progressive politics and regressive entertainment. like peanut and butter.
November 1, 2012 Leave a comment
It doesn’t matter your status in life, it doesn’t matter your job, your trade. What matters is how you treat people, how you treat yourself. Do you act kindly? Do you speak with love or kindness or honesty? Or do you speak with deceit or with manipulation or with unkindness? How you are is what’s really important.
- Gil Fronsdal (“Right Intention,” October 15, 2012)
July 2, 2012 2 Comments
In a relatively recent dharma talk entitled “The Ten Fetters,” Gil Fronsdal speaks about a series of fetters that need to be let go in order to release us from attachment. Despite the title of the talk, Gil often prefers to think of the fetters as knots, which need to be untied. And the way I understand attachment, it’s not that one doesn’t engage in the world and care deeply for others, but the idea is about releasing the clinging — that kind of overattachment where both the hugger and hugged suffer. I tend to think of Hugo, the Abominable Snowman in Looney Tunes.
HUGO: I will hug him and stroke him and cuddle him and sing to him and call him George.
June 29, 2012 2 Comments
One of the ways to add to your suffering is to suffer because you’re suffering.
- Gil Fronsdal, “The Buddha’s Teaching on Not Self”
May 13, 2012 3 Comments
As a teacher, I was particularly interested in the Audio Dharma podcast episode entitled “Teaching the Dharma.” It’s one of a series of talks that Gil Fronsdal gives at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, and on this occasion Gil elaborates on a list of five qualities that the Buddha said should be established in those who are going to teach the dharma.
May 1, 2012 Leave a comment
A huge part of wisdom is to understand really well the problem, rather than understanding the answer. Maybe the answer is to understand the problem.
- Gil Fronsdal, “Letting Go: Clinging and Peace”
April 22, 2012 Leave a comment
Desire is not the problem. The problem is when we’re trapped by the desire.
- Gil Fronsdal, “Letting Go: Clinging and Peace”
March 31, 2012 4 Comments
It’s been said that if you really want to experience a miracle, follow your next breath.
