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Notes on ‘The Mind that Suffers’ by Phillip Moffitt | May 2008 Shambhala Sun

2008.05.31 @ 16:52
… if you are to attain liberation, you must understand and fully experience how your life is entwined and defined by dukkha, meaning your mental experiences of discomfort, pain, stress, instability, inadequacy, failure, and disappointment, each of which is felt as suffering in your mind…

The first kind of dukkha is the obvious suffering caused by physical discomfort, from the minor pain of stubbing a toe, hunger, and lack of sleep, to the agony of chronic disease. It is also the emotional suffering that arises when you become frustrated that things don’t go your way, or upset about life’s injustices, or worried about money or meetings other’ expectations…

… a second type of dukkha … is the suffering caused by the fact that life is constantly changing…

… an underlying unease about the future … is a manifestation of the third type of suffering the Buddha identified — life’s inherent unsatisfactoriness due to its intrinsic instability…

How often in your adult life have you experienced the queasiness and unease that come from a sense of meaninglessness in your life? Think of all those occasions when you felt as though you were wasting your life, or sleepwalking through it, or not living from your deepest, most heartfelt sense of your self. Remember the times when you felt as though there is little you do each day that has any real, lasting significance. We’ve all fallen prey at some point in our lives to such constricted, dreaded, almost unbearable dark times of self-doubt and existential angst.

[ANP note written above the above paragraph: DECONSTRUCT. Except I no longer have any idea to what I might’ve been referring.]

What Buddha is pointing to is that suffering is an experience of the mind. He’s not offering you relief from pain; he’s offering you relief from the extra mental reactivity that causes your misery… Our ancient wisdom-bearers knew life was hard, and they too discovered that there was a difference between the pain of life and your reaction to it.

[ANP note: Victor Frankl; Soren Kierkegaard]


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Notes on ‘Nerd Camp’ by Burkhard Bilger | July 26, 2004 The New Yorker

2008.05.31 @ 15:17

Dept. of Breadcrumbs:

Bright kids are used to fending for themselves in America. Dweeb, dork, brainiac, nerd: to be young and brilliant here is almost always to be a figure of some derision, to accept isolation as a condition of existence…

“Teaching them [gifted students] is like driving a Mercedes.” [says Georgetown graduate student Bill McGeehan] …

“Intelligence is less about knowing than about methods of thought,” a thirteen-year old Egyptian named Amine told me, his fingertips tracing the beginnings of a beard. “Descartes said that others had greater minds than his, but that they accomplished less because their method was not as good.” …

“I used to think that I.Q. almost guaranteed success,” Stanley [”Julian Stanley founded the Center for Talented Youth” … “eighty-six” … “Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard”] told me. “But I found with bitter experience that it’s not true. It can almost be a burden to you.” …

If society really wants to find the next Einstein, teachers should stop asking which students are the brightest and start asking which are the most eccentric and single-minded. “Who is the oddest ball here?” [suggests “Howard Gardner, the Harvard psychologist who originated the theory of multiple intelligences.”] …

“Part of the point of acceleration is to get you into a warmer environment, where people can appreciate you,” he [”Colin Camerer, a behavioral economist at Caltech” … “forty-four” … “one of the oldest alumni of the Johns Hopkins program”] says. “Geeks are more comfortable being geeks in college.” By the time he was in his early twenties, Camerer had earned an M.B.A. and then a Ph.D. in economics…

Hunter [”Andrew Hunter” … “fifteen … an avid programmer”] was so quick and bracingly blunt that he was often taken for rude.

“It’s not like I’m beaten up for ostracized or anything,” Hunter said, when I asked him about the public school he attended… “But I often feel like I don’t belong.“…

“The I.Q. test was designed to find mid-level bureaucrats to administer an empire,” Howard Gardner told me …

This “rage to learn,” as one psychologist puts it, is what really distinguishes the gifted from other students. Their minds may be no sharper at birth than anyone else’s, but they spend their lives continually, compulsively honing them. “We start with little differences, but they snowball over time,” Robert Plomin [”a psychologist at King’s College, London who is studying the genetics of intelligence”] told me.

Asterisk ODubz for putting this article on Radar_ANP.

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2008.05.31 @ 11:35

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Notes on ‘The Bodhisattva’s Composure’ by Myogen Steve Stucky | Summer 2008 Buddhadharma

2008.05.27 @ 20:04
… when we are unable to find composure in the face of impermanence, we suffer.

…

Anything you base your security on may fail. How do you feel as you walk around? Do you feel secure? Do you feel that you have stability? And what is it based on? What is real security based on? …

In the word “composure,” the root -com, from the Latin, means “together, being with, being connected.” The -posure part comes from a Greek root that means “pause,” or “stop.” Remember to pause together, to stop together, and to awaken in this pause with many beings, the myriad things. Don’t doubt the value of the contribution that you make just by being willing to find composure, even by simply recalling the thought, “How can I find composure in this challenging situation?” And also to help each other to do this. This is maturity of mind. This is actually the manifestation of what we call the vow of the bodhisattva, to help beings mature, to help beings be fully present in themselves.

Thought_ANP: we are human beings, not human doings. So why is it so challenging to simply feel the joy of being?

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Memo from meddle management to yappy twenty-something

2008.05.27 @ 14:04

If you sit next to a Vice President with twenty years experience and you’re in an open floor plan, do not take a personal twelve minute phone call and giggle with your girlfriend regarding all the beer you drank this weekend.

And please stop telling me about your ridiculous twenty-something boy drama.  Just because I’m smiling and nodding and saying, “Really?”  and “No, he didn’t!” doesn’t mean you and I are on the same page.  “He’s not good enough for you; move on,” is code for, “If I hear you ask me what his latest text message means ever again I’m going to take a corporate-issued coffee stirrer and skewer my Lasikked eyeball.”

Also:  I can see your bra straps.

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