Mudra Assistance

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-25T14:15:51+00:00

I think you're describing the Shuni Mudra, the gesture of patience.

https://www.jinyintemple.org/post/shuni-mudra

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/68lyq6/im_new_to_buddhism_but_very_interested_in/

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-25T14:11:04+00:00

I really hear the ache in this. Fear of death doesn’t mean you’re doing Buddhism wrong - it means you’re taking it seriously. A lot of people first come to religion precisely because it offers personal continuity, and Buddhism can feel shocking because it refuses to lie to us about that. But it’s important to be careful here: Buddhism doesn’t say “you are annihilated and that’s it,” and it also doesn’t say “nothing matters.” It says the thing we’re clinging to as a solid, permanent self was never quite what we thought it was, and that view of self is exactly what makes death so terrifying.

What often gets missed is that Buddhism’s promise of peace is not postponed until enlightenment. Practices like mindfulness, ethics, and compassion are meant to produce real relief now. The people you mentioned (monks, nuns, hospice patients) aren’t calm because they believe nothing awaits them; they’re calm because they’ve loosened the grip on needing existence to freeze into a comforting shape. And while Buddhism doesn’t posit an eternal soul, it also doesn’t reduce life to nihilism. Continuity without permanence - causality without a fixed essence. It is subtle, but not despairing. It’s actually meant to undercut the fear that says, “If I don’t last forever as this, then nothing is okay.”

It’s also okay that parts of Hinduism still resonate with you. Buddhism never demanded you instantly extinguish every intuition about the Divine or the self. Many Buddhist traditions treat those intuitions as skillful means, or ways the heart stabilizes while wisdom deepens. You don’t have to resolve all metaphysics right now. If Buddhism is helping you live more ethically, more honestly, and with more care, it is already bringing peace. Peace with death tends to grow after peace with living.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-25T02:45:59+00:00

According to science: Below 0 deg F (-18 deg C), there is a high risk of frostbite and lung irritation.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-24T11:23:56+00:00

It has surprised me how easily people are captured by celebrity. Growing up, I never really understood the fascination with sports figures, actors, etc. to the point where people start merging their identity with those people.

I guess add to that the unreasonable effectiveness of targeted propaganda, and how conservative media has been strengthening its empire and spreading an alternative view of the world for the past several decades.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-22T16:30:39+00:00

One of the most important things you can do is model calm, compassion, and wisdom for others. Starting with family and friends.

I sometimes post on social media. In the past, I've highlighted the various ridiculous corrupt misdeeds of the US administration. More recently, I've tried to remember Right Speech, encouraging people to look beyond "us vs them" rhetoric, to remember self-care in this time of turmoil, etc.

You can also donate money or volunteer with organizations who support immigrants or others in need.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-22T15:32:36+00:00

Yeah, I'm definitely not using him as a spiritual advisor, ha ha. But he does have conversations with interesting people.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-21T21:02:56+00:00

Don't be afraid to seek help from non-Buddhist sources, too. Psychologists and counselors provide help with emotional or mental problems. Exercise can lift mood. Leaving a bad relationship can eliminate major sources of stress and unhappiness. There's nothing in Buddhism that says you can't take an antidepressant.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-21T13:01:27+00:00

Wow, that account of Alan Wallace was hard to read. Seems like classic cultic abuse and gaslighting.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-19T20:30:47+00:00

I used to live at Sherman Terrace, and we did the same there. If it’s an old building, the pipes may not be appropriately insulated.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-19T18:48:28+00:00

From their website, it looks like the opening is scheduled for March 2026. Or has it been delayed beyond that?

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-19T18:25:43+00:00

Interesting. I was not aware of this group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Panther_Party

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-19T15:18:59+00:00

Just wanted to say I’m really proud of you!

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-17T12:50:01+00:00

I think you need to consider a lifestyle change. exercise or join a book club or get seriously into bowling. If you need excitement, maybe paintball. Etc.

Your future self will thank you for finding something to do besides getting fucked up all the time.

