&amp;#039;s precepts don&amp;#039;t codify a standard against driving my car to work because bugs may accidentally be killed on the way by flying in front of the car. &lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;At the risk of confusing things I&amp;#039;ll try to reword. I am responsible for my latent tendencies. Owning those is better than not owning them. Because by owning them I&amp;#039;m more motivated to address them. There is a risk that I play games (strategies of avoidance) if I think I&amp;#039;m not responsible for them, leading to things like suppression of emotions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;To give an example in your case - the intention is to kill the insect when you let your husband do that. If the intention was not to kill the insect then you would not let your husband do that e.g. you would save the insect. Not acting (or acting to get others to act) is as intentional as acting yourself (as far as morality is concerned).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;There are different &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;approaches to ethics, one is codified rules. I&amp;#039;m interested in the idea of virtue ethics which gets away from the idea of rules. You are right that it is codified rules in the judicial system.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ethics, as opposed to a moralistic morality, is always a matter of making tough decisions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I think I have a moral responsibility to seek another moral framework when the Buddhist one clearly can&amp;#039;t be observed. Not killing anything is litterally impossible.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Again, the Buddhist precept is not against accidental killing or killing that happens on the way to fulfilling another goal that is necessary and good to meet, like feeding one&amp;#039;s family or protecting them from deadly organisms. Our primary moral dilemma as mammals is that life eats life. As Florian tried to say above, working through moral dilemmas and tough tradeoffs&lt;em&gt; is the practice&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;I was a bit harsh in that satement. It did send me off looking at things outside of buddhism in regards to ethics. An ethical framework that is based only on the precepts is not enough. I don&amp;#039;t think that is what the buddha taught but I think buddhist circles can reduce it to that. There are so many interpretations and I think there is value in looking to ideas within one&amp;#039;s own culture for ethics because there is a huge cultural aspect to morality.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Working within the precepts is a way of grappling with ethics. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;Agreed and lots of value to that - maybe it can be complimented by other ideas too.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The five following components of killing are required for karma to be thrown:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Object&lt;/strong&gt; (targeting a particular insect)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intention&lt;/strong&gt; (through the arising of habit/ignorance, aversion, or attachment, motivation to harm/annihilate that insect forms)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act&lt;/strong&gt; (doing the harmful act by which killing may be achieved)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completion&lt;/strong&gt; (watching the insect die before one&amp;#039;s eyes as a result of the intended action)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feeling&lt;/strong&gt; (fulfilling the intention through completed action reinforces feeling, view, and future action)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;I think this is a case in point of distorting things - the risk of codifying the precepts if you like.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&amp;#034;targeting a particular insect&amp;#034; would support random acts of violence e.g. the Boston bombing was not targeting a particular person. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&amp;#034;through habit/ignorance&amp;#034; - this is what I tried to say earlier - we are often not aware of habitual reactions and we are often not aware of our ignorance. If we are lucky the awareness arises with insight practices.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&amp;#034;doing the harmful act&amp;#034; would allow someone to use another person e.g. a child soldier is executing orders but should this make the person giving the orders free &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&amp;#034;Completion&amp;#034; back to my grissly bomb example - the perpetrator does not hang around to watch it &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The reason that in practicing we avoid killing an insect is because killing habituates our minds to future killing. We are trying to reprogram ourselves out of habits that cause us suffering (and incidentally cause other beings suffering).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;That is one reason. It also leads to discussions like this. If we take the extreme - targetting a particular insect, focusing on a dislike of it, squashing it slowly to observe the act in detail then reflecting on right the action was. Well  that is certainly going to mess someone uyp in the worst sense. I don&amp;#039;t think many people would behave in that way so it is nearly not worth considering.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I do think it would be positive for you to not kill insects - it is obviously something that resonates in you. If you are conscious of greed/aversion/ignorance driving the action then going ahead is not skillful. I would avoid trying to convince people who don&amp;#039;t have the same sensitivity on that particular issue.  They may be more sensitive on other issues that you are not. Seems to have been a good discussion point.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;The reason I see for teaching karma is to help improve morality. If you can see an interpretation of karma that allows for immoral actions then I would question the interpretation rather than think the immoral action is OK.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;The example your son gave is a great example of how the focus on not acting leads to terrible conclusions. Pushed to the extreme it leads to a political system where priveleges are preserved - behaving like that in the real world it would not be random chance that the majority are in the firing line. On a simpler level your son (observing those morals) would not call the fire bigade or an ambulance either because that intentionally puts those people at risk (even driving to the scene is dangerous).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;My son encountered this scenario in a college philosophy class. He&amp;#039;s not a Buddhist. The philosophy professor was deconstructing morality into ethics. Are you saying that you would definitely know who in that scenario ought to live and who ought to die, and you would be willing to be the selector? Really? Explain to me exactly why the one person should lose life by active intervention of a bystander to save 5 other people. Are you comfortable with playing God to that extent? If so, on what ethical basis?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;I was stupid taking your son to task - nothing personal in that. It was just the example you offered.