the Four Limitless Ones

I attended a talk on the Four Limitless Ones last night. I've heard Pema (Chodron) repeat this buddhist prayer/chant many times but never realized it contains what she also calls the Four Limitless qualities we might all aspire to: loving-kindness (Maitri), compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

Happiness and the root of happiness is considered Maitri. Being free from suffering and the root of suffering is Compassion. Sympathetic joy helps us overcome jealousy at others' achievements and good fortune. Equanimity is the prayer that everyone might be free of passion, aggression and prejudice.

May all sentient beings enjoy happiness
and the root of happiness.

May we be free from suffering
and the root of suffering.

May we not be separated from
the great happiness devoid of suffering.

May we dwell in the great equanimity
free from passion, aggression, and prejudice.

Actually here is the most important concept about cultivating these qualities: "We start with the amount we have, no matter how limited it is, and we begin to nurture what we have, and then it will expand by itself until it's actually limitless." (Pema quote, from this page the Four and Maitri.)
I'll post more in a Facebook note, but wanted to include Buddha and the iPad here ;) (compliments of another buddhist blogger Buddha and the Big C.) This gal knows a little something about ALL the Limitless Ones, given her struggle with stage four breast cancer. Namaste!

Facebook 2.0

Oh, my... I almost emailed this link, a post called "Goodbye Facebook", to several of my real friends. Not Facebook "friends" but people I actually interact with all the time. Then I stopped. 1) I don't really enjoy being sent gobs of links all the time. I can't keep up with all the blogs and online sites I like to read, much less all the online articles that other people send. 2) I want this link where I can tweet it, FBook it and refer to it as often as I want. ** What LINK? ** Where is it?? ** hang on...

Little preface: I watched the Social Network movie, something I had been really anxious to watch. I was sure I would enjoy it because of Aaron Sorkin's writing, and the docu-drama aspect of the "real" Facebook story. BARF>>> PUKE >>> as the sophmores themselves might say. The story (real or imagined) was so idiotic I couldn't stand it. Then came the Golden Globes and it won the BEST PICTURE ?!?!?! Some say it will win several Oscars, too. So sad. Then I got a tweet from Jack Schafer at Salon with THE link. Vindication, I begin to scream. Someone else -- two of them, at least -- felt just like i did!

Facebook: Nothing more than "a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore."

... we should all delete our Facebook accounts to protest invasion of our privacy and the stupidity of the site in general. Then, just like poster Nichol realized --
even down to her ending (which spoiler or not, you can read NOW.)

"...I’d really like to share this epiphany with my friends.

Hmm… now, how do I do that again? (with Facebook account deleted.) I guess I’ll tweet it. And can someone else share it on Facebook for me?" she says.

HA!! And thus, I blog. Oh, yeah, here's the LINK ;)

Beginner's Mind

This is a famous book by Shunryu Suzuki called "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." It's one of the first Buddhist books I owned in the early 1970s. One of Suzuki's first topics is posture. I bet I rolled my eyes back then at his incredibly detailed description of how to sit, and tilt, and hold our hands -- not to mention his paradoxical references. In my impatient youthful years, no wonder I could never truly get into Zen. All that sitting, which I found unbearably boring, and the incomprehensible koans. But I liked the idea of it enough to continue reading over the years, even when I wasn't sitting. Liked it enough to call myself ZenWoman when I needed a "handle" for Compuserve in 1979. (I discovered Compuserve while working at a TV station back then. First for research and later as a fun diversion.)

Anyway, now I find myself endlessly fascinated by the subtle nuances of how to sit for meditation or stand for yoga. I just posted a note about this on Facebook. I feel compelled to try and explain some of these aspects of Buddhism in hopes of demystifying it. I really hate to see beautiful, helpful practices like meditation and hatha yoga (the physical part of yoga) and T'ai Chi all lumped into some "woo woo" category or to go the way of Islam, where people actually begin to hate it.

I hope with President Obama's call for civility and for us to tone down the vitriolic rheteroic, we can all try. I know it's hard. Even in the midst of writing these pieces I felt the old urge to start name calling and blaming the fundamentalist factions for our problems. But I am part of the problem unless I try to shed light on my own practice, walk my own walk, and make some of my tools accessible to others. You never know when someone is ready and you know what "they" say: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. We are all each others gurus.

Assault Weapons

I have tried not to get into controversial subjects -- politics, gun control, debates on God or Christianity -- because I am working on my judgmental nature and anger issues. The Tucson Tragedy has brought all of the above to the forefront. Instead of entering my own commentary on guns, I'm going to link to a favorite blog of mine, The Buddhist Blog . (You can see his other posts after you read the weapons one.)

James is able to convey these ideas in a calm, measured way that I have not yet achieved. Enjoy his post (s). Namaste!

New Year, New Computer (s)

It's 2011, my intention was to focus on spirituality, but instead I am drowning in technology. I now have four computers. FOUR! Each one tinier than the preceding one: an old desktop with it's new wide-screen monitor, a Vista laptop with whiz bang video card, iPad and now a 4G HTC android phone. Do I need all this? Maybe if I start a book tour this spring. After all three of them will "go with" for touring. The desktop is old, but I still like using a "real" keyboard and large screen when I'm home. I could dock my laptop to that stuff, couldn't I, and get rid of the old "box"? OH, and I bought one of those tiny portable HDs too, so I can back up the old hard drive -- all the more reason to make the laptop the main machine. I love the iPad and don't regret buying it all all. It's great for kicking back and reading online stuff, when the phone screen is too small. Some pages look like crap on the phone... my own included: www.AKSbook.com But the phone is fab for combining all my little handheld stuff into one contraption. It's not just a phone, but MP3, FM radio, mini TV, Skype-capable calling, a HOT Spot for the laptop and iPad, HiDef camcorder, mega pixel camera, little game machine and uses those SD cards to hold lots of music, videos and photos. It's too cool not to have! Wasn't this the goal when PDAs first came into our consciousness? One machine to do all things digital? So that makes me an e-Buddhist? But if I ever go to a cave for contemplation, how will I plug in all this stuff to recharge ;)