Avoiding Preferences 

Short story. After a divorce I was feeling super lonely. The way through it turned out to be giving up my preference to NOT feel lonely. Once I got there I was free of loneliness. I used the same method to quit cigarettes and drinking as well. It worked for me. I can’t however say it’ll work for anybody else. It might but I can’t guarantee it.

To quote Frank Zappa, "If it's you against the world, back the world."

Needed this today! GREAT VIDEO BRAD … fully support the book idea. Nisargadatta Maharaj continues to basically blow my mind.

For a minute I thought that was Neil Young! You got me

The poem felt very taoist to me. The no preference thing seems very like equanimity, which to me means essentially being accepting of whatever happens without being overly caught up in a particular result. I think that's pretty much what you're saying too. I very much agree that people need to relax and stop requiring the that the world confirm to our desires.

Imagine the founder of Buddhism and Nagarjuna at the ice cream parlor. The founder rejects all flavors as being conditional and therefore impermanent and unsatisfactory. Nagarjuna regards all flavors as illusory and is therefore without preference for rejection or acceptance. Hes the ultimate fence sitter who regards even the fence as an illusion.

Love it baby

I'm so grateful for you...

i'd definitely read that book if you wrote it. i like your style and i think you'd do a bang up job. thanks for everything

Shakyamuni Buddha himself is quoted to have been teaching something very much on the same lines of the Shin Jin Mei's prime teaching when, in the Samyutta Nikāya (Pali Tipitaka btw) he is recorded saying: "Regard with equanimity all contacts, both pleasant and painful, without favouring or rejecting anything."

I, for one, demand a bookshelf tour!

Pup cup for Ziggy 👍😁 I'm with you on DTS - one of the first signs on the path for me

Excellent video. Brad, I like your idea of writing about Nisargadatta Maharaj a lot. Just saying... Discovered him years via a random reference and went down the rabbit hole. Read about a third of I Am That, completely lost and confused, but getting enough flashes that blew me away that I kept going. I was so pleased and amazed, and a bit shocked, when you started to talk about his work in your videos! I think there is such connection between his work, Advaita Vendanta, and Soto Zen Buddhism. Thank you for all your work Brad. Besides the videos, I treasure each one of your books (even the Dogen paraphasing books which I struggle with sometimes more than I do with Nisargadata Maharaj!).

Come to New Mexico PLZZZ & thank you for all you do !!!

My absolutely favorite of all Buddhist writings - decades before I found Zen, I came across Hsin Hsin Ming in a book, I believe by Carl Jung, and kept it with me for years. It is, to me, the only writing I need. Thanks for talking about it.

"May we be free from attachment to loved ones and rejection of others and rest in boundless equanimity." If we don't choose this and reject that then we kind of cease to be who we are. Defining ourselves by our preferences is second nature. Very hard to shift.

You should write that book. I’ll read it!

Fun intro! Preferences… schmeferences… Trying not to attach to my tasty morning coffee, but that’s a done deal. Viva Ziggy!

Totally write a book on Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Brad, do you avoid the preference that people aren't afflicted with the disease of having preferences?

mmm its easy to avoid preferences about things i dont care about, say, what car i drive, as long as it drives, and is a car, im good. music though..especially if i cant switch it off. but even there it depends upon mood. have less preferences? i think im movin towards that, slowly.

"The way is perfect like unto vast space..." This use of the word SPACE as a metaphor for enlightened consciousness has a long history in Mahayana Sutras but not in early Buddhism. Space is everywhere but is unchanged by everything. Space does not prefer the depths of the earth or the vast voids of the cosmos...nor does space reject anything it contains. There is a word for this in western philosophy...panentheism! "To define more exactly the Buddhist notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according to which God is all and one, and more than the totality of existence." -Zen Master Soyen Shaku (1860-1919)

the xin xin ming is an abridged version of a longer poem "mind inscription", the author/s are unknown and likely literati similar to the new testament authorship actually religions are fundamentally reified literature, several modern christian variants are lifted to a recognisable extent from milton

I think it might be even more than "don't try to force the world to be like you want it to be". I think it might even extend to "accept the world as it is" (which extends also to what you like and dislike, not just what you try to do). But there are some fun contradictions in there, if you "naturally" want to force the world to be like you want it, then that desire is something which you shouldn't try to change about yourself, and actually is something you should just accept. I'm not saying anything about what is true (no clue), this is just what I think about when I hear about the "no preferences" stuff -- but there might be some kind of middle way through there.

Hsin Hsin Ming is attributed to Sengcan, Third Patriarch of Chan (although whether he actually wrote it is debatable).

Oh man. Nisargadatta for some reason just cuts deep sometimes. This was a good one. I ‘wish’ you would pause after reading him to let that sink in for a bit before moving on to the zen ;)

I read a sci-fi story once where aliens had named their planet ''Not Here.'' I'm still not sure why I find this so profound. 🤨The planet itself was sentient and just by breathing the atmosphere one began to absorb the collective mind of the inhabitants, the celestial body, the oceans, the forests, and all the animals.

Ramesh Balsekar has books on Nisargadatta, “pointers from n…m… etc

just pay attention to the twinge and let it go.

I was The One who thought hypno hypn I just thought it will never work. But Could I ever have been wrong .. god. Thank you

Avoiding Preferences sounds kinda like the Taoist thing of Wu Wei. ;}P>

Maurycy Frydman was a Polish Jew! I also go for mango usually.

Brad, I have the luxury that I don't care about that kind of shit any more.

Sounds somewhat like indifference. Difficult to adopt this concept.

Maurice Frydman was a Polish Jew

Wording of the poem seems more absolutist than your take

too tied up in words brad, dogen, nisargadatta, endless the nonsense these people speak

Why the remark about operations to change the body? If someone changes their own body, it's their decision and it's not forcing the world to change. It might be the opposite - the world forcing the individual to change against their will or nature.

Dang, I preferance all my life long, so I'm the ultimate sinner.,ye, omg, ok