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now that I have dug the hole I&amp;#039;ll try to get out of it &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That particular situation is constructed to cause the debate. For example in a real world situation we don&amp;#039;t know how many people will die when making the decision. They may all jump out of the way in time. The train may be able to stop. Someone else may intervene. So it goes on. If I was trying to dodge the bullet I&amp;#039;d say there is more hope of saving someone by avoiding the train heading toward a crowd. So I&amp;#039;d think about it in terms of saving life rather than killing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But for the sake of the hole, lets assume we know the one person is sure to die. These types of decisions are made all the time. For example in hospitals, drug research and humanitary aid, the list goes on. I think the underlying question is &amp;#034;is one human life worth the same amount as five human lives&amp;#034; my answer is no. So if you put me in some god awful situation where I must decide I&amp;#039;ll try to &amp;#034;save&amp;#034; as many as possible (rather than &amp;#034;kill&amp;#034; as few as possible). I would not be comfortable with that decision - but I would be even less comfortable not acting.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;An ethical basis would be virtue ethics - I guess a lot of people would appreciate 5 people being saved.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for your slippery-slope argument that my son&amp;#039;s refusal to choose a particular person to die by his own hand means he will also subtend a politics for the privileged is a bit farfetched. And, in fact, my son is a self-identified socialist.  As for refusing to call the fire fighters--no, he would not refuse to call the fire fighters. His intent would not be to kill the firemen, nor is it more probable than not that a fire fighter, by being called to do his job, would die.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;I think I am on the slope &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; My point is to say that inaction is a moral choice. So for example if a system supports a favored few at the expense of many our inaction maintains that status quo. I&amp;#039;m guessing you are living in a western country and I&amp;#039;m guessing you can see that we have a political system (both the left and right) that is very much looking after the interests of a small number of people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m sure your son would call the fire fighters too. It is on the other end of the scale of the same type of question. My point is that we do accept to act and those actions do have negative consequences - it is unavoidable. We can try to choose to not see the negative consequence but I understand buddhism encourages owning them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000cd"&gt;Best wishes to you and your son.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 08:52:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574347</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-27T08:52:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574241</link> <description>&lt;strong&gt;Mark:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I&amp;#039;m guessing we are all willfully blind to many things - not to pick on you but you probably didn&amp;#039;t &amp;#034;think&amp;#034; about all the insects being killed by driving a car. It is however clear to 3rd parties that you have no excuse in regards to your responsibility for the resulting insect deaths. Now you may not have felt bad (self alert) about it but that does not seem a reasonable criteria for morality.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t drive a car in order to kill beings; I drive a car to get to work to support myself and my family. In Buddhist precept terms, this is not karma for killing. It doesn&amp;#039;t fulfill intent to harm, and it does fulfill protection of my family by the means available to me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Intention is an interesting idea - I tend to associate intention with self. It is committing an act consciously. If we have faith in what the Buddha taught (or are awake, it seems) then we realize . . .  that there is no self. That means that intentions are NOT only the decisions we consciously acknowledge. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not following a logic here at all. First, I don&amp;#039;t think it is completely accurate to say that the Buddha taught that we have no self. In terms of the moral training, and even in terms of wisdom training, we certainly do exercise a self. (See the chapter on &amp;#034;No Self vs. True Self&amp;#034; in MCTB.) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Moreover, having &amp;#034;no self&amp;#034; means we are somehow personally responsible in the here and now for intentions we are unaware of . . . how? If we are unaware of an &amp;#034;intention,&amp;#034; then in what realm of consideration or by what definition can it be said to be intention at all? I get that you are talking about legal concept of neglect, but in the case of neglect, there has to be a codified standard of behavior (statutes, case law) first and the person&amp;#039;s willful and reckless disregard for that standard when acting in the world. The Buddha&amp;#039;s precepts don&amp;#039;t codify a standard against driving my car to work because bugs may accidentally be killed on the way by flying in front of the car. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ethics, as opposed to a moralistic morality, is always a matter of making tough decisions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;I think I have a moral responsibility to seek another moral framework when the Buddhist one clearly can&amp;#039;t be observed. Not killing anything is litterally impossible.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Again, the Buddhist precept is not against accidental killing or killing that happens on the way to fulfilling another goal that is necessary and good to meet, like feeding one&amp;#039;s family or protecting them from deadly organisms. Our primary moral dilemma as mammals is that life eats life. As Florian tried to say above, working through moral dilemmas and tough tradeoffs&lt;em&gt; is the practice&lt;/em&gt;. Working within the precepts is a way of grappling with ethics. The five following components of killing are required for karma to be thrown:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Object&lt;/strong&gt; (targeting a particular insect)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intention&lt;/strong&gt; (through the arising of habit/ignorance, aversion, or attachment, motivation to harm/annihilate that insect forms)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act&lt;/strong&gt; (doing the harmful act by which killing may be achieved)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completion&lt;/strong&gt; (watching the insect die before one&amp;#039;s eyes as a result of the intended action)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feeling&lt;/strong&gt; (fulfilling the intention through completed action reinforces feeling, view, and future action)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The reason that in practicing we avoid killing an insect is because killing habituates our minds to future killing. We are trying to reprogram ourselves out of habits that cause us suffering (and incidentally cause other beings suffering).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;The example your son gave is a great example of how the focus on not acting leads to terrible conclusions. Pushed to the extreme it leads to a political system where priveleges are preserved - behaving like that in the real world it would not be random chance that the majority are in the firing line. On a simpler level your son (observing those morals) would not call the fire bigade or an ambulance either because that intentionally puts those people at risk (even driving to the scene is dangerous).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;My son encountered this scenario in a college philosophy class. He&amp;#039;s not a Buddhist. The philosophy professor was deconstructing morality into ethics. Are you saying that you would definitely know who in that scenario ought to live and who ought to die, and you would be willing to be the selector? Really? Explain to me exactly why the one person should lose life by active intervention of a bystander to save 5 other people. Are you comfortable with playing God to that extent? If so, on what ethical basis?