Home Practices

Wise Livelihood: What is our true occupation?
Home Practices #1 (4/17/25)

Click Here to view a PDF of the home practices.

1. Sitting Practice: for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. (If you use apps-use them only a few times this week).
2. Gratitude Practice. Call, text, or e-mail your buddies from the class, 3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything. Gratitude is the capacity to take delight in life, in this moment, here, now, in being alive! Gratitude is the ability to feel joy & wonder.
3. Koan Questions: What is my true job? What is my true occupation? What is occupying my heart/mind right now? Ask these questions a few times a day (or at least read them once a day).  Pause, listen for the answers. If you wish, write them down.
4. Please Reflect: What is my attention like at work, when volunteering, at home, when engaged in tasks? Where am I awake? Where do I zone out?
   Take a fresh look at your life and what you do and how you spend your time and the quality of attention that you bring to your day. How do you occupy your heart and mind? What do you occupy your time and thoughts with? Where do you tend to dwell? Be gentle with yourself! We are learning to explore our lives and to grow in wisdom and compassion. To use our work, life, heart and the mind’s occupations to grow consciousness. YEA!!
5. Remember Beginner’s Mind: When we bring our practice into our work or life or where the heart and mind dwell, we take a leap out of that conditioned small mind into the freedom and generosity of the mind that is accepting, fresh, and full of possibility. This mind is the “Beginner’s Mind.”
6. It is very important to be attentive to your body. Show up for work, Show up for life-Show up for your heart-mind Be present-use breath, body to help
   I invite you to explore the challenges and joys of work, life, where you occupy your heart and mind, where you dwell– Practice with Gentleness and I hope that you will experience a new understanding of yourself.

HAVE FUN!!

Ānāpānassati: Session 2 (4/16/25) Home Practice

Ānāpānassati: Session 2 (4/16/25) Home Practice

Click here for some reference material, based on our work in the First Tetrad.

Session 2 Homework

This week, for home practice:

• Continue a regular practice of 20-40 minutes of daily sitting practice, if possible.
• Try to use the roadmap we have used in class to visit the breath centers in the body
• Remember that the first resting spot of ‘a calm and relaxed body’ lies with step 4 in this tetrad.
• Remember that we start out attending to particular areas in the ‘map’ we have chosen, but we end up with a sense of the whole body breathing, using a broad, spacious sense of the body. Relax any tension that you can let go of along the way as you move through the map.
• Use the counting of the length of the inhale and exhale for at least the first half of your practice time.
• Keep 80% of your attention on the feeling of the breath energy in the body, using the other 20% for counting or a meditation word or phrase.
• Follow along with this guided audio file if you would like
• Notice at times in daily life, where the breath is felt in the body as you breathe.
• Read as much of the reference material as you would like. The main points to take away are that breath energy is more than just air. The fact that we can feel, hear, taste, smell, see or conceptualize anything depends on the presence of ‘life-force’, (Pāna in Pali and Prana in Sanskrit), which is always present in each moment of life and which is renewed with each breath.

Ānāpānassati: Session 1 (4/9/25) Home Practice

* Become aware of the connection between the breath and the body in terms of energy. Which ways of breathing feel calming?  Which ways of breathing feel energizing?

If you already have a meditation practice that uses awareness of breathing, try feeling the breath in a location other than your usual or favorite location.

*Spend five to ten minutes (or longer) feeling the breath in each of the breath centers in this ‘map’:

• Below the navel
• Above the navel and below the sternum
• Center of the chest at the breastbone
• Feeling the flow of breath at the throat
• Somewhere in the head, at the tip of the nose or farther back in the nasal or sinus cavities

Count the length of the inhale and the length of the exhale. To count five breaths in each area, you can count like this for each round of inhalations and exhalations:

(inhale) “1 2345…”  (exhale) “1 23456…”

(inhale) “2 2345…” (exhale) “2 234567…

(inhale) “3 23456…” (exhale)  “3 23456…”   and so on for 4 and 5

Some of you requested a video to help you remember the energizing practice we did in class.  This video is a little older.  Now, as we did it in class, I like to relax the shoulders more on the first squatting motion, with the palms facing down. Then I hold the palms facing each other as I lift through the chest and raise the arms for the full chair pose.

• Video: Breath Center Energizer
• Password: ‘breathingCIMC’

Resources and readings for this session are located here, along with a copy of the home practice.

Exploring the Breadth and Depth of Mindfulness with RAIN: Week 4 (4/7/25) Home Practices

In formal & informal practice:

1. Can you notice the difference between taking something personally and not identifying with (or clinging to) it? What does each attitude feel like?
2. Can you recognize and allow personalization without judging or otherwise getting caught in it?
3. When personalization is happening, use whichever of the following wisdom supports you find helpful:
   • “[xyz] is happening.” [e.g., aching, thinking, imagining, walking, wanting, not wanting, etc.]
   • “This is what [xx] feels like” [e.g., anger, joy, heat, calm, etc.]
   • When the personalization is focused on difficult thoughts or emotions, imagine they are coming from a nearby podcast or radio show (perhaps via a metal filling in a tooth, however fanciful that might be).

Exploring the Breadth and Depth of Mindfulness with RAIN: Week 3 (3/31/25) Home Practices

Formal practice:

1. Notice when “obliviousness” arises (e.g., zoning out, apathy, indifference, sleepiness, and the like). It could be mild or intense—from a little disconnected to fully checked out. Take a few moments to allow it. Then, you might want to try taking an interest in it, perhaps using some of the questions below, but this is not essential.
2. Whether or not you detect any obliviousness, see if you can boost your level of interest in the sensations of your anchor or in another experience that is prominent in your body or mind. You can use the questions below to help pique curiosity:

• • What does this really feel like?
  • How am I relating to what’s happening?
  • Can I look closer? Or, What are the subtler qualities of the experience? (But don’t strain or force!)
  • Can I follow the sequence? (I.e., what came before and what happens next.)

Please note: You do not need to use all these questions; only those that feel most helpful. And feel free to modify or make up your own questions.

Informal practice:

1. Notice when “obliviousness” arises (e.g., zoning out, apathy, indifference, sleepiness, and the like). It could be mild or intense—from a little disconnected to fully checked out. Take a few moments to allow it. If you want, investigate it briefly, perhaps using either or both of the first 2 questions below:

• • What is this really like?
  • How am I relating to what’s happening?
  • What mind-state is motivating this action (of body, speech or thought)?
  • [Regarding speech, when about to say something]: Is this both true and useful?
  • Can kindness be here now? (Or, what if this were done kindly?)

2. In whatever mindfulness in daily life practice/s you are doing (as explained in the homework  for Weeks 1 & 2), change the focus to interest by adding in any of the bulleted questions above.

Reminder: The questions are not meant to be answered intellectually. Instead, drop a question into your formal or informal practice from time to time, attune to what’s happening, and see what arises.

The homework will be discussed in small groups next week.

Exploring the Breadth and Depth of Mindfulness with RAIN: Week 2 (3/24/25) Home Practices

Formal practice: When resistance arises, try using 1-3 of the investigative questions below to support the quality of allowance. Please remember, you can even allow resistance.

Also please note: Investigative questions are not meant to be answered with the intellect or thinking mind. In fact, from a conventional perspective, they are not meant to be “answered” at all! Instead, they are meant to gently invoke curiosity and experimentation—even playfulness—that prompts you to explore new possibilities. More on this topic next week.

When you notice resistance, choose 1-3 phrases:

• Can I make room (space) for this?
• Can I be at ease with this?
• Can I take in the fact this is happening now?
• Can I soften around this?
• Can I open to this?

Feel free to modify or make up your own phrases as needed.

In daily life: You can go about this in 1 of 2 ways. Either…

1. Continue practicing the daily mindfulness activity that you did the first week (or pick a new one), but now, instead of focusing on recognition, notice when resistance is present. Then, see if you can bring in allowance, perhaps using one or more of the phrases above. OR…
2. Instead of doing a specific mindfulness activity like last week, simply notice resistance at any time over the course of your day. Then, see if you can bring in allowance, perhaps using one or more of the phrases above.

Exploring the Breadth and Depth of Mindfulness with RAIN: Week 1 (3/17/25) Home Practices

Please choose 2 mindfulness practices this week to support the quality of recognition and awareness of distraction. One practice should be done during your formal practice and the other in your daily life. I suggest choosing something that stretches the edge of the proverbial envelope a bit, but that doesn’t come close to busting it—something somewhat or moderately challenging. Home practices will be the basis for small group discussions next week!

If you would benefit from basic meditation instructions, you can find them here

Formal Practice

If you already have a daily formal, mindfulness practice, you can continue that and add in some of the suggested questions or prompts below; these support the quality of recognition and awareness of distraction. You don’t need to use all of them—which could feel unwieldy! Just choose what feels right for you, modifying them as needed.

• Where is the attention now?  (Or, What’ s happening now?)
• Just notice
• Just this
• Is the mind aware of what’s happening or caught in what’s happening?

Additionally, it can be helpful to notice how you react when you realize that    the mind has been wandering

If you are a new meditation and unsure how to go about it, here are instructions for a basic mindfulness meditation:

If you do not have a daily practice and would like to establish one, that’s a great way to boost Recognition! I recommend choosing a specific spot in your home at a specific time of day where you will have some relative quiet and privacy. Practice for 5 minutes/day everyday (or 5 days/week)—and no more! See the bottom of the above attachment for new meditators for more tips. (Also, you don’t need to use the questions and prompts for recognition if your meditations are only 5 minutes.) If you do not want to establish a daily practice, you can do only the daily life practices.

Daily Life Practice

There are many ways to practice bringing more moments of recognition into our daily lives. This week, we’ll be choosing specific activities or places to practice mindfulness during our usual activities. You can use the suggestions below—choose only one—or create whatever that feels right for you.

Examples of activities: brushing teeth, getting in and out of a car (preferably if you do it more than once per day), taking a shower, eating one meal or snack per day, drinking a cup of tea or coffee, exercising—or a portion of your exercise period, making the bed, whenever you open a door, etc.

Examples of places: a hallway, path, or short route—indoors or outdoors—that you walk on several times per day; a park, a building, the subway platform, or other location where you are several times per day for a few minutes at a time or a few times per week for a longer time, mindfulness in the bathroom, etc.

