Skip to main content

fortitude, courage, samadhi, jhana

 



from stackexchange:

How to develop fortitude?

Specifically when someone you love or whose opinion matters to you greatly attacks your way of life, your beliefs, or even on a smaller scale just makes you feel ignored, pushed around, etc.


I find I quickly lose confidence in my "inner voice" when my loved ones, particularly family, do this. Generally when a stranger does this to me it's easier to let go.


Does anyone have a useful visual metaphor or story around this? I try to see myself as a rock and their words like arrows pinging off me but it doesn't work.


EDIT This has drawn a lot of attention so here are some specifics.


The "ignored" is primarily my manager who has not indicated "hearing" me in our daily meetings for the past year. If I speak he will sometimes speak over me. Every single other team member hears me and responds, except for him. It's obviously humiliating, and I've been able to tolerate it, but I recognize it's been subtly eating away at me.


The "pushed around" is in response to a DMV worker, who signaled at me to put my mask on while I was in my car. She gave me instructions for the driving test in the makeshift course the DMV made, I did not understand her instructions. (This may have been my fault for not understanding her instructions.) After she told me I had failed, when I asked for more clarification on the test directions, she took off her mask and began to yell at me and my partner, spitting on us in the process. I essentially broke down in the car after. I would like to, in the future, not be emotionally impacted or feel impact on my self esteem after such incidents.


The "greatly attacks your life and belief" is that I'm working in aerospace and defense and am Asian American in my early 20's. After the shootings I felt called to devote my life to lifting up voices typically ignored or silenced by the mainstream. I am now quitting my job for several reasons, the primary one as I was starting to get published on op-eds regarding anti-Asian racism and wanted to give myself time to redefine my goals.


After I submit my resignation, my aunt called me and spent an hour yelling at me over the phone for being irresponsible and ungrateful to my mom. When these conversations happen, I feel like I am in danger of losing my "fortitude". As in, I want to keep intact my concrete desire and wish to do well for the world, rather than making my family happy by taking a job they think is good (this is limited to the subset of jobs under "top earning doctor lawyer or engineer"). My default is to go along with my family' wishes to be filial to them, but I don't want to lose my vision for making the world better just to fulfill their wishes for me. I feel that previously my fortitude to be vegan was also subtly ground away by my family who did not support it.


Incidentally, a lot of the comments below have been great. I read a comment where one user stated that feeling ignored and pushed around may be the norm in adults life, and that after a certain period of time you train yourself to accept it. I would like to train myself, somehow, but I have experienced these kinds of situations many times and I feel like while I am certainly able to continue, internally I'm still distressed.



frankk response:


It sounds like you have a sound idea on right and wrong. If you're not uncertain, and have conviction in what is right, and stick to it, do your best to be polite and respectful to parents, coworkers, etc, but stick to your conviction on things that are right, and that are important.


Developing samadhi and jhana in a holistic way is your best bet to strengthen fortitude. Obviously that's not going to happen right away, but using little mental tricks like visualizing and so forth, is not going to have power without samadhi. What I mean by holistic way, is doing enough physical exercise at least 1.5 hours a day, eating healthy, 2-4 hours of meditation a day or as much as you're able. When your jhana battery gets charged up enough, you'll have internal energy/viriya that gives you courage and strength to follow through with your convictions and principles. If you protect and nurture your internal energy, don't overindulge in sex, drinking, gambling, sensual pleasures, and meditate instead, you'll feel the difference in strength (physical and mental). If you go celibate for 100 days and meditate a lot, you'll feel a big difference, especially if you're young and healthy.


When I was a kid I was shy and afraid of public speaking, afraid of even answering the telephone. Now, I'm totally fearless in those situations, completely relaxed. I regularly stand up to bullies, and am not afraid to question and criticize even the most popular and powerful. If I had 20 million followers on facebook, and they were all bullying me and telling me I'm wrong, but I know that I'm right, I'd just laugh them off and pity those fools. That's samadhi.



Forum discussion


Stackexchange moderators shut down that thread prematurely, so I restarted the discussion here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuddhismUnlimited/comments/mo7t7l/how_does_one_use_buddhism_and_meditation_to/


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked: Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity? I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views? Frankk response: In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.  I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas   if you're serious about jhāna.  (since monastics are already celibate by rule)   If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas,   celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to tha

illustration of Buddha Gotoma where he looks like a human being

Illustration by Bhikkhu Vimalo from a BPS postcard wishing a happy vesak   More images where Buddha looks human: https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2021/02/where-are-buddha-images-and-statues.html Buddha and Arahant images that look like real humans

1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue

To give more context, this is a public event,  * everyone knows cameras are rolling  *  it's a room full of children * the boy's mom is standing off camera a few feet away watching all of this * the boy initiated contact, he had already had a hug with Dalai Lama earlier and then asked Dalai Lama for another hug which triggered this segment  17 min. video showing what happened before that 1 min. clip and after, with some explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0qey5Ts78 16min talk from Ajahn Acalo with his thoughts on Dalai Lama kissing boy, relevance to Bhikkhu monastic code, sexual predators in religion in general, and how celibate monastics deal with sexual energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2m0TcUib0 The child's comments about the incident in a filmed interview later https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2023/04/18/643eba5d46163ffc078b457c.html The child: It's a great experience It was amazing to meet His Holiness and I think it's a great ex