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for your slippery-slope argument that my son&amp;#039;s refusal to choose a particular person to die by his own hand means he will also subtend a politics for the privileged is a bit farfetched. And, in fact, my son is a self-identified socialist.  As for refusing to call the fire fighters--no, he would not refuse to call the fire fighters. His intent would not be to kill the firemen, nor is it more probable than not that a fire fighter, by being called to do his job, would die.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 03:52:57 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574241</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-27T03:52:57Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574223</link> <description>The Tibetan center where I used to sit had a railway on one side of it and an and exterminator company on the other side. Try staying concentrated sometime with an earth-shaking train roaring past on one side, and the unmistatakable smell of bug poison wafting in from the other. Like trying to meditate in a hell realm.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 02:47:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574223</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-27T02:47:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574220</link> <description>&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;Learn to love to cockroach, and your life will be better.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I live in the U.S. South. They &lt;em&gt;fly&lt;/em&gt; right into your face down here! Used to be even worse when I lived in Florida. They aren&amp;#039;t very cuddly, y&amp;#039;all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Also, ants only come where there&amp;#039;s food.  You don&amp;#039;t have to kill the ants, just seal your food and they go away on their own.  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I wish. They seem to stick around even where there is only water, as in the bathroom. One time I did get them to leave by literally asking them to leave. Or maybe my husband poisoned them when I wasn&amp;#039;t looking. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not Tao: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;Or maybe there are ants in your house for a while.  Are they hurting you?  Maybe it makes you embarrased when company comes over?  Maybe you just believe ants aren&amp;#039;t supposed to be in a house?  These are all things you don&amp;#039;t really have to care about.  Just decide not to!  It&amp;#039;s no more difficult than that.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well, they are annoying and can really build up their population! My husband&amp;#039;s main strategy lately has been to find where they are coming in and block that entryway. With the cockroaches, they really can be health threats, not just annoyances, so I definitely don&amp;#039;t want them nesting in the house, though I think everyone in the South has them nesting in their abode, whether they know it or suppress that knowledge. I think that the cockroach is a good object for extreme equanimity practice, though! It may do me good if I could attenuate that reaction of rage and disgust and fear when I seem them. If I could find a way to see them as being with a plight. &lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 02:43:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5574220</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-27T02:43:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Meditation for Decisions and Problem Solving</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572475</link> <description>Focusing comes to my mind: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Focusing"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 16:07:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572475</guid> <dc:creator>Andreas Thef</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-23T16:07:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Meditation for Decisions and Problem Solving</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572439</link> <description>Discusison on meditating with questions, derived partly from the Zen koen tradition.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2014/02/bg-308-working-questions/</description> <pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 13:52:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572439</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-23T13:52:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571556</link> <description>Hey, that website looks really helpful, hadn&amp;#039;t found that before.&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for pointing it out!</description> <pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2014 07:48:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571556</guid> <dc:creator>bernd the broter</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-21T07:48:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Meditation for Decisions and Problem Solving</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571022</link> <description>In my limited experience of trying to do an &amp;#034;indecision meditation&amp;#034;, I did have a bit of a breakthrough by focusing on what might be causing the sense of being blocked.  I went into that and found that a lot of what was guilt about leaving a relationship, and and underlying belief causing that guilt, which was the belief that it is wrong to abandon someone you love.  The indecision meditation I did helped me to recognize the underlying belief, and then I used inquiry to see through the belief (Byron Katie&amp;#039;s inquiry method worked for me).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This was just peeling away a layer on the problem.  I still don&amp;#039;t have a sense of resolution, but one of the many forces operating in my mind seems to have quited down.  Perhaps continuous meditation on the feelings block clarity might help in time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is a great book called Sources of Power that explains the psychology of how decisions are made in naturalistic settings.  But basically it&amp;#039;s usually pattern recognition and mental simulation.  Problem solving and decision making are essentially the same thing.  At the basic level the book describes a model of intuition.  However if the mental simulation on how to resolve the issue runs into blocks, a decision cannot be made because essentially no way can be imagined forward.  Usually we don&amp;#039;t weight options, but just pick the first mental simulation that seems to work, and the insight for solutions comes mostly from experience of what has worked in the past.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I agree that insight comes when the mind is at rest in the silence of contemplation. The alpha waves delivering signals from the right hemisphere of the brain can be more easily detected in relaxed or meditative states of consciousness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am still struggling with a decision now about to leave or stay with a relationship, and haven&amp;#039;t yet found a practical solution on how to resolve the question.  It seems to come down to the lack of information that I have to base a decision on.  There may be some situations were a decision is not possible, simply because the conditions are not there for a decision... lack of adequate information about starting conditions, lack of clarity on target conditions, or lack of clarity on how to move from starting to target conditions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wisdom and clarity seem to be the key to a sense of &amp;#034;knowing&amp;#034; what to do and intention seems to arise from that, and lead to action.  