Exercise from the book "Mandala" by Dr. Ed Bastian

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cjdevries
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Exercise from the book "Mandala" by Dr. Ed Bastian

Post by cjdevries »

This is Dr. Ed Bastian's personal antidote for dealing with a negative emotion from his book "Mandala" (Dr. Bastian is a longtime religious studies professor who specializes in Buddhism): "1) Objectively and dispassionately observe the negative emotion. 2) Focus attention on breathing to pacify the secondary mental and physiological effects of this emotion (the breathing will create a gap between the stimulus of desire and the response to it). 3) Examine the cause of the unhappy emotion and see that it is an unrealistic expectation that an external thing, sensation, or relationship can cause me to be happy. 4) Focus on the impermanence and emptiness of desires, projections, and the unhappiness they create (this, along with the breathing, allows the effects of the emotion to dissipate). 5) Realize that both oneself and all objects of perception are empty of inherent existence. 6) Experience the mental equanimity that arises from gentle breathing, and from pacifying a desire based on false expectation. 7) Allow the natural state of equanimity, contentment, peace, and happiness to rise up and enjoy that feeling within. 8) Remember that even this equanimity is interdependent and refrain from attachment to it. 9) Replace the unhappy emotion with a compassionate intention to become enlightened in order to liberate others from the causes of their suffering."
"Please call me by my true names so I can wake up; so the door of my heart can be left open: the door of compassion." -Thich Nhat Hanh

"Ask: what's needed of you" -Akong Rinpoche

"Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents, never revenges itself." -Gandhi
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