Add bookmarks from the pages that you visit frequently. They will appear here, where you can reorder them, and put them into groups.
Tres Sellos del Dharma
Through personal experience and deep looking, we embrace the flowing rivers of being, erase the artificial boundaries that describe the body, and realize the cooling freedom that comes as habits of thought dissolve.
In Thích Nhất Hạnh’s book Touching the Earth , he dedicates one of his mindfulness practices to acknowledging Impermanence and Interbeing. Looking deeply, we know that every cell in the body dies and is replaced by new cells; that what we feel today, physically and emotionally, is in constant motion, and tomorrow or even minutes from now will be another feeling; that how we receive information changes with the passage of time and with our mood; that our thoughts are formed of ephemeral, electric impulses, and quickly dissolve; and practicing awareness, that our consciousness is equally changeable and changing.
These rivers of being, called the skandhas in Buddhist tradition, have always been in motion, and were woven together before your conception as a manifestation of you, or your family and friends, or those you consider unpleasant or enemies, all the creatures who are our close kin, the plants and winds and stones and stars.
I am aware that my body is always changing. Yet I still have the habit of acting as if everything is permanent and I am a separate self. I know that my feelings of anger or joy will arise, stay for a while, and eventually fade away to be replaced by another feeling. Yet I have the tendency to believe that my feelings, my perceptions, my mental formations and my consciousness are permanent. I know that my belief in an unchanging, separate self, cut off from other people and living beings, has caused me to suffer and has caused other to suffer. Yet the deep, hidden tendency to be caught in the view of a separate self still lies in the depths of my consciousness.
Accompanied by the intention to live more peacefully, the teachings kept alight by past and present guides, and the community of practitioners, we are able to release false notions of permanence, with all of the fear and unfruitful actions that they create.
In Buddhist tradition, all teachings must speak to the Three Dharma Seals to be complete. On a foundation of personal experience and looking deeply, we can embrace the rivers of being, erase the artificial boundaries that describe the body, and realize the cooling freedom that comes as habits of thought dissolve. Click the headings below to explore each more fully: