Agarwood: Be Careful What You Wish For!

The blog at  www.floracopeia.com is a treasure chest full of surprises. 

You never know what you might learn or be inspired to do when you visit.

The blog entry I read today was about the effects of agarwood.

After reading it I felt a strong urge to buy some.

Read for yourself and see what you think:

Click here to read the blogpost!

How meditation can help you!

My notes from a teaching by Venerable Geshe Doga (Drol Kar Buddhist Centre) on 12th August 2012:

To achieve our life’s goals we have to our help our mind and our body.
The mind is more important as it is the mind’s thoughts,  emotions and feelings that cause the body to act. With a positive mind you get positive actions. On a daily basis, try to examine your thoughts and what action these thoughts lead to. If the thought is not positive try and refrain from it – it will lead to refraining from negative action. If you manage to refrain from negative thought and focus your mind more inwards it will make the mind calmer. The senses continuously feed the mind with ‘things’ out there which makes the mind restless and agitated. For as long as your senses are feeding the mind and the mind gets immersed in ‘it’ the mind will be chaotic and not calm. Here the meditation will help you to focus inwardly and calm the mind. 

My notes from a teaching by Jakob Leschly (Resident Teacher Siddharthas Intent Australia) on 25th August 2012:

The meditation has to be grounded in living and real connections to other humans.

Dalai Lama says:  Buddha never talked about any higher force – like a creator! He suggested to just work with your own mind and body. With the conditions of the mind, from moment to moment. This is the middle way. The practice of meditation is hugely helpful to ground us in the present moment . Duality between self and other can be removed in meditation – but when we exist in reality is very hard to keep. You get annoyed with other, have trouble to stay calm and get caught up in strong emotions and feelings.  The solution is to try and let go of me 24/7 and embrace others and investigate this phenomena. My ignorant insecurity works against compassion.

 Don’t ever feel proud and good about your compassion, that works against progress in your practice.

 The nature of our being is naturally to care for the others and to have a lightness about us in being really kind and warm to others without having a central radiator.

People with a strong sense of me – naturally suffer.

 Compassion should always be non-self-congratulatory.

When you are in a difficult situation – it is really an opportunity to practice patience and compassion – which will be very helpful for you in your practice at the same time as you should feel compassion towards the people being annoying or difficult.

 Four important things that will encourage compassion (quality of life):

•  Impartiality towards others – everyone is the same (equanimity )

•  Love towards others (wishing happiness for others)

•  Compassion for other (wishing all sentient beings to be free from suffering)

•  Sympathetic joy for others – free of jealousy  (rejoicing in others happiness)

 How to work with improving these four things:

•  Important to contemplate on equanimity in meditation. 
•   It’s all about karma – what you do now creates tomorrow. Realise the causes of  happiness. Caring for other – meditate on love.
•  Feel  happy about others happiness. Just be happy when others are happy. Not always  that easy.
•  Check your motivation – is this for myself or others. All actions (Body, speech and  mind) should have a good ground with no bad intentions – be good and helpful to others.

Complete altruism!

I pay homage to my teachers Jampa Drolma, Geshe Doga,  Geshe Sonam, Jakob Leschly, Alan Wallace, SN Goenka (on video) and his assistant teacher and last but not least Khyentse Norbu who designed the online buddhist teaching program that I attend at www.siddharthasintent.org.