Sakula encouraged me to start a thread on Dana after I posted the Sequence of Meritorious Actions

My favorite story about Dana is Visakha’s profound dana wisdom

Let’s discuss our practices and challenges regarding dana.

with metta / Antony.

I don’t have any trouble hearing it in quiet settings or in sitting meditation, even when it is not so quiet.

But I have trouble hearing it in busy situations, noisy situations, etc. and so it’s greatest appeal is missing. I like it because as they say it is always there and you don’t have to do anything to create it, just simply turn your mind to it. Unfortunately that is not how it is when I try it under certain conditions. Sometimes I think I hear it but I am not sure if I am imagining or remembering it.

So, all I can do is recognize this as doubt, and resume a “listening attitude” or “listening mental posture,” and wait.

Does this sound familiar experience to anyone? Do you have any tricks or advice? I love tricks and advice.

The best trick I ever learned was about practicing mindfulness while eating. I found I could be mindful much of the day but when it came to the daily meal I would take two or three mindful bites and then the next thing I knew I would wake up out of the swirl and was looking at an empty bowl. Then someone, a monk at Bhavana society it was, told me to try, while chewing, to keep your hands still, not reaching for more, scooping food around, etc. Right away it worked! It was so much easier to stay with the experience.

That was a great trick.

metta,

Supakamo

I’m interested in learning how many of us here are practicing and learning alone and how many are active members of a group.

If your answer is YES, please share how it has helped to shape your practice.

If your answer is NO, please share how you sustain your practice without the support, encouragement and example of others.

Kris

Thanks for popping in. My name is Sakula, how do you do? I’m well and glad to be here. Please make yourself at home. Let me introduce myself and then, if you would, it would be nice to know a bit of yourself as well.

The short version and why I’m here: I love this practice. And I love sharing with others the challenges, embarrassment’s and well met feats that walking this path can highlight. I’m happy you’re here. Go grab yourself a warm drink, I’ll have coffee, and pull up a chair. Let’s chat.

I first came into contact with this lineage when Ajahn Amaro visited Portland, Oregon sometime ago, I think it was in 1996. Six months later I visited Abhayagiri and felt an immediate pull. I soon became a frequent visitor and formed friendships that have lasted to this day. Over time I and ten other friends of the Abhayagiri community graduated from a training program called “Community of Abhayagiri Lay Ministers” or CALM for short. One expression of this role that brings me a lot of joy is in encouraging atmospheres where people living by the five precepts (also known as Upasikas) can easily come into contact with others doing the same, hence this forum.

You are invited to reply to any post and/or start up your own topic. If its not obvious how to do so or if you have any questions please email me and I’ll walk you through.

I look forward to sharing our practices, challenges and journeys, whether that be up, down or sideways. This is a long journey, I’m grateful to be walking it in good company

Struggling with what seems like the inevitability of pest control, i.e. removing bees from my house and yard. Anybody know how to deal skillfully with this topic?

Best,

Jessica Swanson
Upasika, PDX

I would like to take a moment to introduce everyone to a project that I am very excited about. I have recently begun work on a virtual study center for the Dhamma. This study center will incorporate a multifaceted approach to learning and analyzing the Dhamma that will include an online journal with informed analysis from various experts in the Dhamma, a forum where anyone interested can visit to seek or offer help in different aspects of the Dhamma, and finally, a virtual school which will offer classes in the Dhamma (think Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, but online).

The forum has just been installed and is up and running! There you can download the entire proposal for the project and read it. Please help by participating in this exciting project to get it off the ground.

The name of the project is Pariyatti.net and can be found here: http://www.pariyatti.net

Any questions, comments, or suggestions are more than welcome and can be directed to me at
Please note that this project is dedicated to study of Dhamma material from the Theravada tradition.

Thank you,
James

Two things strike me especially hard from a scriptural perspective and how her story related to the accounts of the Buddha given in the Pali Canon. Number one, that the Buddha says in many many suttas, that the final defilement to go before enlightenment is the conceit “I am”. You’ll see why this strikes me when you view the video and she is talking about the role of the left side of the brain.

The other thing that strikes me is when she is describing what sensory input was like after she recovered from her stroke and came back from this “Nirvana”. She described it as “burning”. The same way the Buddha describes sense impressions in many places. Some of the places that the Buddha describes sensation as burning:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit...075x.than.html (Magandiya Sutta, one of my favorites)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit....028.than.html (The Fire Sermon)

Here is the link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Here is the transcript:

http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php#more

My suspicion is that this woman did indeed get a very rare “glimpse” into nibbana by fast tracking to the last step of enlightenment without having to do all the many years of brain altering meditation. However, other things, desires, were still in place, so she failed to actually achieve full enlightenment.

I’m introducing this topic so that we have a place for people to share questions and suggestions about the mechanics of posting to this forum. This topic is not about the content of messages. Please check the announcement titled “How to use this Forum” for guidelines about the content of our messages and about our intention to organize our messages into relevant topics.

The focus of this topic is the procedures for posting messages, attaching files, inserting links to web pages, subscribing to topics, creating new topics, searching for existing messages, and other such technical details. This is nerdsville.

For many, this topic will be of no interest at all. Most of us will just type our messages and post them without any questions arising. That’s just fine. But some might be interested in doing something more complicated. In spite of the fact that the forum is pretty self-evident, some questions might arise. This is the place to ask them. This is also the place for us to share bits of information about the mechanics of the forum that we’ve discovered along the way.

So . . . feel free to ask a question, offer a tip, or ignore this topic entirely.

With a smile,
Dorothea
Note: To keep the topic brief, I might delete some questions (just leaving the answers), or I might find a way to group related tips. The idea will be to make this a place where we can easily find the information we’re looking for.