For example- if you falsely accuse someone of something, the bcustumary way to opologies is to heap some blessing on them. Anyone can do it. Friday night right before the sanctification of wine- parents are all juiced up on holiness and stat blessing up all their kids. Lay hands on head, invoke ancestors. Etc etc etc. just blessing things
I have heard it said that you don’t need to go to Nepal or Tibet or somewhere like that find a holy place. A place becomes holy because the local Buddhists treat it as such.
Yes... it doesn't have to be Buddhists. As I wrote in "Sacredness without metaphysics" (https://meaningness.substack.com/p/sacredness-without-metaphysics), random American tourists, most of whom would reject the possibility of trees being sacred if asked out of context, *treat* the "Angel Oak" as sacred, and *perceive* it as sacred, nonetheless. That's partly out of a local non-religious folk tradition of doing so, and partly due to an accurate perception of peculiar qualities of that tree.
But, you also don't need social validation. You can find sacredness in many places where most people don't.
What a truly beautiful day, alive with the feeling of something new unfolding. Spring carries a warmth that awakens connection and a gentle fire within. I honor this season of new beginnings and welcome its energy. Blessings as we enter spring, and thank you, David, for sharing this special day with us.
David, I want to bless you and thank you, because your work on meaningness keeps me from another lapse into a manic state. Mania is eternalistic in the same way depression is nihilistic, and thanks to you, I am able to avoid stepping in both directions in my thoughts and stances.
what if we blessed the bad?(should we not?) I notice your blessings were exclusively 'good' things(you skirted the bad with dog poop, but the bag itself is a good. Then you blessed everyone which includes all bad beings but doesn't single them out. Seems more like gratitude than blessing to me so would love more on this
Yes, absolutely, blessing bad things is good! That happened not to show up in this video because it was a beautiful day in a beautiful place.
I recorded an hour of this and boiled it down to seven minutes (because who would want to watch an hour of it). There was a section where I was looking at high peaks in the distance, and remembering that several people die on those specific mountains every year, and blessing the treacherous trails and blessing the dead and their deaths and also the medevac technicians who save some, and so on.
Blessing bad things is actually more important, I think, but also may be a more emotionally difficult practice. It might be better to start with what's easy, and then expand into blessing things that are generically bad, and then things that personally offend or hurt you.
I thought about that question too when I watched the video. I could see a possibility of me blessing the experience of anger or disgust. Also, the question reminded me of https://vividness.live/charnel-ground.
blessing vs gratitude: When I watched the video, I also see a similarity between this and a gratitude practice. What I found different is that I felt a more outward flow of loving-kindness in the blessing practice, e.g. May ___ be well and etc; which make me see a similarity between blessing and practice on four immeasurables (https://unfetteredmind.org/practice/four-immeasurables/): equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion and joy. Especially, when you extend them to those close to you, those you find difficult and everyone everywhere.
Oh, yes, good, thank you! Definitely closely related to the Four Immeasurables.
I'm sure there are similar practices in other religions, although I don't know details. And, it's not inherently religious at all; wishing that all be well can be entirely secular.
Within Buddhism, I mentioned tonglen, which is sort of a higher-voltage version of the Immeasurables. And then chöd is the next step up from there! Charnel ground practice is the essence of chöd. The full chöd practice is a ritual version. Or, versions; there are more and less complicated versions of chöd.
As the voltage rises, these functionally similar practices gradually move through the yanas: from basic Buddhism, to Bodhisattvayana, to the border between Bodhisattvayana and Vajrayana with tonglen, and outright Tantrayana with chöd. The version of charnel ground practice I wrote about is at the border between tantra and Dzogchen, because it's non-ritual and a practice of mere view.
Bless you for this teaching. Bless the awkwardness involved in me saying something like that. It's embarrassing and dorky, like you said. It is nice to have permission to overcome that sort of resistance.
