Buddhist Belief – Jewel of the Dharma
“Turn your mind away from things which are not permanent.”~~~ Buddha
It has been over a month since I last posted here. Frankly, I’m just as surprised about the length of time as I’m sure you are. After my surgery, there certainly was a period of time where I wasn’t feeling good and needed to put my mindfulness onto the process of healing. However, after about three weeks, I did feel well enough to get back to writing but found myself procrastinating — and becoming rather skilled at doing so. There was no difficulty in finding excuses to avoid writing — not only here in Buddhist Belief, but in my other blogs as well.
Then, this morning I read a post by a great friend of mine from the United Kingdom where she talked of her own discoveries about why she wasn’t doing much writing either. You can read it here: Murmurz.com — We’re both writers by nature, so this was all making a direct hit on the guilt-factor for me. Her blog post showed me how “just writing” can often cause a break-through. She just sat down and wrote. These words I’m writing at this moment are my own attempt to follow her lead.
When I last wrote here, we wound up our discussion of the Eightfold Path of Buddhist Belief, or, as I like to refer to them, the eight principles of enlightened living.
If you would take the time to go back through these past discussions about these eight principles, you’ll see that the whole Dharma teaching is explained. This isn’t like studying, or having to follow, the Eight Commandments — you know what I’m saying — “if you do all these things you’ll get to heaven later”. This is different. This is simply about sanity.
Think about it — isn’t it more sane to be helpful to others rather than to be harmful?
Isn’t it more sane to be present, rather than to always be distracted and absentminded?
Isn’t it more sane to be working at your true vocation rather than making compromises for how you spend your life?
These principles are the best guide I’ve ever found for living with some degree of sanity and enlightened living. I’m not saying it’s easy to follow these principles of enlightened living, but I do feel they pretty much sum up the Dharma. It’s really eight facets of one jewel. If you look at that jewel, of course it can have infinite facets, but I think these eight pretty well sum up everything.
I do believe there is one facet missing — I feel we should also include “Right Exercise” and call it the Ninth step on the Ninefold Path. (Please don’t write me nasty comments, folks, it’s just me thinking out loud and being a little facetious!) If the Buddha were teaching today, I’ll bet he might include exercise. I’m not thinking just physical exercise, either. I’m also thinking about mental and emotional exercise as well. It might be yoga — it might be Tai Chi — it might be some sort of martial art. It’s about developing our mental and physical faculties for health, mental alertness and relaxation. It’s healthy to exercise our freedom to inquire or debate about things. We should exercise our speech that way. Not just swallow the Dharma whole.
We have now covered the Four Noble Truths — the four facts of life — and the Eightfold Path — the principles of enlightened living.
I hope you will take the opportunity to put some thought into these writings we’ve shared over the past several months and see how you might apply them to your own life. You should find going through the process to be helpful. The process of applying these principles to your own life is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Doing so will help you to lead an enlightened, sane and more righteous life. Despite what many people say, you don’t have to wait until you die to reach Nirvana. You don’t have to wait for anything. There is nothing missing. Everything is available to you right now, in this moment. All you have to do is tap into it — “it” being the Dharma — the truth — the Buddhist Belief we’ve written about in this blog.
This is the joy of the jewel of the Dharma. Dharma means the truth — the truth of things as they are — right now — in this moment — in the present. Accept things as they are — right now — in this moment — in the present — and you will find inner peace.
I’ll be back to write more about Buddhist Belief in future posts. We’ll be writing in more general terms and discussing more interesting ways to look at life from a Buddhist point of view.
Until then,
Namaste — Be in Peace.
Ron Rink
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For those who wanted me to repeat the links for the books I’ve mentioned in the last few articles, here they are again — And, I have added another wonderful book by Sharon Salzberg. Here’s some information about it. I highly recommend all these books to you:
Sharon Salzberg — The Kindness Handbook
“It takes boldness, even audacity, to step out of our habitual patterns and experiment with a quality like kindness–to work with it and see just how it might shift and open up our lives. This book is an invitation to do just that.” – From The Kindness Handbook — “The Kindness Handbook
Eckhart Tolle’s amazing best seller, “A New Earth”
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s wonderful book, “My Stroke of Insight” — “Nirvana is just a breath away!”
And this one by Sharon Salzberg and is entitled: “A Heart as Wide as the World: Living with Mindfulness, Wisdom and Compassion“.
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Always remember this wonderful quote from Buddha ….
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”~~~ Buddha
Shanti everyone, … (A sanscrit word meaning, “Let there be Peace. Peace, beautiful Peace. Peace within, Peace without. Peace in this world. Peace for all beings.”)
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”~~~ Buddha
Have a peaceful day!! —
Ron Rink
http://www.theleaderinside.com
http://www.wecould2.com
http://www.buddhistbelief.com
Tags: attachment, Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist, Buddhist Belief, detachment, Eightfold Path, First Noble Truth, Four Noble Truths, Fourth Noble Truth, inner peace, karma, loving kindness, Meditation, metta, Nirvana, Peace, Second Noble Truth, Third Noble Truth
February 16th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Oh Ron. It’s wonderful to have you back and I am filled with a warm confusion wondering how my own muddle could possibly inspire someone else!!
A suggestion for your Ninth Step would be Dance of Shiva. It is wacky. That’s all I can say – but it has helped me enormously on a number of levels. I would not dare to describe myself as a shivanaut – I mere flail my arms around in yet more confusion – but things shift when I do it.
Dance of shiva is available through Havi Brooks over at http://thefluentself.com
So, so glad to have you back. Did I say that already?