I gues  all that can be done is to work on increasing clarity, but if there is not enough information, then is there really a decision possible? </description> <pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2014 05:27:50 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571022</guid> <dc:creator>Nikolai M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-20T05:27:50Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570515</link> <description>Hi Bernd,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Brother David Steindl-Rast might be a good place to look. Also,if it&amp;#039;s still relevant, here&amp;#039;s my personal approach:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every night in bed I try to find an item in each of the following 4 categories, for which gratitude arises naturally. The categories are&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;P - Person&lt;br /&gt;O - Opportunity&lt;br /&gt;E - Experience&lt;br /&gt;T - Thing&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then I try to feel the sensations which make up the experience as closely as possible, looking for any change in them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wishing you well,&lt;br /&gt;D</description> <pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2014 19:29:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570515</guid> <dc:creator>Dominik J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-18T19:29:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570507</link> <description>Hi Jeremy,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I seem to have offended you, sorry about that.  You are right the thread was touching on several different topics/contexts and that is confusing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The way your message ended has me thinking you do not want to continue the discussion. I&amp;#039;ll keep this reply short.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It seems you are confusing virtue ethics with deontological ethics (basically codes of conduct) - virtue ethics is not about creating a rule set, it is about developing virtues (or character traits).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From a virtue ethics perspective intent will largely come from the character of the individual - different people will have developed the various virtues to different levels and that could lead to different intentions and actions. For example I don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;ll find that all enlightened people would behave in the same way in the same circumstances.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Focusing primarily on intention may work really well for you. I think there is a risk that intention can be used to disown the unconscious aspects of one&amp;#039;s action. Typically people have good conscious intentions but acting skillfully or unskillfully will influence the consequences enormously. My basic understanding of virtue ethics is that good intention is considered as a neccessary but not sufficient basis for moral actions. Developing the virtues increaeses the likelihood of good intentions leading to skillful actions - or so I hope.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was not trying to offend by pointing out the brain vs mind distinction. When you refer to consciousness I associate this more with mind, while the brain has a lot of sub-conscious activity. I think that sub-conscious activity is why even enlightened peolple are capable or morally corrupt behavior. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for your patience and please don&amp;#039;t feel an obligation to reply.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2014 19:18:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570507</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-18T19:18:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570497</link> <description>Truth can be expressed in words only for a certain context.  If the context changes, the expression of truth will be different.  But there are not different truths.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You are changing contexts with every question.  And so more questions have risen.  I could address each one, but you should know the answers for yourself or they will mean nothing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here is where you reveal your confusion:  Not only is creating a complete code of conduct impossible due to the sheer infinite number of possilbe different interactions, you should know better than to try for many reasons.  Your understanding will change and grow, will it not?  Would that not change your code of conduct each time?  How many times has your understanding grew already?  Has the code of morality changed with it?  Then why are you attempting to stop your understanding from growing further?  How can there be a code of morality when you do not exist as something independent.  What are you?  Are you so sure that all of your actions are not deterministic?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;All good deeds cause bad consequences.&lt;br /&gt;All bad deeds cause good consequences.&lt;br /&gt;That is why intent matters and not your deeds.  It really is impossible to help people until you are enlightened to full attainment, but you will not reach that place without cultivating compassion.  So you must, in each situation, alleviate suffering to your capability.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When engaged in dokusan, you must never point out what one doesn&amp;#039;t say.  That is useless.  When I say mind and body, that includes brain.  But I could have said only mind, and everything would still be true.  What arises and passes is given names by conciousness.  Conciousness of the mind arises and passes.  Conciousness of the body arises and passes.  However, not all arises and passes.  What does not?  If you answer that question, you will see that life is not short at all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am done with this conversation.  I wish you well &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2014 18:22:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570497</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-18T18:22:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570042</link> <description>Hi Jeremy,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can assure you that if you do learn anything then I will have too. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I want to reword:  An act done with intent for a reward is not selfless.  But a selfless act may bring many rewards.  Goodness is determined by intent.  Wisdom determines the form and quality of the goodness.  No, goodness can not be undone, even if it has bad consequences, because intent is what matters.  Just like killing someone on accident isn&amp;#039;t wrong.  Intending to kill someone and failing is still a wrong.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Intent is a concept that is central to these questions. You are probably familiar with the concept of &amp;#034;wilful blindness&amp;#034; which means that our intentions need not be conscious. Imagine someone who is very egocentric, they could act in an egocentric way, without an explicit intention to be rewarded because tthat behaviour is deeply integrated. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There may be no easy answer to that. When people refer to acting &amp;#034;from the heart&amp;#034; I think it implies the intention is good and genuine. Paradoxically it feels good - so there is some immediate reward.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has me leaning toward virtue ethics which can increase healthy intentions. It would be nice to connect acting &amp;#034;from the heart&amp;#034; and virtue ethics.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have driven myself into that paradox and it did make it me sick.  That was insightful!  