Dreaming Darkly & Dharma - #AtoZChallenge

Dreaming Darkly
by Caitlin Kittredge


Ivy Bloodgood’s mother is dead, and she should probably be sad about it. But she isn’t. Myra Bloodgood was confusing mix of protective and abusive, a manipulative personality who never told the truth—about where she came from, who Ivy’s father was, or why they were living their lives on the run.

Now that Ivy has been sent to Darkhaven, an island off the New England coast, to live with a rich uncle she didn’t know existed, she is forced to reckon with her mother’s past. Ivy can tell right away there are long-held family secrets buried within these walls, but when she wakes up from one of her nightmares covered in someone else’s blood, Ivy fears that whatever demons her mother battled while she was alive have come to roost in her own mind. Scared that she can no longer trust what she sees, Ivy seeks the help of a boy who thinks her episodes are connected to the sordid history of Darkhaven—but what they don’t know might kill them both.

A moody and twisty gothic mystery with an impossible romance, Dreaming Darkly is an atmospheric, fast-paced page-turner written by comics veteran Caitlin Kittredge.

Dharma

• The eternal and inherent nature of reality, regarded in Hinduism as a cosmic law underlying right behavior and social order.
• The nature of reality regarded as a universal truth taught by the Buddha; the teaching of Buddhism.
• An aspect of truth or reality.

To develop this freedom, one must practice habits of ethical conduct, thought, and meditation that enable one to move along the path. These habits include:

 

• Right understanding. Really knowing, for example, that unwholesome acts and thoughts have consequences, as do wholesome acts and thoughts.
• Right intention. Recognizing that actions are shaped by habits of anger and self-centeredness, or by habits of compassion, understanding, and love.
• Right speech. Recognizing the moral implications of speech. Truthfulness.
• Right action. Observing the five precepts at the foundation of all morality: not killing, not stealing, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not lying, and not clouding the mind with intoxicants.
• Right livelihood. Earning a living in ways that are consonant with the basic precepts.
• Right effort. Cultivating this way of living with the attention, the patience, and the perseverance that it takes to cultivate a field.
• Right mindfulness. Developing “presence of mind” through the moment-to-moment awareness of meditation practice, including mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of walking, and mindfulness of bodily sensations.
• Right concentration. Developing the ability to bring the dispersed and distracted mind and heart to a center, a focus, and to see clearly through that focused mind and heart.

10 Rules:

• Patience (dhriti)
• Forgiveness (kshama)
• Piety or self-control (dama)
• Honesty (asteya)
• Sanctity (shauch)
• Control of senses )indraiya-nigrah)
• Reason (dhi)
• Knowledge or learning (vidya)
• Truthfulness (satya)
• Absence of anger (krodha)