Dear Doug. This is one of the best and most useful advices I have got from your videos. The 4 Brahmacharias are concrete anchors in my daily practice beyond sitting in meditation.... to keep one or more of the Brahmacharias in mind gives real meaning to my practice, but I haven't connected the dots between them in the way you have presented them. Thank you so much for showing me that! Look forward to the next video on this topic. Wish you well
I've just recently discovered your wonderful videos, Doug, as I'm working with Metta Mindfulness Music on an album about The Four Divine States of Mind. I have been focused on practicing Metta for a decade, and find now to be a perfect time to focus on deepening my understanding and application of Upekkha. Thank you for your generous sharing.
I have now grasped the three universal truths , the five aggregrates , the five hindrances , the Tripitika , the Four Noble Truths , the Noble Eightfold Path , the three Hindrances - Desire , Hatred , Dukkha ( Unsatisfactoriness ) rising out of the three universal truths and the Brahmaviras that lead to nirvana on meditative insight or vipassana .
Hello Doug, I appreciate you making this video and choosing to focus on the Brahmaviharas in more detail in future videos. I feel like they are too often neglected. In my limited experience they are highly effective accelerators of developing stable attention and very important practices in their own right. I think people overlook them due to overestimating the power of rationality over the human psyche and underestimating how useful practices that work with emotion are. In that context these practices are perceived as inauthentic, unimportant, and childish. I sometimes wonder if the extent to which these practices are underemphasized in the West contributes at all to teacher scandals. Failing to work with the mind on an emotional level could lead to spiritual bypassing and suppression as the practitioner tries to force the mind to do what they want - motivated by Western notions of self-control which creates self harshness in response to how unresponsive the mind is to rationality devoid of appeal to emotion. The result is that even after becoming highly accomplished in meditation the practitioner is still susceptible to behaving unskillfully given access to sufficient temptation. Then give the practitioner access to a large audience of people who highly revere them and scandals come out of practitioners who have gotten far in meditation and are powerful innovators. Of course, that is just speculation on my part, but I have recently noticed how in my own practice Western assumptions about self-control can create spiritual bypassing and create aversion to practices that work with emotion. I am curious as to what you think about the matter.
Hi Rufus, yes spiritual bypassing is a deep problem, one I’ve discussed many times in my videos. As for the notion of control, though the Buddha’s advice was nuanced, he was much more interested in a path of self control than most contemporary western teachers are willing to pursue, at least in my experience. Western teachers often seem very reluctant to push their students to make serious effort, perhaps because they know most laypeople lead busy, stressful lives already. So it’s something we need to investigate and practice with on a case by case basis.
Are the 4 Brahamviharas supposed to be practiced together? Or are they like the Jhanas, states that need to attained before you can move on to the next one?
Good question Maarten. They aren’t necessarily meant to be practiced together, but neither does one need to progress from one to the next. Each can I think be practiced on its own. 🙂
In a sense the broadcasting does happen -- the heart is creating huge EM waves with each beat. If the signal is stable everything else in the body will sync up through entertainment.
Well it's not totally clear. It usually is interpreted as "thus come" or "thus gone". It is a pre-Buddhist term, essentially it refers to an enlightened being of some importance.
It depends on how one practices it. Many people don't practice a secular form of Buddhism, and that's fine. Some do. As for the general question of an "authentic" Buddhism, see: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kS-Xtsq4_xE.html
