New York Insight Blog

Our world is at risk; we are the world. The renowned humanist Vaclav Havel (Czech playwright, essayist, poet and dissident, ]the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic) once said that morality means taking responsibility, not only for our own life, but for all life. Martin Luther King expressed it as our being “tied together in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

Sometimes on meditation retreats I have no choice but to amuse my mind with my own hilarious inventions. Of course, most of my ideas lend themselves much less to the label “hilarious” when I get home, so I encourage you to read this tongue-in-cheek Vipassana glossary just as you come back from a retreat and it is fresh in your mind! And, for a fun mindfulness break, add your own terms to this list (retreat related or not).

The teaching of ethical conduct or integrity is the second of the three limbs of the Eightfold Path. Sila (ethics) includes wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood that do no harm. The practice is twofold: to resolve to do no harm and to do only that which is wholesome and skillful. The Buddha said that skillful actions have freedom from remorse as their purpose. They are a conscious choice to refrain from behavior that causes fear, confusion and suffering. There are increasing levels of subtlety in them.

Wise Understanding is the first aspect of the Wisdom limb of the Noble Eightfold Path. Albert Einstein said “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is really a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion, to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature and its beauty.”