Resistance aside, it is pretty easy to bless good things, the beautiful manifestations of nature most of all. I also am blessed to live in a gorgeous place, I could bless it all day long, no problem. But blessing bad things is a different story. You say it is "emotionally difficult", I think that's putting it mildly. I am not sure I can constitutionally do it, even though it might be spiritually beneficial. Anyway, I hope you follow this up with Blessing 102 – how to bless the bad stuff.
Bless wondering what blessing badness means, or whether that's missing the point.
Bless horrors. Bless tragedies. Bless everyone and everything healing from them. Bless what was destroyed. Bless what is gone. Bless what never was. Bless what never will be.
This is a wonderful practice; I did it this morning on my walk.
However, I do find it more powerful to hold the intention for the blessing to actually have a positive effect on the thing I am blessing. That makes the intention itself more powerful and altruistic than if I think the point is just my intent itself
Oh, yes, absolutely! My post failed to be clear about this. What I wanted to say was something like "you don't *have* to believe this will magically make things better in order to do the practice."
Oh, I've got another thought besides my other comment. Relating to the main topic of this article, that I should go about blessing things silently: imo, this doesn't hold much meaning if you just do it silently to yourself in your head, so I don't actually plan to do that. Nice article though.
Bless my newest discovery last night, that there IS a way to overcome my seemingly constant problem of not wanting to do anything in my free time because of the effects of my medication. I can just use my bright light corn bulbs to get my mind into a mode where I am okay with doing things. Bless those things. Bless you, David, for showing me the method of using bright light corn bulbs, bless the reminder you gave me that they exist when you posted about how your ones were going into the garage as junk. Bless that there was a new second set available that I was able to get on Amazon that don't burn out due to overheating.
Bless this video. Bless you, David.
Hell yeah
We do this in Judaism all the time
For example- if you falsely accuse someone of something, the bcustumary way to opologies is to heap some blessing on them. Anyone can do it. Friday night right before the sanctification of wine- parents are all juiced up on holiness and stat blessing up all their kids. Lay hands on head, invoke ancestors. Etc etc etc. just blessing things
I have heard it said that you don’t need to go to Nepal or Tibet or somewhere like that find a holy place. A place becomes holy because the local Buddhists treat it as such.
Yes... it doesn't have to be Buddhists. As I wrote in "Sacredness without metaphysics" (https://meaningness.substack.com/p/sacredness-without-metaphysics), random American tourists, most of whom would reject the possibility of trees being sacred if asked out of context, *treat* the "Angel Oak" as sacred, and *perceive* it as sacred, nonetheless. That's partly out of a local non-religious folk tradition of doing so, and partly due to an accurate perception of peculiar qualities of that tree.
But, you also don't need social validation. You can find sacredness in many places where most people don't.
What a truly beautiful day, alive with the feeling of something new unfolding. Spring carries a warmth that awakens connection and a gentle fire within. I honor this season of new beginnings and welcome its energy. Blessings as we enter spring, and thank you, David, for sharing this special day with us.
David, I want to bless you and thank you, because your work on meaningness keeps me from another lapse into a manic state. Mania is eternalistic in the same way depression is nihilistic, and thanks to you, I am able to avoid stepping in both directions in my thoughts and stances.
Really glad it has been helpful!
Bless your novel-to-me analogy.
what if we blessed the bad?(should we not?) I notice your blessings were exclusively 'good' things(you skirted the bad with dog poop, but the bag itself is a good. Then you blessed everyone which includes all bad beings but doesn't single them out. Seems more like gratitude than blessing to me so would love more on this
Yes, absolutely, blessing bad things is good! That happened not to show up in this video because it was a beautiful day in a beautiful place.
I recorded an hour of this and boiled it down to seven minutes (because who would want to watch an hour of it). There was a section where I was looking at high peaks in the distance, and remembering that several people die on those specific mountains every year, and blessing the treacherous trails and blessing the dead and their deaths and also the medevac technicians who save some, and so on.
Blessing bad things is actually more important, I think, but also may be a more emotionally difficult practice. It might be better to start with what's easy, and then expand into blessing things that are generically bad, and then things that personally offend or hurt you.