Also, yes thank you, It was a long time ago and I&amp;#039;m okay now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m glad to hear your OK and I&amp;#039;ll try to be aware of that risk, thanks.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I should be more careful.  I do think I am in a position to say things about the psychology of a Buddha, but I would never expect you to believe me without knowing me for a long time. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I believe there are people who are &amp;#034;enlightened&amp;#034; or awake if we define that as living from a non-dual perspective. For example Daniel claims to be an arahant. The Buddha claimed attainments which go well beyond arahant and I think there is little chance of understanding what that means without going there. I&amp;#039;m not aware of anyone claiming to be a Buddha. It makes sense to me that the Buddha would have a very unique experience and that would result in a very unique psychology. In regards to the Dharma, the Buddha seems to consider that others (arahants I guess) can and have mastered it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t think our discussion needs to bring the psychology of the Buddha into consideration. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; In fact, I have come to where I am through a different way, and I have never been an ardent student of any school of Buddhism.  But truth is universal, &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not sure but I suspect the notion of truth is a dualist concept i.e. it needs something else that is false. A non-dual experience could be interpreted as &amp;#034;the truth&amp;#034; but that seems to be trying to transpose the absolute into the relative when the relative is contained within the absolute. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I believe the nervous system (which includes the brain and all nerves/senses) is what gives rise to our perception. This is somewhat supported by reports of enlightened people who are aware 24hrs of the day (i.e. even when sleeping) but still loose any notion of experience when anaesthetised - even their enlightened experience requires the brain to function in specific ways.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For example we tend to think of there being two types of experience dual and non-dual. With a sort of switch being thrown upon enlightenment. A different brain my allow for both views to be held at the same time. Or maybe allow for different perspectives again e.g. full awareness of all stimuli at all times (our brains use abstraction and other techniques to give an appearance of full awareness but simple visual illusions demonstrate how we are fooling ourselves (the brain is no doubt using similar tricks in many other aspects of our experience)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My point here is that &amp;#034;universal truth&amp;#034; is perhaps a misleading term. We might be better served by a simpler model of enlightenment e.g. a better way (or maybe best way) for humans to experience the world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;and if you see a wrongness in how I say this, then you will have deepened me, but enlightenment is the escape from suffering and therefore it is the escape from karma.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Even people who are enlightened suffer - that is part of being born. The buddha suffered (Daniel has some details in his book - headaches was one thing I think). After enlightenment the individual continues to function in the relative world in an imperfect way so karma will follow too - eat too many twinkies aand you become diabetic. Enlightened people would prefer to not have diabetes. I liked Daniel&amp;#039;s phrase which was something along the lines of - don&amp;#039;t ignore your relative life (morality) in the search for enlightenment because when you wake up you will wake up to the life you have built.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Someone who is not awakened is likely to suffer a lot more because of the &amp;#034;second dart&amp;#034; or attachments - but removing attachments does not avoid the first dart. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  It is simply seeing without interpretation or bias that all things that can arise, will fade.  Seeing the ego correctly will show you that the ego is simply a set of forces that interact in such a way that they work together to form what we percieve as ego.  It has its purpose.  Now seeing that the ego is a set of forces, will it be destroyed?  Why would it be?  Would it do what it is its purpose to do?  Why wouldn&amp;#039;t it?  But will an enlightened being ever again think that he is this ego?  No... it exists until it doesn&amp;#039;t, and does ego things until it no longer exists.  But I have already found that yes, it diminishes over time, becoming subtle, quiet, and weak. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think you answered most of those questions yourself there. I think the ego is very connected with a dual perspective - it is not destroyed by enlightenment (a good chunk of the Freudian ego is sub-conscious) but a non-dual view is not very supportive of lots of problems the ego can introduce.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; My point in either case would be the same, trying to destroy the ego is impossible.  Ignoring the ego is unnecessary.  Allow without clinging, as always in mindfulness practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I agree it would not be good to be at war with the ego - but letting it go might be a nice analogy.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cessation of thoughts?  Why is this important?  I am not my brain, so I do not need to be concerned with what it does.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Agreed you are not just your brain but it is a necessary part of your experience - destroy the brain and the subjective is gone. You&amp;#039;ll still exist in regards to your previous actions in the world and their unfolding consequences but there is no subjective perception (either dual or non-dual) without the brain.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  It is supposed to generate thoughts.  That is its purpose. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That seems like a confusion between mind and brain - the &amp;#034;mind&amp;#034; has thoughts but the brain is doing a lot of things that does not involve thoughts. In fact it seems to be doing nearly everything without thoughts. The thoughts seem to come later to provide a coherent experience for the self in a dual perspective. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; But If I do not try to destroy the thoughts, ignore the thoughts, but allow without clinging, and then it is as if there are no thoughts.  And in this state, yes you are right, the ego has no fuel.  Knowing the ego is a temporary construct, however, was enough in my early practice to never have issue with it.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The balance between concentration and mindfulness is definitely a delicate one and seems to demand a very light touch while at the same time demanding large effort. Right effort calls for intentional manipulation of thoughts.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Morality is completely subjective.  A teacher may lie to bring someone closer to truth.  The method is not important, only the result.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That seems like one popular framework for morality - Utilitarianism. There is a conflict in your phrase because if only the result matters then it is not completely subjective (unless you really mean the only thing that matters is the subjective result).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At the moment I think Virtue Ethics fits nicely with Buddhism. It can give a model for the sub-conscious drivers of our actions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ends that justify the means is a very slippery slope and probably best avoided.