Letting Go of Control 

😄Well, I guess it's my PhD speaking ... glad you found the approach helpful!

Excellent expression photoistyx. Agreed! 🙂

@@DougsDharma graveyards are full of people that took themselves too seriously. Big heads and ego can get You in trouble. It happened to my brother in laws. One was shot Dead, the other arrested for brandishing a 9mm at a hamburger joint.

Yes! Unwilled thought is a big thing, and we don't tend to be aware of it until we start meditating.

Glad to hear it, Nelson. Yes, I enjoy learning from monastics as well.

🙏🙏

Glad to hear it Michael! Welcome.

What makes me here is kinda funny... I was watching, "was there a real jesus?" Out of curiosity after watching the prompted documentary on my RU-vid, I search to see whether anyone makes a documentary on was there a real Buddha(?) I am a Buddhist and just want to see is there anyone got their say(badl) on Buddhism. So I got here and become a subscriber. Never got to see doubts, but yet got bonus watching Doug's videos. Appreciate 🙏🙏🙏

Everything happens for a reason. Maybe Buddha guide me here becos I am kinda lost in my life.

You prolly dont give a shit but does any of you know a way to log back into an Instagram account? I somehow forgot my login password. I would appreciate any tips you can give me

You're very welcome Shantha. Thanks for the kind message! 🙏

@@DougsDharma You're gifted my brother in speaking well and keeping It light and understandable. Namasta

You're very welcome Sammy!

Thanks Jillian, very kind of you to say!

My pleasure, Fernanda! 🙏

You're welcome, Rosemary!

Glad to hear!

Wonderful! Yes that's a great teaching.

Yes I think that's right Steve, thanks!

Glad it was helpful! 🙏

🙏😊 I do make many judgments but practice not to take any but a few of them too seriously. It is a practice!

Yes indeed it's hard! Practice is simple but it isn't easy. So, you just keep on with it. 🙂

My pleasure, Chris. Thanks for watching. 🙏

Glad it was helpful! 🙏

You're very welcome Andrés, glad you found it useful!

🙏😊

Yes, I found something similar when I was meditating for longer periods. It's possible to get attached to one's own achievements, or even supposed achievements.

It's similar to a well trained dog. She's so well tempered, smart and trained in a proper way, but actually she's still a separate being with its own needs and aspirations, how strange it is, that our own mind fits so close in that description: some have an untrained mind, some cannot comfort it when it's not okay, others forget that it should have some freedom on its own..

Meditations are the distractions of Mara..do not take pleasure in any stage of Mediation..do not compromise... Go all the way towards Extinguisment..

Yes, I'd say that in all cultures we know instinctively that children have an undeveloped sense of self-control or understanding. The problem as I see it is about the availability of guns. A child should never have the possibility of carrying a gun around, and certainly not without close adult supervision.

That would be cool. We can sort of inch our way there by being slightly in control of small things for a long enough time that we get better at it.

Yes, "influence" is a milder term that allows more room for life to get in the way.

You're very welcome esther! I haven't talked much about guilt, it's not an emotion that really exists in early Buddhism. What does exist is remorse, which is the appropriate attitude to have for something we've done badly. Guilt involves a grasping onto the bad deed, an identifying with it, which is unskillful. So one practice would be to work with non-self and consider how who we are changes from moment to moment. But this is only one practice. Hope that's helpful. 🙂

Doug's Secular Dharma Thanks! Truely helpfull. 🙏Sort of, gives room to more being free.....Maybe. Beautiful the possibilities of internet.....me here in The Netherlands learn from your teachings. The English word guilt feels somewhat , like, more detached, as the Dutch word (schuld), more free from the connotation, inherent in our culture. Made me right now think of a ‘guilty pleasure’ 🤗 wish you well being 👌🍀

You as well esther! 🙏

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Well personally I'd start with people like Bhikkhu Anālayo or Bhikkhu Bodhi, although they are traditional believers and I'm secular. They are both however very knowledgeable about the early material as well as being kind and good people. There are many, many others as well such as Andy Olendzki or Bodhipaksa.