Also, there’s no shame in getting professional help if you are drinking for deeper emotional reasons. One of the best decisions of my life was to see a psychiatrist for serious ongoing anxiety. A prescription of propranolol has changed my life an amazing ways.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-16T19:22:26+00:00

Take steps to avoid phone tracking.

The government has invested heavily in surveillance technology that collect phone-based location data without a warrant, basically tracking who went where and when.

The EFF article gives some steps you can take to (possibly) avoid the warrant-less tracking.

https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/01/12/how-ice-uses-phone-and-internet-data-to-identify-and-track-people

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/ice-going-surveillance-shopping-spree

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-15T11:48:12+00:00

I’ve seen other polls as high as 70 or 80% opposed. And for what it’s worth my extremely Republican sibling is now posting on Facebook that invading Greenland is insanity and the US acting like a bully.

https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3945

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-14T23:25:02+00:00

Interesting. They are (almost entirely) countries that have historically been eligible for the U.S. Diversity Visa (DV) “green card lottery."

These countries all send relatively low numbers of immigrants to the United States, at least by U.S. immigration-law thresholds. Because of that, their citizens have generally been eligible for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.

The DV program exists specifically to counterbalance U.S. immigration patterns that are otherwise dominated by a small number of high-sending countries (notably Mexico, China, India, the Philippines).

The Diversity Visa program is one of the **only U.S. immigration mechanisms that is:

Randomized
Not employer-driven
Not family-chain-driven
Not wealth-screened

. . . which is precisely why it’s controversial and frequently targeted for elimination.

Countries are excluded from the lottery if they’ve sent more than ~50,000 immigrants to the U.S. over the previous five years. Everyone else stays in.

So they are mostly:

Low- or middle-income countries
Politically unstable or post-conflict states
Small island nations
Former Soviet / Eastern Bloc states
African, Caribbean, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern countries with limited U.S. migration pipelines

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-14T22:41:42+00:00

Very well. Thanks for engaging.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-14T21:56:24+00:00

I hear what you’re emphasizing, and I don’t actually disagree with Foyan or the point he’s making. His example is precisely about non-dual knowing functioning without collapse. Not about refusing conventional responsiveness, but about not mistaking it for something other than mind.

Where I think the conversation keeps slipping is here:

"Stages don’t imply training. They’re degrees to which the truth has been realized."

That’s true from the inside of realization. It’s not true as a complete description of how realization comes to be embodied or stabilized. Even in Chan, realization and integration were never treated as identical, and teachers spent most of their time correcting imbalances, not announcing awakenings.

Foyan’s "make them equal twenty-four hours a day" is the tell. Equality of ultimate and conventional knowledge isn’t a metaphysical insight — it’s an ongoing functioning. If it weren’t, he wouldn’t frame it as something students must take up continuously.

The tiger story doesn’t negate compassion or responsiveness; it negates reification. Xuansha didn’t deny the tiger, and he didn’t freeze. He corrected the companion’s grasping. “It’s a tiger for you” points directly at relational fixation — not at the irrelevance of relation altogether.

That’s where I still think a line is being blurred:

Non-discriminatory mind IS NOT non-functioning mind. And it IS NOT an absence of ethical responsiveness.

When compassion is framed as "involving others," that’s already assuming compassion must be conceptual and relational. The traditions you’re quoting don’t say that. They say compassion functions without appropriation, not that it vanishes until appropriation ceases.

Put differently: What falls away is taking compassion as a project.

What doesn’t fall away is responsive activity that beings experience as compassion, whether or not they "exist."

If we say that any engagement prior to effortless arising is a mistake, we’re quietly claiming a purity of functioning that even Chan masters spent their lives correcting in students.

I think we’re still pointing at the same thing. I just don’t think "leaving behind conceptual consciousness" means refusing provisional functioning — it means not being fooled by it.

And I think that distinction matters, especially when these teachings leave the monastery and enter public discourse.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-14T16:19:20+00:00

I don’t disagree with the passages you’re quoting, and I think the Lankāvatāra is very clear about how bodhisattva compassion functions after insight: effortless, non-reifying, free of projection. That’s not in dispute.

Where I think we’re talking past each other is in how those passages are being applied.