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  But one cannot truly help others if one first needs to help himself.  Sometimes, for those who suffer greatly, the best thing they can do for the world is to work toward enlightenment.  For the deeply enlightened, every waking moment is dedicated to either meditation or helping people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That fits with the interpretation I&amp;#039;ve often seen/heard in buddhism. I also think it is open to serious criticism. Helping others is a very important part of building morality it is perhaps the fast track to developing compassion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wisdom through insight is maybe not the most effective short-term way to improve morality, but what is the need for short-term solutions?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The fact that we are all going to die within a very short amount of time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That is something I will think about.  Perhaps you can let me know, later, what your conclusions were.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Everything else I completely agree with.  The intial awakening is such total freedom that some get stuck there and never deepen their enlightenment.  But always, when enlightenment deepens, it becomes impossible to do anything but consider everyone else&amp;#039;s best interests.  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;These discussions do tend to focus on the divergent points of view but there is plenty of common ground. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Profound knowledge of the absolute is not going to be directly transferrable into the relative. Many people who are enlightened wonder at how other people did not even notice the change when they did. The range of interpretations of enlightenment tends to point to some similarity but also the influence of the individual&amp;#039;s personality, culture etc. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enlightenment is typically described as a sort of switch being thrown, I interpret that to be a shift to a non-dual view. To extend on Daniel&amp;#039;s idea from a Virtue Ethics perspective, we could say build the character you want because that is the one you are going to wake up to.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 17 Aug 2014 12:43:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5570042</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-17T12:43:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5569296</link> <description>You write very well, and I&amp;#039;m excited to discuss something on this level.  We do disagree on a couple things, but you may change my view!  Otherwise, I need to be sure to explain we almost entirely agree.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;A selfless act can still result in rewards. This idea that &amp;#034;real&amp;#034; good acts do not result in rewards is problematic because it gets used to undermine the good work some people do. For example if I see you do a good act, then I thank you and your ego swells or if I help you because I saw you help someone else this does not undo the goodness or selflessness of your initial act&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I want to reword:  An act done with intent for a reward is not selfless.  But a selfless act may bring many rewards.  Goodness is determined by intent.  Wisdom determines the form and quality of the goodness.  No, goodness can not be undone, even if it has bad consequences, because intent is what matters.  Just like killing someone on accident isn&amp;#039;t wrong.  Intending to kill someone and failing is still a wrong.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have driven myself into that paradox and it did make it me sick.  That was insightful!  Also, yes thank you, It was a long time ago and I&amp;#039;m okay now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;I don&amp;#039;t think you or I are in a position to say much about the psychology of a buddha. It does seem that the buddhist path leads to a significant suppression of the ego. I doubt it can be total but I think we can say that someone who has spent significant time on the path will have reduced the weight of their ego in their everyday life.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I should be more careful.  I do think I am in a position to say things about the psychology of a Buddha, but I would never expect you to believe me without knowing me for a long time.  In fact, I have come to where I am through a different way, and I have never been an ardent student of any school of Buddhism.  But truth is universal, and if you see a wrongness in how I say this, then you will have deepened me, but enlightenment is the escape from suffering and therefore it is the escape from karma.  It is simply seeing without interpretation or bias that all things that can arise, will fade.  Seeing the ego correctly will show you that the ego is simply a set of forces that interact in such a way that they work together to form what we percieve as ego.  It has its purpose.  Now seeing that the ego is a set of forces, will it be destroyed?  Why would it be?  Would it do what it is its purpose to do?  Why wouldn&amp;#039;t it?  But will an enlightened being ever again think that he is this ego?  No... it exists until it doesn&amp;#039;t, and does ego things until it no longer exists.  But I have already found that yes, it diminishes over time, becoming subtle, quiet, and weak.  My point in either case would be the same, trying to destroy the ego is impossible.  Ignoring the ego is unnecessary.  Allow without clinging, as always in mindfulness practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cessation of thoughts?  Why is this important?  I am not my brain, so I do not need to be concerned with what it does.  It is supposed to generate thoughts.  That is its purpose.  But If I do not try to destroy the thoughts, ignore the thoughts, but allow without clinging, and then it is as if there are no thoughts.  And in this state, yes you are right, the ego has no fuel.  Knowing the ego is a temporary construct, however, was enough in my early practice to never have issue with it.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Morality is completely subjective.  A teacher may lie to bring someone closer to truth.  The method is not important, only the result.  But one cannot truly help others if one first needs to help himself.  Sometimes, for those who suffer greatly, the best thing they can do for the world is to work toward enlightenment.  For the deeply enlightened, every waking moment is dedicated to either meditation or helping people. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wisdom through insight is maybe not the most effective short-term way to improve morality, but what is the need for short-term solutions?&lt;br /&gt;That is something I will think about.  Perhaps you can let me know, later, what your conclusions were.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Everything else I completely agree with.  The intial awakening is such total freedom that some get stuck there and never deepen their enlightenment.  But always, when enlightenment deepens, it becomes impossible to do anything but consider everyone else&amp;#039;s best interests.  </description> <pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2014 10:01:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5569296</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-15T10:01:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568853</link> <description>Hi Jeremy,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You are right that there are some reflex actions that have good consequences. These did not stand out to me when reviewing past actions. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A selfless act can still result in rewards. This idea that &amp;#034;real&amp;#034; good acts do not result in rewards is problematic because it gets used to undermine the good work some people do. For example if I see you do a good act, then I thank you and your ego swells or if I help you because I saw you help someone else this does not undo the goodness or selflessness of your initial act.