Generosity - for Others and for Yourself: Talk with Rick Hanson on 12/07/22

[@christiansk]

This was such a great talk. So much to take in, so profound, yet so gently delivered. Thank you for your generosity, Rick!

[@laurabehenna7950]

I needed this today. Thank you.

[@jo1681]

New Rick video!

[@NutritionVibes]

very excellent !!

[@Diazbeauthentic]

Thank you! Good reminder to watch out for.... THE RUMINATOR

[@christiansk]

Here are the quotes Rick reads throughout the talk: ----- The paramis, from later texts in the Pali Canon: giving, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, lovingkindness, and equanimity. -- Andy Olendzki, Tricycle, Fall 2020 Generosity, kind words, doing a good turn for others, and treating all people alike: these bonds of sympathy are to the world what the linchpin is to the chariot wheel. -- Jātaka 20 Train yourself in doing good that lasts and brings happiness. Cultivate generosity, a life of peace, and a mind of boundless love. -- Itivuttaka 1.22 As soon as I wake up, I think about altruism. -- Dalai Lama, Tricycle, Fall 2021, p. 91 ... Thay asked me if I had seen the temple’s altar dedicated to Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion. I still feel a chill when I remember how he looked straight at me and said, "Fred, do you know the best offering to make to the bodhisattva of compassion?" He then held up his two hands, and said, "These are the true offerings to give her!" -- Fred Eppsteiner, Tricycle, Spring 2021, p. 80, talking about Thich Nhat Hanh Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. -- from The Ways We Touch: Poems. Copyright 1997 by Miller Williams. You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here. -- Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love. -- John Muir If the deer like to be in the countryside, and the birds like to be in the sky, then the practitioners like to be in nirvana. We are in nirvana. The only problem is that we are not able to return to it. In Plum Village, we use the simple example of the wave and the water. In our life as a wave, we struggle and we have fear, because we have to go up and down, to be born and die, to exist and not to exist. We can see clearly that to live the life of the wave is very difficult. But when the wave discovers it is water, then it begins to practice living as water. A wave is and is not, is up and down, is high and low, but water is utterly free. The question is: Does the wave have the ability to live its true nature as water, or must it just live as a wave. A wave can practice living its life as water. -- Thich Nhat Hanh, from Enjoying the Ultimate: Commentary on the Nirvana Chapter of the Chinese Dharmapada; quoted in Tricycle, Winter 2021, p. 35 Fundamentally, the element of Nibbana [unconditioned, original nature] is there within us already. It must be there; if it wasn’t there already we couldn’t possibly reach it, because Nibbana is not subject to arising. The Buddha stated very clearly that whatever arises must cease, which means that Nibbana must be there within us all the time. Otherwise, it would have to arise at some point in time, which is incompatible with its nature of being unchanging. This is the true nature of Dhamma, the Dhamma in the heart. The heart always experiences a pull in the direction of Dhamma, but its pull ... is not like the pull of the child who must have a sweet right now ... The pull of the Dhamma is a longing to get back to something that we know is real; it’s a longing to go home, in the true way, where everything is just right. -- Ajahn Pannavaddho, Uncommon Wisdom, 2014, pps. 242-243