Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering

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Why do we suffer? Is there a purpose to our pain? Noting that human beings have wrestled with such questions for thousands of years, Phillip Moffitt has found answers for his own life in Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Reflecting on his own journey from Esquire magazine editor-in-chief to Buddhist meditation teacher, Moffitt provides a fresh perspective on the Buddha's ancient wisdom, showing how to move from suffering to new awareness and unanticipated joy. Although the chapters on expectations and living with difficulty are in different parts of the book, there is a distinct relationship between them. Knowing what is essential to you allows you to meet the chaos of life with a clear mind and an open heart. In my experience, being clear about who you are as you respond to life’s twists and turns is the only strategy that leads to a sustainable sense of well-being. Being grounded in your authentic self, or what I like to call your essence, supports you in making choices and decisions, helps you endure anxiety and stress, and enables you to bear disappointment and difficulty with equanimity. Become interested in the nature of your awareness itself. The capacity for awareness has a mirrorlike quality—it reflects what you like or dislike and what you identify with—but it is a neutral observer. Notice that your awareness does not become excited or afraid or identify with what you are feeling or thinking; it simply knows and reflects what is happening in your body and mind. Becoming acquainted with this awareness can provide much-needed comfort and stability when you get caught in emotional chaos. b-don't run away from suffering. accept it and examine what it does to your body.... notice how universal it is. (respond vs. react)

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Reacting to the message, Strictly viewers continued scratching their heads, having had no explanation for Amanda leaving the show.

After missing a weekend series of talks on the Four Noble Truths, one of the attendees told me that he was awakened to the profound depth of these teachings. Inspired by his enthusiasm, I went in search of books focused on the Four Noble Truths and found this one.

Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding [PDF] [EPUB] Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding

It's because of this book that sometimes, when I'm sitting in traffic and the person behind me is honking as if we aren't all trying to move forward I'll (somewhat glibly) say "Thank you for this opportunity to embody suffering!" And, you know what? At least it makes me laugh for a second, and I kind of feel better... I’m enjoying reading Dancing with Life. I just recently finished the portion where you introduced the three ego-renunciation practices. They are now part of my daily recitation of the precepts, and more importantly a very fruitful and challenging practice when not on the cushion.” Why do you suffer? Is there a purpose to your pain? What about the amount of suffering you experience—is it fair, based on some understandable system of cause and effect, or is it simply arbitrary? Can you affect how much you suffer? If so, how? In the present moment, the past and future are embodied, and yet it is only in the aliveness of the present moment that the past and the future have meaning. Before he founded the Life Balance Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to the study and practice of spiritual values in daily life, Phillip Moffitt served as chief executive and editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine. He is an award-winning essayist and a regular contributor to Yoga Journal. In this solid work, Moffitt takes the Four Noble Truths and uses them as a foundation for 12 insights which enable us to dance with both joy and pain while finding peace in a balanced mind. Punctuating the book are comments on poetic passages by T. S. Eliot and references to the thought of Jungian psychologist Helen Luke. Moffitt also brings to bear his experiences from more than 30 years of meditation, yoga practice, and teaching vipassana. He is convinced that mindfulness and compassion are tools for transforming suffering into joy.The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.” A few years ago, Phillip wrote a beautiful treatise on the Four Noble Truths and now, such a short time later, he shares another great gift for transforming our lives into a sacred journey where everything is workable and nothing is trivial. With this book in particular one doesn’t need to be a Buddhist practitioner to fully understand and apply the life enhancing principles Philip has presented. His writing is direct and personal, extremely practical, and often peppered with convincing anecdotal evidence supporting the intrinsic human capacity for consequential transformation when given appropriate support and skills. This is a book I can give to just about anyone interested in living aligned with loving awareness!” Pavel Shlossberg is an associate professor and department chair in the master’s program in Communication and Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.” You are not controlled by your views and opinions or the story of your past, but rather you have a “don’t know” mind that responds wisely to whatever you encounter in life.