Cultivate being ‘available to the Dhamma/Dharma’ in your daily life, rather than just ‘doing’ practice. This allows you to use mindfulness to directly perceive what is and isn’t suffering in your experience.
Approach life as a moment-to-moment practice, rather than focusing on achieving fixed results or expecting things to be etched in stone. This mindset allows you to use outcomes to fine-tune your continuous practice.
Cultivate a ‘responsive mind’ that relates to circumstances based on your values, instead of a ‘reactive mind’ that is defined by pleasant and unpleasant conditions. This shift offers choices in how you relate to life’s dualities, leading to deeper satisfaction and freedom.
Focus on ‘wise intention’ in the here and now, actively manifesting your values in your speech and action in every moment, as best you are able. This immediate application of your values, starting exactly where you are, is empowering and prevents self-defeat.
The first step is to recognize what is Dukkha (suffering, unsatisfactory, distressful, negatively contributing, reducing, flattening) and what is not Dukkha in any given moment. This recognition is fundamental because we often mistake happiness for suffering and vice-versa.
After recognizing suffering, ask yourself, ‘Do I have any choice?’ in how you are participating in or causing Dukkha. Realizing you lack choice can be the beginning of an awakening, motivating you not to live in ways that limit your agency.
If you have a choice in a moment of suffering, actively choose to respond wisely, such as apologizing, stopping an argument, or disengaging from negative thoughts or hateful speech. This integrates your practice into daily life, rather than keeping it separate.
Momentarily release clinging, grasping, or ’thirst’ for things to be a certain way, especially when facing inevitable change or undesirable situations. This practice helps you let go of reactivity, preventing your grasping from distorting your experience and shutting out your wiser, more caring parts.
In challenging situations, such as caring for aging parents or children with major difficulties, actively try to ‘find the sweetness’ or moments of peace and caring. This prevents you from adding to suffering by collapsing into resentment, instead fostering more joy.
Begin each day with clarity by lying in bed, even before meditating, and opening to the day with the intention of who you wish to be, no matter the tasks or identities you adopt. This cultivates an intentional life, ensuring your basic values guide you consistently across all roles and activities.
Accept that life is bound with both Sukha (happiness) and Dukkha (suffering), and you don’t get one without the other, as it is the nature of this dual realm. Understanding this impersonal nature of duality helps you avoid taking suffering personally and allows for a more compassionate, wise response.
Understand that strong feelings or passion for change (e.g., social justice) are not the problem; it’s when passion is distorted by a ‘wanting mind’ that turns to hatred. This allows you to maintain your moral compass and work for change without succumbing to destructive reactive mind states.
Actively practice the Eightfold Path, which includes wise understanding, wise intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, wise mindfulness, and wise concentration. This systematic practice leads to the end of suffering, and through its application, you will realize its effectiveness.
Penetrate and feel the ‘ouch’ of Dukkha, recognizing it in your attitudes, speech, and actions. This direct experience allows you to truly know suffering, integrating it into your decision-making about life.
Know Dukkha to the degree that you can integrate it into your decision-making about life. This deep knowing allows you to respond out of compassion and wisdom, ensuring you do not add to suffering when you have a choice.
Use your intellect to examine the philosophical statement that ’there is Dukkha’ (suffering, stress, unsatisfactoriness) in life. This initial intellectual understanding helps you grasp the fundamental reality that suffering is inherent in this realm, not just a personal failing.
Through repeated momentary releases of clinging, come to know that this practice is true and effective. This deep knowing allows you to shift your way of living, integrating the Dhamma into your daily life.
Engage in discipline and practice to create favorable conditions for inner freedom, rather than expecting your ego to accomplish it. Realization and transformation happen when conditions are right, not solely through egoic effort, as the ‘personality never gets enlightened’.
Realize and acknowledge the strengths and capacities you already possess to be a better person, rather than underestimating yourself. People often defeat themselves by not recognizing their existing capacities, thinking they are more caught in something than they truly are.
Accept that you will have ‘mixed motivations’ (wholesome, unwholesome, and mixed) in your actions, rather than denying the self-serving aspects. Denying mixed motivations gives them more power; instead, have a kind attitude towards them, understanding that the ‘dukkha’ of seeking admiration will eventually lead you to stay with pure wholesome intention.
When you recognize that certain thoughts, words, or actions are ‘burning you’ (causing suffering), release them immediately, like dropping a hot pot. This emphasizes the immediate, self-preservational nature of letting go of unhelpful mental states, without needing to eliminate the underlying capacity for desire.
Recognize the three kinds of Dukkha: emotional/physical pain, the Dukkha of constant change, and the subtle Dukkha of the perplexing, impermanent self. This deeper understanding helps you identify the various forms of unsatisfactoriness in life, moving beyond just obvious pain.
Approach Buddhist teachings not as a belief system, but with enough ‘faith to investigate’ their possibility in your own life. This faith is in your own mind-heart’s capacity to experience and verify the teachings, rather than simply accepting them as dogma.
Practice mindfulness while in traffic by observing your mind states and reactivity. This helps you recognize if your mind state is serving you, making you a safer driver, or if you are caught in unhelpful perceptions like thinking everyone else is in your way.
Acknowledge that suffering is disproportionately allocated, with some people carrying a larger burden. This can provide perspective for your own disquiet and help relate to feelings with wisdom and compassion.
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