ECODHARMA Archives - Mindful Happiness

April 14, 2018 By Admin

Meditation on Ecodharma and Buddhist Ecology

Sit calmly and begin to breathe in and out deeply and slowly.
Open your eyes to see and appreciate the natural environment you are in.
Close your eyes now if you wish to do so.
Know that this nature – the sky, clouds, stars, father sun, mother moon, especially the trees – is your natural environment of being in this life.
This biosphere is our sacred ground, from which we all arise and to which we all fall at our end.
Mother earth and the surrounding universe deserve our deepest respect.
In Asia, forest monks have ordained old, wise trees to spare them from the wrath of consumerism.
Know that ecodharma is an activist Buddhist program aimed at protecting nature and the earth.
We are living and dying in a vast ecological man made disaster, escape from which requires that our species survives AND that the earth survives as well.
Our survival depends upon a healthy, breathing, cleansing earth and atmosphere.
Now take a few minutes in your own silent solitude to contemplate deeply what has been noted above. Pause.
Recall that The Buddha was confronted by the devil-like Mara. This was an attack on his hard-won enlightenment. The Buddha touched the ground with his fingers and hand to re-establish his connection to mother earth, and his enlightenment survived all challenges.
So today, we should all touch the earth gently with respect – we can touch earth with our fingers, hands, feet, heart, soul, and self. We may even wish to prostrate ourselves on mother earth to show our deep love and respect.
The Buddha was born, lived, became enlightened , and died (parinibbana) in the gracious company of trees.
Thich Nhat Hanh noted that our caring for and being with the earth is a way of reconnecting with interbeing of all living things. This great teacher also advised us that to walk and live on Pure Land requires that we love the earth.
Soto Zen founder Eihei Dogen noted that rivers, mountains, and “the great wide earth” as well as “the sun and the moon and the stars” are all part of our personal enlightenment in our minds.
Take a few more minutes to contemplate these teaching. Pause.
Today’s bodhisattva have become an ecosattva to help save the world and humankind – the greatest and most noble act of active compassion and love.
We must be fearless as we confront the extremes of “conspicuous consumption” and its destruction of the earth and all living things. This deadly competition may kill all of us in the future.
Contemplate on this: What will you do very soon to join this battle to save mother earth and the human race as we know it? Pause.

For more information refer to https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/growing-buddhist movement… https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/trees-meditation-teaching... https://tricycle.org/magazine/100-best-climate-solutions… https://tricycle.org/magazine/love-letter-earth… Retrieved 4-21-18

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha

Author of Mindful Happiness

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Contemplative Practices – Affirmative Self-Inquiry Contemplation and affirmative self-inquiry may be helpful in improving your awareness of your better parts of self – your positive strengths and traits. Our self-critical mind often causes us to spend far too much time on critical, negative thinking about ourselves and about others. The practice below may be helpful […]

Use of Breathing Techniques – Do a Polyvagal Test First Polyvagal Test The polyvagal theory (S.Porges) and polyvagal functions are complex, highly important, evolutional processes with powerful influences on human survival, overall physical health, and emotion regulation. The tenth cranial nerve (from scull base to anus) functions in various ways, the most important of which […]

Mediation: Conscious or Not? A true, in depth understanding about what human consciousness is and how it works has eluded mind and brain scientists for many years. A few very interesting ideas have been presented by Stuart Hameroff, professor emeritus and director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies. Consciousness rests in the […]

Liberation of the True Self Socrates is reported to have noted that “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.” In Buddhism there are clear relationships between “no-self” and the force of impermanence, that reality that ensures constant change and thus personal […]

What Consciousness Really Is Considering that we have been to the moon and back, and more recently surveyed important moons of Saturn, science is still a very long way from understanding how the human brain works – and even further away from having a clear, agreed-upon interpretation of human consciousness. Consciousness is the “stuff” of […]

How to Find & Choose an Effective Therapist Recently The Harvard Health Newsletter posted some interesting questions to ask while seeking out a psychotherapist. I will add a few more details and areas of inquiry in this post. Keep in mind that these questions and inquiries do not mean you will be happy and improve […]