How do you view a practice around heedfulness? I ask because typical synonyms of "heedfulness" include "mindfulness", "attentiveness", and "prudence", which are central to early Buddhist practice.

​@@DougsDharma I associate heedfulness with a level of spiritual urgency. The kind you get from reflecting on things like the inevitability of aging, sickness, and death and the level of unavoidable suffering that comes from being trapped inside Samsara.

Yes. I did a video for example about the five daily reflections, which serves the same purpose: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MEu4kzfUSDk.html . The Buddha was famous for saying that we should practice as though our hair was on fire ... something that makes most sense from within a monastic context, but there you are. Many householders have enough on their plates and are working with stress and over-efforting generally so appreciate a more Zen approach to the dharma, which exists as well. At the end of the day it's a balance that each of us has to figure out for ourselves. 🙂

Well it's something you have to feel, if you're aware of what's going on inside you. If you have emotion but push it down, because you don't want to deal with it, then that's suppressing it. If on the other hand you simply don't have any emotional reaction to someone insulting you, then there's nothing to worry about. Many of us I think may be somewhere in between, but tending towards the former: we get emotional but don't want to deal with it.

I'm not sure I understand the question Leśny. Can you elaborate a bit?

​@@DougsDharma you speak about having partial control (or not having perfect control), which implies some degree of freedom and agency, which can be seen as the self. In other words, self is that which has partial control. If not, what is the basis of differentiating between uncontroled change and controlled change? If there is something that can consciously change the causal chain, isn't that a good definition of an agent?

Ah yes Leśny. This is what we might term the "conventional" self. Indeed, the Buddha says we should take refuge in ourselves. That's what he means: we should take refuge in our own ability to put skillful effort into our practice.

But doesn't this contradict anatta? If we had full control (or no control), self wouldn't be visible. Having partial control is the only configuration that implies an actor, makes it "visible". As I understand it, there is just an illusion of self having a partial control, where in fact everything is fully causal, and there is no control at all, hence anatta. As you said, self is just a convention, delineated on a causal flux. Understood this way, there is no letting go of control, as it was never there, just letting go of the idea of control.

The idea that we really have no control is one that the Buddha specifically rejected; it's the view of Makkhali Gosāla of the Ājīvikas. You can see my video on the Buddha's competitors here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aoxagmtSHI0.html In general anatta doesn't mean there is "no self"; it means that there is nothing permanent that makes up our selves. We are always changing. I also have a video on non-self if you are interested in a deeper look there: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gSZjKKuvHEQ.html

Thanks for the question Chris. I’d say early Buddhism corresponds to a kind of analytical deconstruction of the self. But it isn’t materialist: four of the five aggregates are mental. Also the Buddha specifically argued against the materialism of one of his competitors: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aoxagmtSHI0.html

Sounds like it's not the approach for you then, William. Glad you learned something from it though!

Doug's Dharma Thanks. My apologies for being rude. I get the secular Jew tradition because of the recency of the holocaust. And I’ve been vaguely aware of secular Buddhism for a long time but just not that interested. I was looking for concise stripped-down help. I finally found an article in psychology today that addressed my concerns in two very concise and helpful pages. And I found a couple Jon Kabbat-Zinn videos on mindfulness attitudes of “Letting Go” and “Acceptance” each around 4 minutes also very helpful. They all got right to the point quickly in ways I could understand and appreciate. Interestingly, one of those attitudes is patience which I obviously don’t have. I know Jon’s MBSR techniques are partly based on some ancient traditions but thankfully he didn’t go into the details and rarely does because they’re just not necessary to understand the techniques of mindfulness to effectively use them in the modern world. I trained in the Maharishi’s TM which is also thoroughly secular in its’ technique and approach (more than less) but different in kind from mindfulness. TM training does sneak in some Hindu elements into the training rituals though. But I find even that hard to maintain a consciousness discipline as a practice although I try.