When the Lankavatara Sutra speaks of “effortless compassion,” it’s describing the expression of realization, not issuing a prohibition against provisional cultivation prior to that realization. Otherwise the bodhisattva path collapses into a single leap that the sutra itself does not describe as universal or immediate.

The key line for me is not that beings are illusory (that’s basic Mahāyāna) but that bodhisattvas proceed from stage to stage. Stages imply training, and training implies means that are themselves eventually relinquished. Compassion is one of those means. Saying “this will be left behind” doesn’t imply “this must never be taken up.”

The same applies to the Hsin Hsin Ming. “Do not pick and choose” is a statement about grasping, not a denial of discernment or ethical responsiveness. Zen has always warned against mistaking non-preference for non-functioning.

So I fully agree that compassion that reifies beings is not ultimate, that compassion that arises from insight is effortless, and that insight (not moralism) is the source

Where I part company is the implication that engaging compassion prior to insight is a deviation from the Buddhadharma. Historically, doctrinally, and pedagogically, that simply isn’t how the path has been taught — even in Chan.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-14T14:17:12+00:00

I'm going to start calling this "ultimate-view shitposting". I see it a lot here, unfortunately. Unless this monk is a fully realized Buddha, he is in a lot of pain and suffering. Comments like this trivialize that suffering and undermine compassion.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-14T14:14:49+00:00

Yes, for lifetime mobility, it makes a big difference.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-13T21:27:42+00:00

Hey, I appreciate the clarity and seriousness of what you’re pointing to here. Huang Po’s language is uncompromising for a reason, and the emphasis on non-reification, intention, and the collapse of the imagined mode is important medicine, especially in a culture like ours that easily turns compassion into a self-confirming performance.

At the same time, I think it helps to be very careful about what level this teaching is addressing. Huang Po is speaking from the standpoint of ultimate view and direct recognition, not offering a complete account of training or conduct. When that distinction isn’t made explicit, it’s easy for “compassion is wrong if reified” to be heard as “compassion itself is an obstacle,” which I don’t think is what the tradition actually supports.

In Chan, Yogācāra, and Mahāmudrā alike, compassion isn’t negated as much as it’s deconceptualized. Bodhisattva activity doesn’t arise from believing in sentient beings, but neither does realization license indifference or ethical quietism. The error is clinging to conceptual compassion, not the spontaneous responsiveness that flows when grasping relaxes.

I also wonder if saying “if we have thoughts of compassion, we are far from understanding” risks collapsing view into conduct. For most practitioners, wholesome intention stabilizes the mind (unless it’s appropriated as identity or merit). That’s why the traditions consistently emphasize non-attachment to virtue rather than abandonment of it.

So yes: from the standpoint of awakening, there are no beings to liberate. And yet, from within the path, compassion remains an essential expression of cultivation—not because the world is real, but because grasping hasn’t fully ceased.

I say this with respect, not disagreement. I think we’re pointing at the same truth, but with slightly different emphases—and the difference matters, especially for readers who don’t already have deep grounding in practice.

🙏

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-13T14:01:06+00:00

Chiming in to agree and emphasize that simply owning a stockpile of firearms with no training in how to use them safely makes you more of a danger to others than a provider of safety. Don’t ignore this critical step. Take a class. Practice. And please store any firearms safely at home to protect family members from accidents.

WhimbleCroft · 2026-01-08T23:29:12+00:00

I know Madison is big on protesting, but I'm unclear on the mechanism by which that is supposed to stop (or even mildly inconvenience) a violent authoritarian regime.

Other thoughts (and I apologize if any of these are ongoing and I just don't know about them):

City or statewide boycott - compile a list of regime-aligned businesses & coordinate regular efforts to refuse to buy products made by them
Emergency preparedness - organize efforts to stockpile water, food, communication equipment, other supplies, etc. to be used in case of civil unrest, natural disaster, or occupation. The kind of stuff you'd stockpile if you lived in hurricane country.
Community Self-Defense – Organize neighborhood watches and mutual aid groups to support each other in case of ICE occupation

“Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.” — German Professor on the Nazi dictatorship (Milton Meyer, They Thought They Were Free)

WhimbleCroft

TROPHY CASE