Mindful Observation Through Mindful Breathing The following guided meditation is a combination meditation from Asanga’s Grounds of Hearers, Jam-Yang-Shay-Pa’s concentration meditation on the breath, and the Anapanasati Sutta. These guided meditation instructions have been simplified and combined for contemporary use by lay meditators. Observation of Observation – Mindfulness in Breathing Contemplate breathing in and out with complete […]

Mindfulness in the NFL Yes, mindfulness as part of sports psychology programming is being used in the NFL. Yes, big and physically tough football players are being helped via a mindfulness component of sports psychology. There are some important roots here. Dogen, the famous ancient Japanese Buddhist meditation master, brought Chan Buddhism from China to […]

Mindful Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Earth Protectors The Standing Rock Sioux earth protectors are fighting earth destruction, environmental degradation, oil profiteering, and corporate greed. Yes, I suppose finding huge reserves of crude helps many people become employed in the Dakotas. This is important. But other earth-wise activity (more solar for example) would be far […]

Vipassana Meditation and Introduction Vipassana meditation, as taught by S. N. Goenka, has been practiced in India, Europe, the United States and in many other parts of the world. There are various claims for effectiveness when used as a form of meditative treatment with various populations (often correctional and substance using populations); however, there is […]

Stress In America – How to Deal with it Effectively The American Psychological Association just released the results of its annual stress survey for 2014. This comprehensive study of stress in America has some serious implications for our health and happiness. Although self-reported stress levels in many categories are lower than in 2013, the overall […]

Gratitude Along with Sadness and Fear – It Is Life The famous Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh gently advises us to appreciate the many things that we may take for granted. For example, when he does walking meditation he believes and feels that the the earth below his feet is, itself, a miracle of reality. […]

Practice: Yogi Deep Meditation on Inner Listening Carl Jung noted: Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakens. The Katha Upanishads (800-400 BCE) noted: One path leads outward and the other inward. [The] way inward leads to grace. The Mind Cave Focus instructs us to close our eyes and expand your third-eye space to the back of […]

How to be Happier in a Relatively Unhappy World In today’s fast-paced, digitized, unstable world – with it uncertainty, childish tweets from on-high, and general dissatisfaction with things as they are – how may one become a happier person. It is clear that isolation will not work; it is clear that aggressive actions in opposition […]

Crisis Resilience Skills – Mindful Happiness Below I will list various interventions that have proven effective in reducing the level of personal crisis. The sources for many of these skills came from Burns (1980), Ellis (1995), Seligman (1988), Linehan (1993, 2015)), Hayes (2018), and Thich Nhat Hanh (various publications). The skills noted are for immediate […]

What is Mindfulness – The Nature of Mindfulness This is an expanded second post on the nature of mindfulness. This post will begin with secular understandings, and end with basic spiritual path information. Generally mindfulness is a wide-ranging process with a special noticing quality. It focuses the power of attention leading to improved concentration. Mindfulness […]

From The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation, Monkton, Vermont – Five Breathing and Meditation Practices – Attention and concentration on the breath are common practices to attune meditation capacity. We use the breath as an object of attention in our mind training. The better your quality of attention and concentration, the better […]

Quasi Self-Hypnotic Pain Relief To be successful in this intervention you will have to let go of ego-based defensiveness and remain quite focused for quite some time. These are not easy things to do. DO NOT do this intervention if you are feeling highly vulnerable at this time, or if you are not working with […]

Helping Professions and Emotional Balance Helping professions must practice to achieve emotional balance. Working conditions for the helping professions have become more and more difficult over time, especially with the advent of so called “helpful technologies” and ever-increasing governmental/funding requirements for documentation. When I started in the (behavioral health) field of clinical psychology and addictions […]

Understanding Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (or Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, hereafter CBT) has been noted as the most common evidence-based therapy approach used in the United States. That said, the most common “therapy” approach used here remains generic talk therapy with more or less psychodynamic characteristics. Given the absolute limited level of outcome-based evidence for effectiveness of […]