This practice could be considered a simplified version of the Buddhist practice of tonglen (https://pemachodronfoundation.org/product/tonglen-book/). I might write about that at some point.
Yes.
Bless the question! Bless David's response!
I thought about that question too when I watched the video. I could see a possibility of me blessing the experience of anger or disgust. Also, the question reminded me of https://vividness.live/charnel-ground.
blessing vs gratitude: When I watched the video, I also see a similarity between this and a gratitude practice. What I found different is that I felt a more outward flow of loving-kindness in the blessing practice, e.g. May ___ be well and etc; which make me see a similarity between blessing and practice on four immeasurables (https://unfetteredmind.org/practice/four-immeasurables/): equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion and joy. Especially, when you extend them to those close to you, those you find difficult and everyone everywhere.
Oh, yes, good, thank you! Definitely closely related to the Four Immeasurables.
I'm sure there are similar practices in other religions, although I don't know details. And, it's not inherently religious at all; wishing that all be well can be entirely secular.
Within Buddhism, I mentioned tonglen, which is sort of a higher-voltage version of the Immeasurables. And then chöd is the next step up from there! Charnel ground practice is the essence of chöd. The full chöd practice is a ritual version. Or, versions; there are more and less complicated versions of chöd.
As the voltage rises, these functionally similar practices gradually move through the yanas: from basic Buddhism, to Bodhisattvayana, to the border between Bodhisattvayana and Vajrayana with tonglen, and outright Tantrayana with chöd. The version of charnel ground practice I wrote about is at the border between tantra and Dzogchen, because it's non-ritual and a practice of mere view.
Bless you for this teaching. Bless the awkwardness involved in me saying something like that. It's embarrassing and dorky, like you said. It is nice to have permission to overcome that sort of resistance.
Resistance aside, it is pretty easy to bless good things, the beautiful manifestations of nature most of all. I also am blessed to live in a gorgeous place, I could bless it all day long, no problem. But blessing bad things is a different story. You say it is "emotionally difficult", I think that's putting it mildly. I am not sure I can constitutionally do it, even though it might be spiritually beneficial. Anyway, I hope you follow this up with Blessing 102 – how to bless the bad stuff.
More thoughts: https://hyperphor.com/ammdi/benediction
Bless embarrassment. Bless dorks. Bless resistance.
Bless learning how to bless badness.
Bless wondering what blessing badness means, or whether that's missing the point.
Bless horrors. Bless tragedies. Bless everyone and everything healing from them. Bless what was destroyed. Bless what is gone. Bless what never was. Bless what never will be.
I love the way you've phrased it - "You can just bless things".
I loved this. What a lovely practice - this lifted my whole day
This is a wonderful practice; I did it this morning on my walk.
However, I do find it more powerful to hold the intention for the blessing to actually have a positive effect on the thing I am blessing. That makes the intention itself more powerful and altruistic than if I think the point is just my intent itself
Oh, yes, absolutely! My post failed to be clear about this. What I wanted to say was something like "you don't *have* to believe this will magically make things better in order to do the practice."
100%!
Oh, I've got another thought besides my other comment. Relating to the main topic of this article, that I should go about blessing things silently: imo, this doesn't hold much meaning if you just do it silently to yourself in your head, so I don't actually plan to do that. Nice article though.
Bless blessing out loud.
Haha. I actually did have a moment where I blessed my food silently because I was grateful for it.
Bless my newest discovery last night, that there IS a way to overcome my seemingly constant problem of not wanting to do anything in my free time because of the effects of my medication. I can just use my bright light corn bulbs to get my mind into a mode where I am okay with doing things. Bless those things. Bless you, David, for showing me the method of using bright light corn bulbs, bless the reminder you gave me that they exist when you posted about how your ones were going into the garage as junk. Bless that there was a new second set available that I was able to get on Amazon that don't burn out due to overheating.
Bless blessing.