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I appreciate your concern regarding overthinking this. I&amp;#039;ve not spent a lot of time thinking about it recently (it came up yesterday). It appears that you have and you found it paradoxical and you got sick - that is scary and I hope you are well over it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t think you or I are in a position to say much about the psychology of a buddha. It does seem that the buddhist path leads to a significant suppression of the ego. I doubt it can be total but I think we can say that someone who has spent significant time on the path will have reduced the weight of their ego in their everyday life. For example enlightened individuals often talk about a significant (maybe near total) cessation of thoughts - without thoughts the ego&amp;#039;s impact is going to be significantly reduced.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I hope I did not give the impression that I&amp;#039;m intentionally not helping others because I&amp;#039;m worried about the ego. That is not the case. I do think that the Buddhist practices call for an explicit effort in improving one&amp;#039;s morality. Part of that should help reduce the ego - for example increased compassion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You&amp;#039;ll find many terrible historical situations where an act of the utmost goodness was required but was not performed. We may have some inate morality in some situations but many situations are complex and require virtues that are strong enough to act in the face of fear of consequences (a lot of that may be sub-conscious which is why I think virtues is a good way to model where good actions come from).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You might be making a mistake in reagrds to morality, but I&amp;#039;m not assuming this is the case. Your comments bring up the following:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Noble Eightfold Path can be grouped into three categories (I&amp;#039;m aiming at the concept here not the exact definition) : morality, meditation, wisdom. In the west there seems to be a huge focus on meditation and wisdom i.e. the insight practises. There is truth that meditation leads to insights that can lead to more moral behavior but that is not the primary intenion of the insight practices. The insight practices are aimed to bring about awakening which is a different sort of wisdom from morality. It seems widely accepted that even after awakening there is still a lot of work to do in regards to morality.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel proposes at least a couple of paths - first sort your shit out (big focus on morality) then awaken or first awaken then sort your shit out. These two extremes obviously leave a huge range of possibilities. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My point is that focusing on wisdom through insight is not the most effective way to improve morality in the short term. Furthermore the enlightened mind can still act in very immoral ways - sexual abuse scandals in religious communities are a stricking example. I would guess there is some risk that the enlightened mind may reinforce the suppression of some of our inate moral alarm bells (e.g. the ego going to have a harder time expressing guilt if there is no thinking going on).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not saying that enlightenment risks to increase immorality. I am saying that we have an opportunity to improve our morality with practices that are not related to insight (although that may help in reaching insights).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Not wanting to explore morality deeply appears to be turning a blind eye to a significant part of the overall practise. I&amp;#039;m not saying it should be the primary focus, I&amp;#039;m not saying it should be a pure thought exercise. But I do think there is an opportunity to explore this and benefit from it, which is why I started the thread. Particularly for lay people - we have a much more complex and difficult moral environment to navigate. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Currently I&amp;#039;m thinking that good actions come from our virtues and our virtues can be developed. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I also think egotistical behavior (one aspect of the freudian ego) needs to be reduced/removed to allow for better decisions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There may be a misconception that awakening is not about destroying the self as we experience it. Enlightened people talk about the final task being one of letting go - of really surrendering the self (and it never comes back). I was sold on a vision of removing attachments which thereby removes suffering. I&amp;#039;ve now understood that awakening is the removal of the self i.e. realizing a permanent non-dual perspective and that requires going through some suffering to get there. A realization of how the self can limits one&amp;#039;s ability to act in the best interests of a situation could be one more motivation to get rid of the self.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From the way you wrote I suspect we have different views on this (I&amp;#039;ll also be making huge projections based on one text message!). I hope the above is of some use to you. The points you raised were helpful for me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe the PNS can help identify actions that are motivated by virtues.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In conclusion I&amp;#039;ll continue to try to do good even when I see the ego getting involved. I&amp;#039;ll also continue to look for a way to reduce the egocentric reactions and increase virtues. I&amp;#039;ll also continue to meditate &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 07:11:55 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568853</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T07:11:55Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568807</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;So, if you think you aren&amp;#039;t killing all the time, realize that you are. Driving down the road at night in the South in any season except winter kills hundreds of insects on the front of your car. Everything you eat involved the killing of many, many beings. Everything you buy involved it also in some way. We kill constantly for our survival one way or the other. You can&amp;#039;t walk on the lawn without killing things. You can&amp;#039;t walk in a forest without killing things. Just today I breathed in a bug into my nostrils and it died when I went to remove it. It is sad but true.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But these examples don&amp;#039;t rise to the Buddhist precept against killing, for they don&amp;#039;t show the four elements of so-called throwing karma. We aren&amp;#039;t talking Jainism here, are we?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m surprised no one here has discussed the necessary four elements of karma and how that translates into a definition of &lt;em&gt;killing&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;br /&gt;Object&lt;br /&gt;Action&lt;br /&gt;Completion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m talking about intention to kill a sentient being, taking action specifically to fulfill that intention, and then watching the fulfillment of that action (the dying of the being before one). Without this chain, we don&amp;#039;t have killing in the Buddhist precept sense. There are a lot of red herrings on this thread!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have a Christian mystic friend who, before she mows the lawn, walks all over her yard to ask the bugs and creatures to leave. Even though her mowing her yard is not killing in the precept sense, I think her mindfulness is exemplary, the extra mile that it can only do anyone&amp;#039;s own mind/heart good to take. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 03:49:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568807</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T03:49:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568798</link> <description>Argh! I wrote a lengthy response to this comment, but as I pressed &amp;#034;publish,&amp;#034; impermance ate it, killed it dead! &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/huh.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And if I tried to reconstruct, then I would miss my sit. So, hold those thoughts. . . .</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 03:19:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568798</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T03:19:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568773</link> <description>Don&amp;#039;t get me started on water fluoridation . . .  </description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 01:12:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568773</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T01:12:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568706</link> <description>Yes, Florian, I agree. And this is very much what the existentialists said, too.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:26:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568706</guid> <dc:creator>_</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T00:26:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568696</link> <description>If someone falls in front of you, will you not catch them?  This is outside of mind and ego.  Of course the ego will swell with pride, but it did not decide to do the catching.  Ignore your ego&amp;#039;s pride by allowing it but not attaching, dwelling on it.  But if you see that you need to do a goodness, it does not matter where that decision was made, only whether or not the decision is selfless.  A good act that rewards you in some way is not good.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This was an excellent question, but don&amp;#039;t overthink it.  You will drive yourself into a paradox that will make you sick.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The ego exists and cannot be destroyed.  Even a buddha still has an ego.  The difference is that when the ego is joyful, the buddha will say &amp;#039;oh the ego is joyful&amp;#039;.  He cannot delight in himself because he asks &amp;#034;who is delighting?  It is only the ego, that silly thing.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do goodness for any reason, all reasons, and allow your ego to feel what it wants.  But goodness that is spontaneous is the truest goodness, and it will happen more and more often as you grow on your path.  Take my word by faith if you must, but when an act of the truest goodness is required, there is no deciding in any part of you.  You will just do it.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:20:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568696</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-14T00:20:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568283</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Tom Tom:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Apparently there is some research trying to make mosquitos extinct or to eradicate large populations.  &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;popsci&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;science&amp;#x2f;article&amp;#x2f;2011-07&amp;#x2f;killing-mosquitoes-genetic-trick-makes-digesting-blood-deadly"&gt;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-07/killing-mosquitoes-genetic-trick-makes-digesting-blood-deadly&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;T&lt;/a&gt;his can&amp;#039;t be something the Buddha would advocate....&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Being a mosquitoes seems like a very stressful life. Let&amp;#039;s end there agony in masses and give them a chance to get reborn as higher beings...</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:17:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568283</guid> <dc:creator>Simon T.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T22:17:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568136</link> <description>Death is not really a thing.  But suffering is very much a thing.  &lt;br /&gt;When compassion must be cultivated, one must avoid either.  But there is a higher compassion that, once achieved, will seek to kill the things which may inhibit Dharma, including pyschopathic humans.  This compassion may also decide to allow a sentient being to suffer in order to cultivate more compassion in them.   That is the path of the Dharmapala.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 21:01:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5568136</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T21:01:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>From the Heart ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567911</link> <description>I started reading &amp;#034;A path With Heart&amp;#034; which is raising questions. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When I look back at some acts of goodness that I&amp;#039;ve performed in the past I can honestly say the initial intention to help came not from the &amp;#034;self&amp;#034;. But as the situation evolved (literally once the concept to help became conscious) I&amp;#039;m layering all sorts of projections all over the interaction.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As soon as &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; take responsibility for an action it seems the situation is &amp;#034;polluted&amp;#034;. I notice myself no longer following instinctive actions because I&amp;#039;m concerned the reaction will be serving the ego&amp;#039;s interests. So I play some game of trying to do what someone who was actually &amp;#034;good&amp;#034; would do. It is terrible to imagine living an entire life where everything &amp;#034;good&amp;#034; has been some sort of role play!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This idea of acting from the heart is also confusing. I mean the heart is certainly part of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) but do people really think there is some sort of decision making relative to abstrcat moral concepts going on in the heart ? I can buy that the PNS is a feedback system that is extremely valuable - the term &amp;#034;gut decision&amp;#034; comes to mind. But the brain is still doing most of the heavy lifting even if sub-consciously.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe the idea is the PNS can provide feedback unfiltered by the ego (Freud&amp;#039;s ego) ?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:50:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567911</guid> <dc:creator>Mark</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T09:50:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is Killing Ever Right? Of Mosquitoes and Men</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567906</link> <description>we are killing birds, fish and all other natural mosquito enemies which is causing increase in mosquito population so we are now forced to take care of mosquitoes ourselves. It is not debatable if its right or wrong because it is our duty to exterminate them. I personally am worried about how much those fuckers are flying around lately...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;besides killing such a foul creature is not immoral but it is actually act of great kindness =)</description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:42:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5567906</guid> <dc:creator>Paweł K</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-13T09:42:05Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 