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Study Group Book Ordering
Want to order Gateway to Knowledge, Vol. 1 or Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness?
Send an email to Rita Goodlet. She'll order it for you and you can pick it up at dharma study one Friday night. Or give her a call at 297-8037. Or see below for ordering from the website.
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Recommendations Section Now on Website
 People often want to know where to find the books we use in dharma study, or they wonder what books are recommended for various things.
Check out the Luminous Mind website for a new Recommendations section. It's a work in progress, but it already has clickable links for ordering our current books. If you use these links to Amazon, Luminous Mind will receive a small portion of the sale, which will help us purchase more resources for study in the future.
The book pictured at right, Gateway to Knowledge, Volume 1, by Mipham Rinpoche, has a very detailed explanation of the skandhas. Clicking on it will take you to the new Recommendations section.
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Harmless Speech, Harmless Mind
Another person took the Harmless Speech Agreement this week according to the blog poll, giving 12 total, plus more on Facebook. Here is an article I posted this week on the blog site.
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We're well into the second month of the Harmless Speech Agreement. Though it's still early, I'm wondering whether people are beginning to notice a difference in their mind activity.
Do you find that you're not taking others' inventory as much?
Do you find yourself less apt to think negatively?
Are you thinking less of what others are thinking?
Is your mind more peaceful?
Do you feel more loving?
Habitual patterns are deep and it can take awhile to break their hold. But the discipline of harmless speech can help speed up the process to developing a harmless mind.
The longer I go, the more I remember that it's really impossible to know what anyone else is thinking or experiencing. All I can know is my own experience. In fact, all I can know is that I am experiencing. To ponder others is pointless and to comment on them as if I knew their experience is ridiculous.
I learned the value of rigorous speech first from Landmark Education. When someone would say something as fact that was clearly just their perception, they might be asked, "Are you making that up?" At first it was a jolt to the system but it clearly pointed out that if we were saying something we didn't know for sure was true, it was a lie. We all learned to guard our speech so that when we spoke, it meant something. We were taught to keep our word and BE our word. If we said something, it would go down.
A good practice I learned is to catch myself in the midst of mis-speaking and say, "Oh, wait, I'm making that up. I don't know for sure and I could be wrong."
Powerful speech begins with powerful integrity. Can others count on your word? Can you?
Questions to ponder.
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