Turning text pings to mindfulness bells: If you often feel compelled to immediately look at a text when you hear that ping, try using it as a cue to stop what you are doing and practice mindfulness of breathing or body sensations for a few moments. Then, mindfully pick up the phone and experience the sensations involved. Be mindful of whatever movements are necessary to manipulate your body and the phone in order to see the text. Similar to Thich Nhat Hanh’s suggestion for telephone meditation, before you look at it, consider a line like this: “May I practice deep attention to this message.” You can practice mindfulness when sending texts, too. Before composing and hitting send, consider a line like this: “May I practice communication that is honest and non-harming.”

Way of Awareness: Week 4 (4/3/25) Home Practices

Way of Awareness—Home Practices –Week 4…Keep Practicing & Have FUN!***  

Will arrive at 6:45 for Q&A-class starts at 7:00 

1. Gratitude Practice: Text your buddies 3 things you are grateful for each day. 
2. Sitting for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day: Do your best!  For at least the first 10 minutes, keep your meditation simple — focus on the body & then your anchor-the touch points or sounds or breath. To the best of your ability, when some other experience gets in the way of being with the anchor, simply let it go & come back to the touch points or sounds or breath After 5-10-minutes, continue with the anchor until something else becomes more compelling. If physical sensations, emotions, moods, hindrances or thinking predominate, let go of the anchor Open to what is happening in the present moment. Recognize, Allow, Observe. When it is no longer compelling or if nothing else is compelling, open to & return to the experience in the body- the anchor.  (see thought info below) 
3. Practice standing & walking meditation as you move through the world
4. Engage in a daily activity with Mindfulness-a simple, routine activity commit to integrating mindfulness into that activity every day. Such as: brushing one’s teeth, taking a shower, riding your bicycle, or eating. This practice in addition to your daily formal sitting-standing-walking-gratitude practices is designed to bring mindfulness into your daily life. 
5. Continue to dedicate one snack or meal a day to eating slowly & mindfully. Pay attention to the tastes, textures, and temperature of your food & to the experience of your body eating. Whenever your mind wanders, or you get caught up in reactions, pause & come back to simply eating. 
6. Pause Meditation:  
   • Simply Pause 
   • Feel your feet on the floor 
   • Shift into relaxation-Soften muscles where you feel tension- ex: shoulders, jaw, around the eyes, belly 
   • Notice how the body feels, Pay attention as if listening to body-  
   • Ask, What is happening right now? “ Listen for the answer and let it go.  
   • Feel your feet on the floor.-Widen attention over the entire body — Inhabit the body-  
7. Thoughts: 
   •  Remember that the point of meditation is not to stop thinking! With mindfulness, we are not stopping thoughts or pushing away the thoughts that do arise as much as not dwelling in them or being preoccupied with them. 
   • Do your best to pay attention to thoughts without getting lost in their content. Instead, simply notice that thinking is happening. Often we get lost in thoughts about the past or future. Notice other aspects of the process of thinking, do you think in words or images? In color or black & white? Is your inner voice soft, gentle or harsh, critical, or accepting, easy?  
   • Bring an affectionate curiosity, interest and investigation into thinking-thoughts. Notice if thoughts are connected with body sensations (pressure, tension in the body?), feelings-pleasant, unpleasant, neutral or emotions. Investigate-do you control thoughts? Or do they appear & disappear whether we like it or not?  
   • Once during the week, for 10 minutes, find some way to remind yourself every few minutes to notice what you are thinking. Are the thoughts mainly self-referential or about others? Do they tend to be critical or judgmental? What is the frequency of thoughts of “I should”? Are the thoughts mostly directed to the future or the past? Do you tend more toward optimistic or pessimistic thoughts? Contented or dissatisfied thoughts? This is not an exercise in judging what you notice, but in simply noticing. This is an exercise in stepping outside of the thought-stream into an awareness that is bigger than the thinking mind. 
8. ***Enjoy moments of your life!  Have Fun, Laugh. Put the burden down, Lighten up. 

Way of Awareness: Week 3 (3/27/25) Home Practices
(Will arrive at 6:45 for Q & A)

1. Gratitude Practice: Text or e-mail your buddies 3 things you are grateful for each day
2. Practice sitting meditation for a minimum of 10-15 minutes per day.
   When you are sitting, rest your attention on the felt sensations of the body- the touch points or sounds or the breath. When the mind wanders & you notice it. Delight that you are present. Gently, drop the story & open to the touch points, sounds or breath. You can always begin again. When physical sensations or emotions, arise in the background. Let them be in the background. When an emotion, mood, mind state, hindrance becomes compelling enough to make it difficult to be mindful of the touch points, sounds, breath or you are experiencing a struggle- then bring the emotion, mood, mind state, hindrance into the focus of your mindful awareness. Observe it’s changing nature. When it no longer calls your attention, return to your anchor. (You can also practice RAIN- below-)
   • R=Recognizing what emotion is arising.
   • A=Accepting, Allowing, opening to, making room for the emotion just as it is. Not adding, not subtracting.
   • I=Investigating. Dropping any fixed ideas you have about the emotion. Seeing it in a fresh way. Seeing what makes up the emotion- where is it in the body? What are the sensations, Is it pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, got any attitudes? –Not analyzing, not fixing, more a sensory understanding. Let the body be the container for the emotion.
   • N=Non identification. Not claiming the emotion to be who you are or how things are. Instead, nurturing & resting in awareness.
3. Practice standing & walking meditation at least once in your day.
4. Gently notice–when you can, if experiences are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. (Be mindful of the habit to hold on to the pleasant, push away the unpleasant & space out the neutral) ALSO, Do your best to get to know desire, aversion, sloth & torpor, restlessness & doubt. They are common sources for distraction. Are any of these more common for you than the others? What is your relationship to these hindrances when they appear? By noticing their presence, does that change how you get pulled into them? Mindfully observe and get to know any hindrance. Experiment with RAIN or if strong cultivate the opposite (desire-impermanence, aversion-kindness, sloth & torpor-raise energy-stand, open eyes, pull on ear lobes, restlessness-increase calm, steadiness count 1-3, deep breath, doubt- doubt the doubt) or 3 E’s (eyebrow, earlobe, elbow) steady in the neutral & then return open to connect to hindrance)
5. Dedicate one snack (or meal a day) to eating slowly & mindfully. Pay attention to the tastes, textures, temperature of your food & to the experience of your body eating. You might want to put down the spoon or fork between bites. Whenever your mind wanders, or you get caught up in reactions, pause & come back to simply eating.
6. Engaging in a daily activity with Mindfulness a simple, routine activity commit to integrating mindfulness into that activity every day. Such as: brushing one’s teeth or taking a shower, or riding your bicycle. This practice in addition to your daily formal sitting-standing-walking-gratitude and eating practices are designed to bring mindfulness into your daily life.

HAVE FUN! 

Way of Awareness: Week 2 (3/20/25) Home Practices

 I will arrive at 6:45 pm on the day of our practice group- in case you have any questions.

1. Gratitude Practice. Text or e-mail your buddies from class 3 things you are grateful for each day.
2. Sitting practice: Try sitting for a minimum of 5-10 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. When you are sitting, rest your attention on the felt sensations of your anchor. When you notice the mind has wandered gently bring the attention back to the experience of your anchor- EITHER touch points, sounds, breath.
   If a strong physical sensation makes it difficult for you to stay with the touch points, sounds, breath, bring your awareness to this new predominant experience and sense or feel the physical experience. Simply allow it to be there. Drop whatever comments or evaluations you may have about the experience and get to know the experience directly. Is the experience pleasant, or unpleasant? What are the actual sensations of these physical sensations? (heat, cold, tingling, tightness, pulling, hardness etc.). Are there any edges?  Is it changing? Once a sensation is no longer calling your attention or has disappeared, return to or open your anchor Touch points, sounds, breathing. The goal is not to sit without pain. Some sittings you may have joy, calm, others discomfort, pain-In meditation & life get about equal measure- We are not trying to minimize, get rid of, ignore, run away from pain- because if you do you may spend ½ of your life running away! Better to learn how to RELATE to pleasure and/or pain with compassion, tenderness, understanding.
3. Walking meditation: Practice walking meditation at least once during the day as you move through the world. Simply, find a pace that gives you a sense of ease as you walk. Let your attention settle on the base of your feet. Feel the contact with the ground.
4. In the midst of your regular daily activities: Dedicate two 5-minute periods during the week to being mindful of your body. Notice your shoulders, stomach, face or hands. If you find tension in any of these places open, soften and bring in some ease if possible.
5. This practice is a practice of remembering, so when your mind wanders and you notice it wandering or you wake up from the story/trance you are in. Delight that you are awake, ground in the body and gently, simply escort the attention back to whatever you are doing. Every time you bring your attention back to the present moment, you are developing mindfulness.
6. Please practice–beginners mind – to find your way to a quieter mind is to start a new, a fresh, to begin again to open your heart & to be here, in this present moment, over & over. To let go of the stories, agendas, opinions, views, bias, projections, conclusions-to begin again!
7. ***Engage in a daily activity with Mindfulness-a simple, routine activity commit to integrating mindfulness into that activity every day. Such as: brushing one’s teeth, taking a shower, riding your bicycle. This practice in addition to your daily formal sitting-standing-walking-gratitude practices is designed to bring mindfulness into your daily life.***

HAVE FUN!

Way of Awareness: Week 1 (3/13/25) Home Practices

I will arrive at 6:50 pm on the day of our practice group- in case you have a question and of course, there will also be Q & A during the class as well.

1. Gratitude Practice. Text or e-mail your buddies from class 3 things you are grateful for each day. It can be anything (if you haven’t sent me your group names, please do).
2. Sitting practice: Try sitting for a minimum of 5-10 minutes per day (more if you are able). It is helpful to find a quiet space or room, a consistent time, and a chair or cushion that best supports your sitting practice. It is helpful to use a timer (if using your phone, place it a distance away from where you are sitting).
   Please practice your meditation in silence (if you use an app-try using it only a couple times a week).
3. Experiment with different postures and meditation supports – a cushion, a chair, or a bench. Find what works best for your body to help develop an alert and easeful posture. One that supports your attention to the present moment experience of the body/breath or body/touch points or body/sounds.
4. Bring an attitude of kindness, curiosity and interest into your sitting practice.
   As you meditate, begin by settling into the body. Aware of sitting (and the sensations such as the body making contact with the sofa, bed, mat, the floor, or your sitting bones on the cushion or chair. Then gently bring the attention to rest on the breathing either at the nostrils, the chest area or the abdomen (pick just one place- the easiest for you to feel the sensations of the breath). Using the breath as an anchor. Feel the sensations of breathing. You can also use touch points- hands, feet, sitting bones, lips as your anchor. Simply receive the sensations. Or you can use sounds as your anchor. Sounds near or far, all around you, spaces between sounds, tone, pitch, length, loudness. Simply listen- Please choose just one anchor, breath, touch points, or sounds. Stick with the one that is the easiest for you as your anchor.
5. This practice is a practice of remembering, so when your mind wanders and you notice it wandering or you wake up from the story/trance you are in.
   Delight that you are awake, ground in the body and gently, simply escort the attention back to the breath, the touch points or the sounds as your anchor. The anchor is a place you return to when the story pops. Please let go of any judgments about returning to opening to the anchor. Every time you bring your attention back to the present moment; you are developing mindfulness.
6. Ask yourself everyday-What keeps you from paying attention in your life? From living more fully? What keeps you from living here in the present?
7. HAVE FUN!

Clear Mind, Steady Heart: Week 6 (4/13/25) Home Practices

Continue to lean into uncertainty. Notice how it is everywhere. Everything from if you are going to get to the restaurant on time for your reservation, to how that talk you are going to have with a friend about something difficult, to your own or a loved one’s uncertain health. Use mindfulness to keep looking at/experiencing life through this lens.

Notice if/when you fall into either of the two extremes of hope that all will be well, and complete despair and certainty that we are doomed as a civilization. When you realize you are in either place, remember, you don’t know. See if you can connect with that and rest there.

In formal practice, continue to let go into the space between breaths. Particularly between the end of the out breath and the beginning of the in breath. Let go utterly and completely, and die into that dark still space.

Work with Adam’s instructions for finding a subjective, transpersonal ecosattva identity. Particularly with:

• Letting go of guilt and being kind and gentle to ourselves
• Taking care of yourself physically, and in a trauma informed way
• Having a relationship with play, creativity and spontaneity. Be willing to make mistakes.

Clear Mind, Steady Heart: Week 5 (4/6/25) Home Practices

Notice how we live with uncertainty. From not knowing if the next in breath will arrive, to not knowing what one’s health will be tomorrow, to not knowing how one’s child’s life will unfold. We are constantly living in Bardo.

Practice staying. Staying with the eco anxiety. Using the felt sense of the body as a steadying force. Using whole body sitting and breathing to help stay in touch with the feeling without getting overwhelmed.

Find the place of refuge that is outside of the concept of time in the present moment. Tending to the gap between the end of the out breath and the beginning of the in breath can be helpful.

Come to terms with your own death. Reflect on the inevitability of your death.  Do this as a way to support staying with the truth of the climate crisis.

Clear Mind, Steady Heart: Week 4 (3/30/25) Home Practices

Michael Yellow Bird talks about his experience being in the grove of trees by the river with his horse and dogs. Intentionally recall a time or times when you’ve had a similar experience. Recall this each day and be aware of your body as you do it.

Continue with Body based formal practice inclining toward Metta in an embodied way.

In formal practice, and during the day, notice if your orientation is toward just yourself, or with something larger. (Decolonizing the mind)

Continue to visit your place. After a few minutes of being there, see if you can let go of a sense of you visiting this place, and simply be part of the place.

Clear Mind, Steady Heart: Week 3 (3/23/25) Home Practices

Continue to visit your place. Continue to be relational with living beings that inhabit that place. Notice how your body feels when you are there.

Find a note that best describes your ecological distress. Use it whenever you are mindful of feeling this stress.

Notice and/or actively experiment with what helps to calm your ecological stress/nervous system. Make a list so you can refer to it when needed.

Continue with the body focused meditation so as to turn it into a resource for ecological stress. Without striving, actively use the felt sense of the small and big body to support a deepening calm. If you are noticing the body breathing, pay careful attention not to breathe any faster or deeper than is needed.

Session Three

The necessity of naming our ecological stress, anxiety, fear, anger, numbness, etc.

Part of being able to be the agent of change in this time that we want to be has to do with us facing mortality. Our own and all other species. It’s just what is so.

Touching the end of things in order to be fully alive in the present moment.

The Climate Crisis is the first trauma that effects everyone. She compared the skills needed in order to live in a world defined by climate crisis with the skills one would need to live as a black person in a racist world or a woman in a patriarchal world.

Trauma response of avoiding the reality of what is happening. What are the practices that can calm the anxiety, so that we can open to what is happening. STEADY

Community as that which supports “steady”. Also inspire wholesome responses. Also body.

We’re not alone and don’t have to figure it out alone. 

We’re stuck in unhealthy structures, and that’s not our fault. 

Clear Mind, Steady Heart: Week 2 (3/16/25) Home Practices

Continue to visit your place. Start to be intentionally relational with any living beings in that place.

Pay attention to any habitual ways you collapse around a sense of self. Notice how when this happens, your connection to the larger whole is disrupted.

For formal practice, continue to become intimate with the experience of body resting on the earth. Notice any sense of the body being separate from the earth starting to dissolve.

Either formally or informally, be mindful that you are walking on this earth. Be present for the somatic experience of it. You can also offer kindness to the earth through your feet.

Clear Mind, Steady Heart: Week 1 (3/9/25) Home Practices

Each of our meetings will be in line with the Ecosattva sessions. We will cover material from session two in our second class. From session three in our third class, etc.

Formal

Continue with the body touching the earth meditation. Particularly noticing the earth element of the body and the earth element below.

Informal

Visit a place in nature consistently. Every day if you can. Spend a couple of minutes there noticing what is arising at the sense doors. Be as intimate with that place as you can.

When waking, know you are walking on the earth. Feel it. Additionally, see what it would be like to offer kindness to the earth through the soles of your feet as you mindfully walk on the earth.

Think of something connected to the Ecosattva course that you would like to cultivate. Make an intention and visit that intention each morning the moment you are aware that you are awake.

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

Home Practices Week 7 (4/8/2025)

The home practice is to continue working with the previous two week’s practices, (a double practice – week 5 and week 6) which are…

Continuing to reflect on the idea that people are as they are due to causes and conditions and are out of our control.

And…

When you find yourself blaming someone, turn your attention within instead of continuing to focus on the person you are blaming.

More detailed descriptions of those practices can be found in the tabs for weeks 5 & 6.

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

Home Practices Week 6 (4/1/2025)

Please continue with the home practice from week # 5 and add: Turn the attention within when you realize you are lost in blame.

Practice turning it around. When you find yourself blaming someone, turn your attention within instead of continuing to focus on the person you are blaming. Instead, focus on what is going on within you. What are the sensations in the body? In this way, practice caring for your heart instead of feeding the blame.

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

Home Practices Week 5 (3/25/2025)

TS Eliot: “Ours is in the trying, the rest is not our business”

Please take a moment to reflect on the idea that people are as they are due to causes and conditions. They are beyond our control. Rather than trying to analyze or psychologize as to why someone is the way they are, see if you can accept them “as they are” and leave room for them to change. After acknowledging, explore your reactions and responses. Bring your attention to your reactions and responses and respond to your heart rather than over focusing on the other.

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

Home Practices Week 4 (3/11/2025)

Please contemplate the possibility that thoughts and emotions arise due to causes and conditions, and that the arising is out of one’s control.

Instead of trying to figure out why things arise, please simply acknowledge and accept that what you are observing is the way things are in this moment, right here and right now.

After acknowledging, please bring your attention to your response. How are you holding this thought, this emotion? Can “this” be responded to with greater wisdom and compassion? Is it possible to respond with wisdom instead of habit?

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

Home Practices Week 3 (3/4/2025)

Please contemplate the possibility that thoughts and emotions arise due to causes and conditions, and that the arising is out of one’s control.

Instead of trying to figure out why things arise, please simply acknowledge and accept that what you are observing is the way things are in this moment, right here and right now.

After acknowledging, please bring your attention to your response. How are you holding this thought, this emotion? Can “this” be responded to with greater wisdom and compassion? Is it possible to respond with wisdom instead of habit?

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

Home Practices Week 2 (2/25/2025)

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of the home practices from the Spring 2024 EP group

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of the home practices from the Fall 2024 EP group

The home practice this week is to have a piece of paper ready (ok on computer too!) to begin making  a list of what you have a sense of agency over and what you do not.

Other words than “sense of agency” are responsibility, the effort to control the uncontrollable, the effort to manage or fix the unfixable.

We are looking at where we do have agency and where we do not.

Please come to class next week with your list and be prepared to talk in the small group about what you have learned and how you worked with this home practice.

Experienced Practitioners: Cultivating Equanimity, Balancing the Heart

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of the home practices from the Spring 2024 EP group

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of the home practices from the Fall 2024 EP group

Home Practices Week 1 (2/18/2025)

The home practice this week is to have a piece of paper ready (ok on computer too!) to begin making  a list of what you have a sense of agency over and what you do not.

Other words than “sense of agency” are responsibility, the effort to control the uncontrollable, the effort to manage or fix the unfixable.

We are looking at where we do have agency and where we do not.

Please come to class next week with your list and be prepared to talk in the small group about what you have learned and how you worked with this home practice.

Ten Perfections of the Heart – A Year of Practice – Month 4 (4/11/25) Home Practices

Parami: Wisdom

Next class, Friday 5/9/25

Click here for a PDF of this week’s home practice.

1. Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence.
2. Gratitude & Wisdom Buddies: Text or e-mail your buddies 3 things you are grateful for each day: Also meet in person, zoom, Facetime, text, e-mail with your buddies once a week or once this month Share what you learned re: wisdom
3. Ajahn Sucitto’s Pāramī: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods, will be our shared text. Please read pages 73-91. The chapter is” Innate Clarity”  
4. **Recollect Parami Practice- **
   • Initially one brings the topic to mind-this is helpful and useful-it means that the parami gets built-in as a frame of reference. Do your best to build in Wisdom this month.
   • The gathering stage is when you apply the parami in the face of its opposition. (Something in you doesn’t want to bother, other people don’t see the point, not convenient to do so) Do your best to apply Wisdom in the face of opposition.
   • Continue the parami of Generosity: giving & receiving.
   • Continue the parami of Non-harming
   • Continue the parami of Renunciation-

***New Home Practices  STARTS HERE***

5. Wisdom: Buddhism is a wisdom tradition. Wisdom is about how we free our minds from suffering. Wisdom refers to the ability to discern carefully & follow the clearest course of action based on knowledge, experience, and understanding.

Recollect: Wisdom arises from practice; Without practice it is lost.
Knowing these two ways of gain & loss
Conduct yourself so that wisdom grows.    –Dhammapada 282

This tradition refers to 3 kinds of Wisdom

1) Learning: studying the teachings
2) Reflection: contemplate & ponder themes & questions
3) Meditation: Understanding arises from seeing deeply into the nature of our experiences. The 3 universal characteristics: all are impermanent, (impermanent) none are satisfactory refuges of lasting happiness, (imperfect) no experience can qualify as a stable, solid self. (impersonal) Meeting & knowing these 3 characteristics, wisdom grows. Understanding that suffering comes from resisting the constant flow of experience. (clinging, resisting, claiming, identifying)

6. Wisdom Reflections & Practices &Tips:
   Reflections: Please discuss these reflections with your Dharma buddies

• • Asking questions: an important foundation of wisdom. Please spend some time coming up with questions about your formal or daily life practices. This week, write down as many of these questions as possible. Then spend a couple days during the following week narrowing the list to 5 that seem most important to you. Finally the next week spend a day or two considering what might be the single most important question. Discuss it with your buddies-
  • Think about who are the wisest people you know. What makes them wise? What qualities of wisdom do you admire in them? How do they behave that manifests wisdom? Under what circumstances do you have access to wisdom? Under what circumstances do you have some of the same qualities as the wise people you know?
  • What is wisdom for you? How is it different from knowledge? How do you think a person acquires wisdom? What facilitates access to wisdom?

Wisdom Practices: **scroll down for ideas from class too**

1. 1. Wisdom is often called discriminating wisdom when it helps us see more clearly the details of our experiences & the choices that we have. In your meditation, look more carefully at your experience, see if you can make more distinctions with what is happening. Instead of following your breath look carefully to notice the details of the breathing. Or notice the mood or mind state you are in & distinguish the physical, mental, emotional aspects of the mood. If something is uncomfortable, take an interest in looking at the distinct aspects of what is happening. As you make clear distinctions, can you translate it into a wiser understanding of what is happening?
   2. The intentions we have for our practice are supported by wisdom when our discernment shows us how to best follow through on those intentions. During some sessions of meditation & daily life situations set your intention to become calmer & more easeful. With that as an intention, try to avoid doing the things that make you less calm. Instead, do the things that help you become increasingly calmer. Later, reflect on how having this intention helped you to be more discerning and wiser.
   3. Read a passage from a Dharma book a couple of times in the day. After reading it, reflect on what you have read. Each time, consider how the teachings in the passage can be helpful to you. If it feels skillful, memorize that passage or a simple Dharma phrase. Say it to yourself several times a day for the next month. An example: “Anything can happen at any time”

**Tips ** (JG)

• Pause, ask yourself: “What do I understand here?” Let wisdom come to you.
• Explore your life-thoughts, emotions, actions, speech- Ask: “What do I need to see clearly in this situation?” Or “What is creating suffering in this situation?” What is behind it? Underneath it? What is driving it?
  Investigating Impermanence: Look at examples in your life?
• How is Impermanence present in this moment of clinging-craving?
• When & where are your views conditioned by a sense of permanence?
• When there is understanding- Ask: What is creating happiness? What is behind- underneath, driving it?
  Investigating the unsatisfying unreliability of all phenomena: –arises & passes
• When stuck-Ask-what is the attitude in the mind that causes suffering? Examples-Planning mind-planning is an extension of self in the future-A Gentle reminder-not now & not never, wisdom sees that it’s not skillful – planning is not bad- just not helpful right now.
• Pausing-listen-not just first answer- go deeper-Ask: “What else do I have going on in my mind now that might not be true?”
  Investigating selflessness-
• Ask “What am I identified with here?”
• Look at moments when we label what is happening as “me”, “mine”, “I VS others”
• Notice your speech. Catch “self”-ing during the day”., “I am tired, I am angry, I am hurt, I am lonely, I am sad, I am angry, I am right” Be aware, I am ….. is wrong view –taking the above emotions to be self- rather than being with what it is.

HAVE FUN!

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

Ten Perfections of the Heart – A Year of Practice – Month 3 (3/14/25) Home Practices

Parami: Gratitude & Generosity

Next class: Friday, 4/11/25 6:00 – 8:30pm ET

Click here for a PDF of this week’s home practice.

1. Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. If you use an app- try silence several times a week.
2. Gratitude & Renunciation Buddies: Text or e-mail your buddies 3 things you are grateful for each day.: Also meet either in person, on zoom, or on Facetime, with your buddies once this month. Share what you learned about
3. Ajahn Sucitto’s Pāramī: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods, will be our shared text. Please read pages 55-70. Link here.
4. Renunciation – Nekkhamma (pali word for renunciation)
   • Is not getting rid of the things of the world, but accepting that they pass away. The only choice is to let go. The truth of impermanence teaches us that no matter how desperately we hold on to anything, it is already in the process of leaving us. Our choice is whether or not we suffer in the unavoidable arrivals, departures, beginnings & endings in our lives.
   • Great Tips: Reframing deprivation as non- addiction. Saying no thanks- not now, indicates we have a choice– or like Tulku Urgen said, we can practice Renunciation for short moments, that is within our power-so we cultivate the habit of Renunciation for short moments, many times- that becomes a more wholesome & doable habit.
5. Recollect Parami Practice-
   • Initially one brings the topic to mind-this is helpful and useful-it means that the parami gets built-in as a frame of reference.
     Do your best to build in renunciation this month.
   • The gathering stage is when you apply the parami in the face of its opposition. (Something in you doesn’t want to bother, other people don’t see the point, not convenient to do so)
     Do your best to apply Renunciation in the face of opposition.
   • Continue the parami of generosity giving & receiving.
   • Continue the parami of non-harming
     
6. Renunciation Reflections & Practices: lots of ways listed, practice what you can
   • Reflections:
     1. What are your concerns and views about the value of renunciation? What reservations & fears do you have about the practice of renunciation? What is attractive to you about this practice? In what ways do you understand renunciation differently than the practice of letting go?
     2. In what areas of your life could you benefit from practicing renunciation? What motivations or impulses would renunciation help to overcome in those areas? What motivations & understandings would make renunciation easier? Write down a list of all ways you might benefit from renouncing particular things. (bring to class in April)
     3. Under what circumstances is it difficult for you to let go of things you want to let go of? In what circumstances is it easiest? What inner states of being support skillful letting go? What inner states make it difficult?
     4. What would be the single most useful thing for you to let go of?

• • Renunciation Practices: **scroll down for ideas from class too**
    1. Look for an instance when you are strongly clinging to something. Spend some time observing & reflecting on the clinging. Don’t try to let go. Rather take the time to get to know as much as you can about the clinging.
    2. Choose something you do regularly to renounce for a day. Throughout that day, investigate & consider how this renunciation might benefit you. Does the act of renouncing help highlight things about yourself that you had not seen before?
    3. Find situations where you can give something up out of compassion or concern for others. What is it like for you to give something up when it is motivated by compassion?

 ** And below are some extra thoughts shared in class from Joseph Goldstein that you can use if helpful for you. Look at habit of trying to maintain pleasant moments & avoid unpleasant one-The Buddha said “as long as there is attachment to the pleasant & aversion to the unpleasant liberation is impossible”- see it not as giving up addiction to pleasure– more on the playing field of freedom…Ahh here is where freedom lies–choosing happiness, choosing freedom.

1. What are our compelling familiar habits?
2. Explore the habits- Which are skillful? Which are not serving us? Which habits might be up for some letting go
3. Investigate further: What is the mind state from which each habit arises?
4. Once we have seen the power our habits have over us, we can gently begin letting go of the unskillful ones. When you have an impulse, try not following it. Ask yourself if there could be a way of doing it differently or of not doing it. Practice letting go of a moment’s desire, then watch closely for what arises, what happens next.
5. How do you feel in the moment when the habit of craving slips away? This can be a very rich, very revealing opportunity to see the power of the wanting mind & feel the relief of its release.

HAVE FUN!

Ten Perfections of the Heart – A Year of Practice – Month 2 (2/17/25) Home Practices: Virtue- Non Harming
Next class: Friday, 3/14/25 6:00 – 8:30pm ET

Click here for a PDF version of the home practices

1. Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day (more if able). Please practice your meditation in silence. If you use an app- try silence several times a week.
2. Ajahn Sucitto’s book, Pāramī : Ways to Cross Life’s Floods, will be our shared text. Please read, “Crossing the Floods” starting on page 40-45 & 50-53. Link here.
3. Review your year long Intention, Vow, Dedication
4. The Paramis- Read this list every day: Generosity, Virtue or morality, Renunciation or letting go, Discernment or wisdom, Energy, Patience, Truthfulness, Resolve, Loving-Kindness, Equanimity and Gratitude.
   • Ask yourself each day, “What is going to take me you out of stress, discontent right now?” Listen for the answer
   • Initially one brings the topic to mind-this is helpful and useful-it means that the parami gets built-in as a frame of reference. Do your best to build in Virtue- non-harming
   • The gathering stage is when you apply the parami in the face of its opposition. (Something in you doesn’t want to bother, other people don’t see the point, not convenient to do so) Do your best to apply Virtue- non-harming in the face of opposition
5. Gratitude Parami Practice: Text or email your buddies 3 things you are grateful for each day.
6. Integrity the Second Parami: Precepts And Reflections & Practices
   • Sila Is the Pali word for integrity, ethical conduct, non-harming. Non-harming is a distinguishing characteristic of the Dharma. We are invited to do non-harm through wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood. We resolve to act in wholesome, skillful ways, consciously choosing to refrain from behaviors that cause fear, confusion, suffering. Instead acting in ways that promote goodness in general. On wise livelihood, Buddha said: “These five trades should not be taken up: trading in weapons, living beings, meat, intoxicants, poisons.”  It also includes where we occupy our minds. The guidelines, precepts include wise action & wise speech. Take the precepts weekly or daily. The precepts are:
   •  Knowing the interwoven nature of our lives:
     • I undertake the commitment to refrain from harming living beings and to protect the well-being of all AND to practice compassionate actions.
     • I undertake the commitment to refrain from taking that which is not freely given AND to practice generosity. I undertake the commitment to refrain from sexual misconduct AND to respect all beings.
     • I undertake the commitment to refrain from false and harmful speech AND to be truthful, honest, kind and skillful in my speech.
     • I undertake the commitment to refrain from taking substances that lead to heedlessness AND to treasure the clarity of my own body and mind.

In early Buddhist teachings these commitments are referred to as the 5 gifts we offer to ourselves. They are the gifts each of us can offer to the world. *** (Larry Yang info at end)

Reflections for you and to discuss in Buddy Groups before next class:

• Our attitudes towards ethics and virtue are often conditioned by how ethics was viewed and practiced in the family, the culture we grew up in. Spend some time considering how you may have been influenced by this conditioning. What are the formative influences that shaped your relationship to ethics? What ethical training and teachings did you receive growing up?
• When in your life do feel you were most ethical and when do you think you were least ethical? What personal and social conditions existed that encouraged you to be ethical or unethical? What important lessons did you learn from times you were most ethical or most unethical?
• Which ethical virtues are strongest in you? Which are weakest for you? Create a list-To help, here is a list of some ethical virtues: compassion, caring, generosity, truthfulness, honesty, integrity, service, gratitude, unselfishness, justice, and morality.
• Spend time considering the ways you & others benefit when you are ethical.

Practices for you and to discuss in Buddy Groups before next class:

• The first precept, to refrain from harming living beings and to practice compassionate actions: Spend 5 days with a heightened commitment not to be involved in harming other living beings, including insects and to practice compassionate actions. After 5 days, reflect on how hard or easy it was to adhere to this commitment. How were you affected by living with greater than usual concern for the first precept? How important is the first precept for you? If you ever feel justified in not following the first precept, what justification do you use? What were compassionate actions did you engage in?
• The second precept, to refrain from taking what’s not given and to practice generosity: Spend 5 days with a heightened commitment to not taking what is not given and to practice generosity. Be careful not to take anything which has not been offered to you in explicit or in clear, implicit terms. What do you learn about yourself when you follow this precept? How can you follow this precept so it helps you be more peaceful? How did you practice generosity?
• The third precept, to refrain from causing harm with your sexuality and to respect all beings.: Dedicate yourself to 5 days, to not cause any, even minor harm with your sexuality. Follow this precept as it relates to increasing your respect of others and to not taking what is not given. If you are not sexually active, how can you view your relationship to your sexual or non- sexual nature so as not to harm yourself?
• The fourth precept, to refrain from false speech and harmful speech and to be truthful, honest, kind and skillful in my speech. Spend 5 days committed to being as impeccable as possible with speaking the truth and using honest, kind and skillful speech. Don’t talk authoritatively about things you are not sure are true. Avoid exaggerating or pretending things are other than how they are. Don’t speak the truth lightly if it is going to hurt someone. What were your biggest challenges in being truthful? How did you benefit from being truthful? Honest? Kind? Skillful in you speech?
• The fifth precept, to refrain from taking intoxicants that cloud the mind and cause heedlessness and to treasure the clarity of your own body and mind: If you drink alcohol or take recreational drugs, commit yourself to not consuming either for a period of 5 days and to find ways to treasure the clarity of your own body and mind:. What challenges does this avoidance have for you? What does this period of time of not drinking or taking drugs teach you about what motivates your use of drugs or alcohol? What ways did you treasure your mind and body? How does it benefit you and others when you don’t consume drugs or alcohol?
  If you don’t normally drink or consume alcohol, follow this precept by avoiding some activity, such as watching television or binging or surfing the internet, which you might do to avoid being present with your life.

Below are some extra thoughts from Joseph Goldstein that you can use if helpful for you.

**Some additional instructions:

• Consider how you might re-define each precept
• What is your attitude when you are abiding or refraining?
• What attitude arises when you slip up?
• After a skillful or unskillful act, what thoughts or emotions linger?
• What are positive aspects of non-harming with each precept?
• Ask yourself what are you trying to escape from when indulging?
• When resistance arises, what is the attitude in the mind?

**As you go from the habit of breaking the precepts to the habit of honoring them consider:

• What ramifications arise from this new habit?
• What benefits are you seeing as you refrain from acts of harm to yourself & others?
• What gratification and joy, or sorrow and remorse, do you notice as you do or don’t follow your new intentions?

**Reflecting at the end of the day

• Have I done anything that caused harm?
• Have I done anything that was helpful?
• Was there a time where I almost harmed but stopped myself?

***Larry Yang’s Integrity: When there is less or zero external accountability in our larger culture, there emerges an indispensable spiritual imperative to redouble our internal efforts and concentration to have a moral barometer: this is the Integrity of Mindfulness—to be of benefit to our collective humanness, not simply to our personal being.
Remember “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Let’s broaden the scope of integrity: 

• Integrity is doing the wise and compassionate action when no one agrees with us.
• Integrity is walking our highest path, even if it is painful, arduous & long.
• Integrity is acting on behalf of others when we do not have to because we have some benefit, privilege, power, or entitlement that protects us.
• Integrity is standing actively (& not “bystanding”) in solidarity with those whose voices & abilities have less volume or impact than yours.
• Integrity is being kind when everyone & everything around you is not kind.
• Integrity is loving when you do not feel loved yourself.
• Integrity is having ethics in unethical & amoral times—having a moral compass when others around you do not have a clue to what that means and/or disparage the very intentions of ethical behavior.
• Integrity is placing a higher value on the greater good of all, rather than the gain of an individual or selected individual groups.
• Integrity is holding to these principles, even when there are an infinite number of distractions, seductions, & judgments that seek to weaken & obliterate those principles.

Ten Perfections of the Heart – A Year of Practice – Month 1 (1/11/2025) Home Practices: Gratitude & Generosity
Next class: Friday, 2/14/25 – 6:00 – 8:30 PM  ET

Click here for a PDF version of the home practices

1. Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 15 -30 minutes per day (more if able). Please practice your meditation in silence. If you use an app, try silence several times a week.
2. Ajahn Sucitto’s book: Pāramī: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods, will be our shared text. Please read, “Crossing the Floods” starting on page 11-29 & Generosity 31-40. Link here.
3. Setting A Year Long Intention, Vow, Dedication: Finish writing your year long intention, vow, dedication. (What is my motivation in the Ten Perfections of Heart-A Year of practice? What is my aspiration in life? What is my intention/vow right now?) Then put it someplace where you keep special things. Then, as you go through the year, let it be your compass, your underlying direction, in spite of changing outer circumstances. Let it carry you.
4. The Paramis-
   • Read this list every day: Generosity, Virtue or morality, Renunciation or letting go, Discernment or wisdom, Energy, Patience, Truthfulness, Resolve, Loving-Kindness, Equanimity and Gratitude
   • Ask yourself each day, “What is going to take me you out of stress, discontent right now?” Listen for the answer.
   • Initially one brings the topic to mind – this is helpful and useful – it means that the parami gets built-in as a frame of reference. Do your best to build in Gratitude & Generosity.
   • The gathering stage is when you apply the parami in the face of its opposition. (Something in you doesn’t want to bother, other people don’t see the point, not convenient to do so) Do your best to apply Gratitude & Generosity in the face of opposition.
5. Gratitude Parami Practices
   • Gratitude is appreciation, thankfulness, gratefulness. Gratitude is the capacity to take delight in life, in this moment in being alive! Gratitude is the ability to let ourselves feel joy and wonder. Our life rests on the lives of so many lives.
   • Until buddy groups are formed, write down in a journal or word document or say them out loud to yourself. 3 gratitude’s each day. When you know your group from CIMC, Text or e-mail your buddies 3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything.
6. Generosity Parami Reflections & Practices
   • Dana Is the Pali word for generosity or giving. Dana refers specifically to taking delight in giving. To recall acts of generosity is not conceited or egotistical-rather we can use it to see all the choices in the world. To see that we care about ourselves and others to make a skillful choice. We give rather than hold on. We give up rather than hoard. We let go rather than cling. To delight in choices is to delight in goodness.
   • Reflections for yourself and to discuss in Buddy Groups before next class:
     • Reflect on your attitudes and beliefs about generosity which were likely conditioned by how generosity was viewed and practices in your family or culture. What are your beliefs about generosity? Do you have beliefs that interfere with being generous and what beliefs interfere with acting on your impulses to be generous? Consider the validity, usefulness of these beliefs.
     • Contemplate the ways that it benefits you to be generous to someone else.
     • Reflect on your attitudes, beliefs & feelings about receiving generosity
   • Practices for yourself and to discuss in Buddy Groups before next class:
     • When you have the thought to be generous, simply, do it. Notice what happens next. What feelings arise? What thoughts arise? Then pay attention as you give. What feelings arise? What thoughts arise? Finally, after you have been generous (or after you have not been generous) What feelings arise? What thoughts arise? Try exploring different ways of being generous. (caring, time, energy, service) Explore what is the motivation underlying the moment of generosity? Look in the day for what undermines the motivation.“ Generosity becomes stronger and more delightful the more we engage in it.”-Joseph Goldstein.
       Below Practices (pick at least 2 during this month cartwheels if try all)
     • For 15 minutes a few times each week, try offering respectful attention to everyone you meet or talk to. Take the other person’s point of view. Let the person: in, the zoom room, your home, a friend, your neighbor, roommate, child, partner- be the most important person around. Give your full attention to them physically. Put your device(s) away. Look at the person. Listen carefully. Open your heart. Be there without pushing an agenda. Simply Listening.
     • During this month find an occasion where you can bring food (e.g. a nice snack) to share with people who would not expect you to bring food. Notice what effect your gift has on these people. Also notice how it affects you to have done this.
     • During this month find an occasion where you can give something anonymously to a person you have some direct contact with. Be mindful of what you are feeling as you are considering this act, while you are doing it, after it is done.
     • During this month look for an opportunity where you want to do something generous that feels like a challenge or a stretch for you to do. Act on your wish and explore what you feel and think before, during, and after doing it.

HAVE FUN!

7. Agreed upon Guidelines for Yearlong Program. Practicing the ways below, together, every month can support us in our everyday lives thru noticing our immediate reactions. Remembering that we have an opportunity to pause, check in, & choose how we respond.
   • Show up. Pay Attention. Speak your truth without blame or judgment. Let go of outcome and be open to outcome.
   • All perspectives are welcome here. Notice your reaction to what is shared and have that be your practice in that moment.
   • Everything we do here is voluntary. It is a courageous & generous act to share. It is a compassionate & generous act to deeply listen.
   • Speak about what’s alive for you in this moment from your heart, your own experience, refrain from intellectual or philosophical sharing or long story telling, notice if may be judging or blaming another’s perspective. Is it possible to talk from a place of kindness and love?
   • Notice what arises as you speak. Are we in touch with what is true and alive or we wanting to impress, to feel important, to be liked?
   • Listen deeply; notice what arises within you as you listen. Where do we go when someone says something we agree with? When we hear something that triggers us?
   • Please be lean of expression, meaning be mindful to stay on point vs. going tangential. We are a large group, and it would be good to hear from as many voices as possible. WAIT “Why Am I Talking?” Waist?
   • If you’ve already spoken, think twice before choosing to speak again as it would be good to hear from those who have not yet
   • Please refrain from offering advice unless it is specifically solicited or unless you ask the person’s permission.
   • Please honor confidentiality. If you need to share with others out-side of this circle, please share from your own direct experience not that of other members in the sangha.-community
   • The next three were added from the workshop:
     • Trust your heart that we all have the capacity to work these guidelines and paramis.
     • Non-Harming yourself or others with the words you are expressing
     • Pause before you speak

Elders’ Home Practice for April 8, 2025

Thoughts on aging, renunciation, letting go and letting be, and living with the truth of impermanence.

By the Persian poet Hafez:

How did the rose ever open up its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise we all remain too frightened.

Opening up our hearts, and needing encouragement against our fears, especially in times of change.

From Olivia Hoblitzelle: Our elder years are the most heroic years, requiring the most courage.

And often a time of renunciation, of relinquishing, letting go, letting be.

Renunciation – letting go of whatever binds us to ignorance and suffering.

Buddhism has so many teachings on letting go, renunciation, refraining from unskillful actions. In the Five Precepts, we are told to refrain from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, ingesting intoxicants.  In the 10 Paramis, Renunciation is the third Parami, after Generosity and Virtue.

Madeline Klyne, on the Parami of Renunciation: “Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of the world but accepting that they pass away.  The only choice is to let go. The truth of impermanence teaches us that no matter how desperately we hold on to anything, it is already in the process of leaving us. Our choice is whether or not we suffer in the unavoidable arrivals, departures, beginnings & endings in our lives.”

Let it be.  Let what is, be what is.  We can’t change what is, but we can change our relationship to it.  We do have agency.  It’s a hard choice, but it’s ours to make.

How do we not cling to what we’ve lost – people, homes, abilities?  How can we let what is, simply be as it is, and still feel alive and vibrant? 

• Slow down and listen: When we struggle against what is, it gets noisy. Practice quieting and stilling ourselves, and listening deeply to within and without, to hear the call of what’s next.
• See how faith fits into your life. Faith in the dharma, the practice, ourselves.  From Lion’s Roar – as the world seems unchecked by the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance, there is an antidote. The antidote is the dharma.   Sharon Salzberg writes that “Faith is essentially about connection – a connection to our own inherent capacity for wisdom and love no matter what our immediate circumstances. Faith in that connection.
• No Separation: We are connected, part of each other, in the Sangha of our life. As Thich Naht Hanh has said, we are interbeing, interdependent, there is no separate self. Practice how that feels, on the cushion and off.

If we can have the courage to stop clinging, stop struggling, even for a moment, we can listen to our stillness, and that of others. We can have faith we are indeed all connected.

Then we might find some of the hidden blessings of aging: Slowing down, simplifying one’s life, discovering joy in small things.  More contentment and less ambition.  Having time for ourselves, for others. Appreciating the present moment, perhaps as we’ve not done before.  We might even feel a new sense of gratitude and connection to the world around us. It’s another choice, a choice of attitude, of view.  It’s a way of acknowledging the truth of impermanence with grace, and possibly even some love.  We are, or will be, the elders, with many years of experience and wisdom.

Elders’ Home Practice for January 14, 2025

A new year, a time for reflection on the past year, of setting aspirations for the new year.  How am I in the world?  Am I kind?  Compassionate?  Generous? To whom?  Where do I separate? 

The story of the Golden Buddha in Thailand, had been covered in plaster and stucco to protect it, but when being moved and dropped, the plaster cracked and the gold was revealed.

We are all Golden Buddhas, often covered in protective plaster.  As we deepen our practice, expand our awareness, we can face our protective coverings, we become aware of our own golden Buddha-nature.

Perhaps we require the plaster and mud to crack open our protective barriers, to break open our heart, before our gold shines through.

Thich Naht Hanh – No Mud, No Lotus.  The lotus flower requires the mud for its flower to bloom on the surface of the water.

Chögyam Trungpa: “To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.” “The spiritual warrior is one who bravely faces their own shadows and embraces the light within.”

Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.

The Japanese art form Kintsugi,  the art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The broken pieces of pottery are put back together, and then the joins are painted and decorated with gold or silver powder.  This highlights the cracks, the imperfections, creating beauty and wholeness out of what had been broken.  We put ourselves back together, not hiding our cracks, but seeing their beauty, their gold.

Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year, by John O’Donohue
For Josie, my mother

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Elder’s Home Practice for Dec 10, 2024

December holidays, can be joyful with family, food, giving and receiving. Can also cause stress, clinging and longing.

Antidotes can be generosity, gratitude, the practice of tonglen

Generosity, dana in Pali, the first Parami, the first of the 10 Perfections of the Heart

Sylvia Boorstein:   The Buddha taught that generosity was the first of the paramis because most people have something they can relin­quish. In the largest sense, generosity is not giving away material things. It is non-clinging. … For myself [she continues], giving up attachment to ideas, attachment to views, has been a much more difficult challenge than giv­ing away material things. When I have been able to give up my attachment to views, it has seemed like an act of gener­osity both to myself and to others.

Generosity as not clinging, the relinquishing of our views and attitudes, not just the giving of material things

Gil Fronsdale, Insight teacher: Perhaps dana is more about how we are than what we do.  Through generosity, we cultivate a generous spirit.

Generous spirit, generous acts, letting go without judgment. No strings.

The practice of generosity, giving and receiving fully, can lead to the practice of gratitude.

Having an attitude of gratitude.

Zen meal gatha, a verse in the Zen tradition said before eating, which begins: “Seventy-two labors brought us this food / We should know how it comes to us.”

Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen teacher: These words [the meal gatha] are a gateway toward gratitude and a reminder that we are all connected.

To see all the paramis as gateways to being more present, more whole, right here and right now.

Tara Brach: Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive

Generosity and gratitude, all the paramis, as aspirations.

Tonglen – breathing in another’s suffering, breathing out ease.  

Pema Chodron: It’s a simple and natural exchange: you see suffering, you take it in with the inbreath, you send out relief with the outbreath.

Sharon Salzberg: We are all bodhisattvas, not in the sense of being saviors running around taking care of everybody’s problems, but through the truth of interconnectedness. There is no separation. We all belong to each other.

Elder’s Home Practice for Nov 12, 2024

We are buddhas, sitting in sangha, attending to dharma.

Rebecca Solnit, “Hope in Darkness.”     

You have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember what love is.

You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who’s upset.

Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.

Olivia Hoblitzelle, “Aging with Wisdom.” The elder years are our most heroic years.

Matty Weingast, “The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns.”

VIRA ~ HERO

Truly strong
among those
who think themselves
strong.

Truly unafraid
among those
who hide their
fear.

A hero
among those
who talk of heroes.

Don’t be fooled by outward signs—
lifting heavy things
or picking fights with weaker opponents
and running headfirst into battle.

A real hero
walks the Path
to its end.
 
Then shows others the way.

Majjhima Nikaya 141:  Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives…

So what can help us remember? Remember who we are, the person we want to be?

• Take a timeout, to meditate, spend time in nature, journal or write, hug a pet, call a friend.
• Remember a vow, mantra, or totem.
• Remember the Thich Naht Hanh smile, the small upward curve of our mouths, our inner smile
• Remember the Three Treasures, take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Our own capacity for awakening; the teachings everywhere in all things; the whole of all beings, the great circle of being.

Thich Naht Hanh, “Being Peace.”

“When we say, ‘I take refuge in the Buddha,’ we should also understand that ‘The Buddha takes refuge in us.’ … The Buddha needs us for awakening, understanding, and love to be real things and not just concepts.… We are all buddhas, because only through us can understanding and love become tangible and effective.”

From “The Essential Rumi.”  (trans. John Moyne and Coleman Barks)

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

HOME PRACTICE for October 22, 2024  Elders Sangha

Instructions for Opening Meditation: Affectionate breathing taken from Christopher Germer/Kristin Neff – Mindful Self Compassion Training – 20 – 30 minutes

• Please find a posture in which your body is comfortable and will feel supported for the duration of the meditation.  Then let your eyes gently close, partially  or fully. Take a few slow, easy breaths, releasing any unnecessary tension in you body.
• If you like, placing a hand over your heart or another soothing place as a reminder that you’re bringing not only awareness, but affectionate awareness, to your breathing and to yourself.  You can leave your hand there or let it rest at any time.
• Now beginning to notice your breathing in your body , feeling your body breathe in and feeling your body breathe out. Breathing in and breathing out
• Perhaps noticing how your body is nourished on the in-breath and relaxes on the out-breath
• Just letting your body breath you. Breathing in and breathing out………..There is nothing you need to do
• Noticing the rhythm of your breath, flowing in and flowing out (Pause) Taking time to feel the rhythm of your breathing
• Perhaps incline your attention toward your breathing as you might toward a beloved child or a dear friend
• Feeling your whole body subtly moving with the breath, like the movement of the sea
• Your mind will naturally wander like a curious child or even a puppy.  When the happens, just gently returning to the rhythm of your breath, feeling it move through your body
• If you notice there’s a sense of watching your breath see if you can let that go and just be with you breath, feeling it
• Allowing your whole body  to be gently rocked and caressed  – internally caressed – by your breathing
• Just breathing. Being breathing. (Long pause)
• And now, gently releasing your attending to your breathing , sitting quietly in your own experience, allowing yourself feel whatever your are feeling and to be just as you are
• When you are ready, slowly and gently opening your eyes

HOME PRACTICE for September 10, 2024  Elders Sangha

Books:

1. The Magnanimous Heart: Compassion and Love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation by Narayan Helen Liebenson
2. Awakening Through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness by John Makransky

Other suggested reading:

1. The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions by Christopher K. Germer
2. Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive by Dr. Kristin Neff
3. Compassion by Christina Feldman

Suggested programs:

1. Cambridgeinsight.org: The Magnanimous Heart: Loss and Grief, Love and Compassion, Joy and Liberation (hybrid: online) with Narayan Helen Liebenson Saturday, September 28 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
2.  sustainablecompassion.org Meditations to access unconditional qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom. Sustainable Compassion Training supports people in caring roles and professions, modern Buddhists, and people of other spiritual traditions who want to access a power of unconditional love, compassion and wisdom for living, service and action.

HOME PRACTICE for May 28, 2024  Elders Sangha

We picked up on the theme of gentleness and kindness in our practice, which was sounded during the last session in the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, who always reminded us that happiness was close at hand by touching the present moment with our mindfulness.

We introduced this poem, or Vajra Song, which Larry Rosenberg would often hand out near the end of his 9-day IMS retreats as a reminder to release our grasping and relax our striving.

“Free and Easy” – A Spontaneous Vajra Song
by Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Happiness cannot be found through
great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.

Don’t strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises
in the body-mind
Has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with,
And become attached to it,
Passing Judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves
without changing or manipulating anything
and notice how everything
vanishes and reappears, magically,
Again and again, time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It’s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching,
or a dog chasing it’s own tail.

Although peace and happiness
do not exist as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don’t believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are today’s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there –
open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of this spaciousness, this
freedom and natural ease.
Don’t search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
And nothing missing.

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

HOME PRACTICE for May 15, 2024

Why do I meditate?  What calls me to sit? Does Meditation help me to manage suffering?

Thich Naht Hanh in Tricycle  (June 28, 2017) talks about the energy of mindfulness helping us to no longer be afraid of being overwhelmed by the energy of suffering.

Mindfulness can be defined as learning to bring our attention to the present moment and seeing what arises, without judgment or bias.  Paying attention to exactly what is, and being able to be with what arises from that seeing.

Meditating is a training ground for mindfulness. We learn it on the cushion, and slowly move it into a way of life, off the cushion.

Pema Chodron, in The Wisdom of No Escape, talks about three qualities we can cultivate, in our mindfulness meditation, and in our living a mindful life. They are precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go.

Precision – to see clearly ourselves and our world, with honesty.

Gentleness – to incline ourselves, our attitude, to gentleness, relaxation.  No critic.

Letting go – to notice our mind is telling a story, is part of the narrative, and let it go.

We soften ourselves, our attention, our breath, with precision and gentleness.  We learn to befriend ourselves. By befriending ourselves, we can befriend the world.

Sebene Salassie: “Our practice is our whole life. It’s not about the fifteen or thirty minutes on the cushion; it’s about seeing how much presence, awareness, kindness, joy, and freedom we’re bringing to each moment.”

Things to ponder:

Why do you meditate?  Do you feel that you can take your mindfulness off the cushion and into your daily life?

Do the terms “precision, gentleness, and letting go” resonate with anything you’re experiencing or have experienced – in your meditation practice or in your life? Or conversely, are any of the terms off-putting or simply don’t work for you?

Poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, called “With Astonishing Tenderness.”

When, in the middle of the night,
you wake with the certainty you’ve
done it all wrong, when you wake
and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,
in that moment, when dreams will not return,
this is the chance for your softest voice—
the one you reserve for those you love most—
to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart,
this is not yet the end of the story.
Sleep will not come, but somehow,
in that wide awake moment there is peace—
the kind of peace that does not need
everything to be right before it arrives.
The peace that comes from not fighting
what is real. The peace that rises
in the dark on its sure dark wings
to meet you exactly as you are.

Practice and Compassion

There are times when things seem to fall apart, times we need to remember our practice, and compassion.  It’s often useful to remember the Buddha’s First Noble Truth – There is suffering.  And that all is impermanent, one of the Buddha’s Three marks of existence.  And the Five Recollections: We age, we can get ill, we will die, we will know loss, my actions are my only true belongings.

We seem to suffer most when we are attached to the way things are, when we are full of aversion to change, to impermanence.

From Tricycle, Cultivating Courage (intro, Feb 8, 2024):

We must become brave in the face of all we fear. The Buddha as an embodiment of Compassionate Courage. We must learn to not turn away.  To stay present. To meet every challenge and difficulty with compassion…. That courage isn’t about battling our demons so much as it is about dropping our armor – opening our hearts to embrace all of our experience.

Pema Chodron’s book – When Things Fall Apart.  She talks how the practice of metta, and of compassion, can create a steadiness and peace, that is independent of condition.  And as we steady and ground ourselves, we offer it to others.

Which requires Attention, Intention, and Effort, to support this steadiness.

From Pema: We need room for it all, the entire gamut of our feelings, of life.    We are vulnerable, we are tender, and we can touch in on that vulnerability, that tenderness. We can hold ourselves with compassion.

What is compassion?  From Sharon Salzberg:  “Compassion is known in Buddhist teaching as the quivering of the heart in response to pain or suffering.”  Which requires bearing witness, to our pain and the pain of others. Even when it feels unbearable.  We can offer kindness rather than withdraw.

Things to ponder:

What does compassion mean to you?  Self-compassion?  Compassion for others.

When compassion feels too hard, how might you use practice and sangha to help?

Allow – Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado.
Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground.
The only safety lies in letting it all in —
the wild and weak —
fear, fantasies, failures, and success.

When loss rips off the doors of the heart
or sadness veils your vision with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your known way of being,
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

2/13/24

We talked about viewing things in new ways. For example Sayadaw U Tejaniya says the mind “never wanders, where would it go?”.
Even though we have all used that language of the ‘wandering mind’, since it feels experientially true, U Tejaniya says that the mind is merely becoming absorbing into our thinking instead of absorbing into our breath, body sensations, or whatever object we originally chose. Does using that language give us a different perspective?

Another example is the wonderful way that Thich Nhat Hanh has used language to describe the steps of meditation practice. This video, called “Stop Running,” which was mentioned in our session, is a wonderful example of using the word “stopping’ to describe the practices of calming the mind, traditionally called Samatha practice.

Also mentioned was this technique, called the Six R’s, that describes the steps of coming back from the “wandering mind” or the “mind absorbed in thinking” when this inevitably happens:

Six R’s – Ven. Vimalaramsi

Recognize – What we are attending to: A plan, scheduling, a memory, a fantasy, a brilliant idea?
Release – the energy around thinking about that now. It can be done later.
Relax – Any tension in the body that resulted from the thinking
Re-smile – Came back to resting in the present moment
Reconnect – your attention to the breath or your meditation object
Resume – wash, rinse, repeat!

Refuge and Sangha

Traditional Buddhist Precepts ceremony: Taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.

Sangha as a refuge, a way to be connected, be supported, a way to offer support to others.

Thich Nhat Hanh: “Members of your sangha may be your child, your partner, and a beautiful path in the woods. The blue sky and beautiful trees are also members of your sangha.” (Tricycle, The Next Buddha may be a Sangha, Jan 22, 2023)

Sangha as an essential part of our practice; it can hold us, make a container for us.

Thich Nhat Hanh: “The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation.”   (Tricycle, Jan 22, 2023)

Zen Peacemaker’s Order, Three Tenets:  Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, Loving Action.

In Sangha, we bear witness to others; they bear witness to us.

As elders, we can be held, and we can hold others.  Sharing the wisdom of aging.

Larry Rosenberg: Our Practice is the Practice of Intimacy.  Intimacy with ourselves, with others, with the present moment. (CIMC Newsletter Jan 31, 2023; Mar 3, 2023.)

In Sangha, we can be reminded of our own Buddha nature.

Thich Nhat Hanh poem, from (from “Call me by My True Names – The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh”, Parallax Press, 2005.)

You are me and I am you.

Isn’t obvious that we inter-are?

You cultivate the flower in yourself

so that I will be beautiful.

I transform the garbage in myself

so that you don’t have to suffer.

I support you – you support me.

I am here to bring you peace,

you are here to bring me joy.    

November 28, 2023

We discussed using the Four Noble Truths as a daily refuge and actual framework for exploring stress, (Dukkha), and the cessation of Dukkha, in other words, as a practice instead of a view.

Readings from a wonderful little book from Ajahn Sumedho were discussed.

Here is the link to download a free copy of his revised book on the Four Noble Truths.  This site is a rich treasure of Dharma writings and talks from Ajahn Sumedho and the other U.K. forest sangha.

November 14, 2023

Intentions, Effort, and Hooks.

We have intentions, aspirations, things we wish to do, ways we wish to be. This is often hard, especially in times of inner and outer distress, of high emotion.  We need effort, often, to stay true to these intentions, to help us to make them manifest.  And so we work with Wise Intention and Wise Effort, path factors on the Eightfold Path.

How do I use my practice to support my intention?  How can my practice help me to notice what I’m doing, where I’m distracting myself from my intention? We come back to the breath, to our body. We come back to attention, noticing what is attracting us, what we’re pushing away. And being with that, accepting even our resistance.

From the early suttas:

Wise Intention: Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis on which your mind is established. (SN 12.40)

Wise Effort: And when we notice our tendency is towards the not-so-skillful, or the non-beneficial, we need to Rouse the will, make an effort,  stir up energy, exert our mind, and strive. (MN 141)

From Pema Chodron –

Don’t Bite the Hook (audiobook).

“How we get hooked, and how we can unhooked.”  (Lion’s Roar, Jan 13, 2023).

Shenpa, the urge, the hook, that triggers us into tightening, into contraction, into habit. How can we not get hooked?  We use effort to remember our practice of being with what is. With effort, we practice not contracting; by accepting that realities of impermanence and change.

By noticing, and accepting, we create space, and allow for possibility of not biting that hook.  The global hook; personal hook.  Both so important. We practice being with what is, seeing how we might be resisting, and loosening into the reality of what is.

We use our practice to not get hooked, to remember our intentions, and to use our effort to come back to the breath, to our body, to our wholeness. And just be, right here, right now.

—

The CIMC Sangha Life Committee (SLC) is a group that represents different sanghas of the CIMC community. See more about them on the CIMC website:

https://cambridgeinsight.org/our-community/sangha-life-committee/

Kathy Holmes represents the Elders Sangha on the SLC.  She invites any of the Elders Sangha who have questions or concerns, or are simply curious, to contact her via email. Please include “Elders” in the subject line.  kholmes45@gmail.com

Adrift (Mark Nepo)

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of

wonder and grief. The light spraying

through the lace of the fern is as delicate

as the fibers of memory forming their web

around the knot in my throat. The breeze

makes the birds move from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost

in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh

of the next stranger. In the very center, under

it all, what we have that no one can take

away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

She Let Go (Rev Safire Rose)

She let go.

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments.

She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.

She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.

Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice.

She didn’t read a book on how to let go.

She didn’t search the scriptures.

She just let go.

She let go of all of the memories that held her back.

She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.

She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go.

She didn’t journal about it.

She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.

She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.

She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.

She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.

She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.

She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.

She didn’t call the prayer line.

She didn’t utter one word.

She just let go.

No one was around when it happened.

There was no applause or congratulations.

No one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort.

There was no struggle.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

A small smile came over her face.

A light breeze blew through her.

And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

She Let Go (poem by Rev. Safire Rose, c. 2003)

She let go.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear.
She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice.
She didn’t read a book on how to let go.
She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.
She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t call the prayer line.
She didn’t utter one word.
She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort.
There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

Homework

Besides continuing or renewing your daily meditation practice, (Fall is a great time to recommit whole heartedly!) bring awareness to experiences of change:

Changes in outer circumstances

Changes in the body, changing emotions, recurring thought patterns, etc.

Watching the dance between resistance and letting go

Quotations from the talk on “Dealing with Change:”

N.Y.T. Op Ed “Stop Resisting Change,” Brad Stulberg

Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything is Changing – Including You, Brad Stulberg

“You have to become a chaos to give birth to a dancing star.” – Nietzsche

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.”- Alan Watts

“The sanctity of now” – Rupert Spira, You Are the Happiness You Seek

“When you’re completely in the now, you’re always standing in the middle of a sacred circle.” – Pema Chodron

Experiment with your personal ways of homecoming, centering.

It may be helpful to list them, knowing clearly what really helps.

Your daily practice, both meditation and throughout the day, moments of remembering, coming home to yourself, shifting from the world of distraction – (both external and within)

2) Hokusai (Most famous 19^th century Japanese artist) Also most famous exponent of positive aging:
“Everything I have done before the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75, I will have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create […] will jump to life as never before. […] I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself ‘The Old Man Mad About Drawing.”

7 Homecomings:
1) Breath
2) The body, beginning of meditation, including subtle body or energy body
3) The body in movement: Gentle stretching, etc.
Walking: slow, mindful walking or walking for exercise
Personal practice: “With great respect & love I bow to this body:
Home of the self (essence self), Vehicle for awakening
Abode of pure awareness
4) Sacred place
5) Natural world Finding refuge in nature
6) Daily practice: meditation ideally 20-30 minutes and awareness practice throughout the day
7) 3 words from Shiva Sutras: “Remembrance is Bhairava” (Bhairava means the Lord, Mystery, That which is beyond words, God)

**Any moment of remembrance is sacred (the inner shift to remembering your refuges, homecoming)**

Two more this morning: 1) Stopping 2) Awareness to the heart center

Inspiring interview with Brother David Steindl-Rast (97 years old)

Poem: https://poets.org/poem/morning-i-pray-my-enemies

Lessons from the Dharma for coping with a significant loss

1) The Five Recollections:

I am of the nature to age.
Aging is unavoidable.

I am the nature to get ill.
Illness is unavoidable.

I am the of the nature to die.
Death is unavoidable.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love
are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot avoid the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

2) Read The Magnanimous Heart by Narayan Helen Liebenson

3) Read Awakening Through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness by Lama John Makransky

HOME PRACTICE for June 13, 2023 Elders

Our elder years are so often times of aging and separation and loss, often times of experiencing fear, and finding the courage to face that fear. How might we meet those fears, what can we practice to help us remember courage?

We can practice the Buddha’s Five Recollections, or Five Remembrances.
1. I am of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health; there is no way to escape having ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die; there is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. My deeds are my closest companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.

In those recollections, we are reminded to let go of self, and to remember that what is happening to us is part of life, not personal nor punitive. We experience all that life offers, pleasure and pain; we are not exempt from the full gamut of life’s experiences.

We can practice Right View, the first of the path factors of the Eightfold Path. Right View can be a way of alleviating suffering. By seeing that what is happening is simply what is, we can alleviate the extra suffering we often add with our second arrows, by wanting things to be other than they are.

Thich Nhat Hanh: Right View is not an ideology, a system, or even a path. It is the insight we have into the reality of life, a living insight…

Right View is a compass, an aspiration, a reminder. It is an insight and an acceptance of the reality of things, of how life is.

We can accept being in the in-between place, and not knowing.

Pema Chodron: The in-between place: …We aren’t told all that much about this state of being in-between… The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion rises.

Compassion for ourselves, for those we might be caring for, for all beings also experiencing the whole gamut of life.

Koan: Not-knowing is most intimate
It takes courage to be in this in-between place, this place of not knowing. We can remember to soften into intimacy, with ourselves, with the moment, with this in-between place.

Poem: Allow, by Danna Faulds: There is no controlling life.… and practice becomes simply bearing the truth… (You can access the entire poem via Google.)

From Larry Rosenberg:

May we continue to look into ourselves.
May we see things exactly as they are.
And may such clear, direct seeing free us.

May 9 Homework – Kate Beers

The Wisdom of the Body

Your body is always present:

1. Think of a time when your mind and thoughts told you one thing but your body reactions told you something else. For example, denying you are angry to yourself and others but your body reactions reveal that you angry.

2. Take sometime to discover and experience your own body sensations. For example, when angry, perhaps your jaw tightens, your breathing becomes forced, your eyes narrow, etc.

3. List a few words that reflect your deepest values; and, using them as a mantra, discover your body sensations. For example, Integrity; kindness, gratitude, grace.
Let yourself appreciate how your mind/body is fully connected.

References:
Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness by Martin Aylward
The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom by Willa Blythe Baker

Website:
Dialogue between John Makransky, Lama in Tibetan Buddhism and Richard Schwartz, Family systems therapist and founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Becoming Our Compassionate Self: Integrating Parts of Ourselves into the Process of Spiritual Awakening
A Conversation Between Internal Family Systems and Tibetan Buddhism

April 11 Homework – Kate Beers

Bring kindness to your body

Suggestions:
• Metta / Body Scan
• Gentle Yoga
• Massage

Reference: Sharon Salzberg – Aging Wisely

Discover your own embodied wisdom

Meditate on a word or words that reflect a deep value and note your own body sensations. Allow yourself to experiment. Stay with words that fully resonate in your body. Let go of words that may feel conflicted. What do you discover?

Examples:
Gratitude, kindness, compassion, grace, integrity, authenticity, love, etc

References:
Martin Aylward – Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Wisdom
John Makransky – Awakening Through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness

Our body is the first of the four foundations of Mindfulness – from the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha’s Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness.  Often it’s our body where we first notice signs of aging, of becoming an elder.

The practice of acceptance, of ourself, of our body, of kindness towards ourselves, even our losses, is crucial. To accept, to witness ourselves, without judgement, and with care; to love them, to lean towards them, to embrace them.

Thich Nhat Hanh in his book No Mud, No Lotus, talks about the Sallatha Sutta, the Arrow sutta. The first arrow is that which happens, causes pain; the second arrow is fired by our own selves, is our reaction, our storyline, our anxiety.  We add to our suffering with these second arrows.

Sharon Salzberg as she was turning 70 wrote a Tricycle article, Aging Wisely, with much the same themes – what happens to the body as we age as the first arrow, and “our tendency to rehearse some catastrophe, and thereby live it several times.” This rehearsing as the second arrow.  One way to work with these, a doing a body scan along with the loving-kindness meditation; may each part of the body be happy.

Ruth King, in a Tricycle podcast, writes about kindness. “Kindness is a decision, a decision to incline the heart toward goodwill for all beings.”

Narayan tells of a Zen teaching:

A student asks his Zen master: How to be happy. The teacher replies:  Complete unrestricted cooperation with the unavoidable.

Nancy Mujo Baker – “Living Without Why,” from Meister Eckhart. Without “why me, why now, why this?”  Depersonalize the suffering that is innate in nature – the First Noble Truth: There is suffering.  Personalizing our suffering is another form of second arrow.

How do we cooperate with those hard parts?  What can we count on, rest in, to see us through, to sustain us.  We come back to the first foundation, to our body, to our breath, to our center.

TNH poem – This Body is Not Me:  (first lines)

This body is not me; I am not limited by this body,
I am life without boundaries.

Rumi poem –

I am not this hair
I am not this skin.
I am the soul
That lives within.

February 14, 2023 Homework

Focus on bringing metta or loving -kindness into both your meditation and at other times, perhaps using one of the traditional phrases. Examples: (create your own phrases)
May I and all beings live with loving-kindness
May I and all beings have ease of heart
May I and all being live with peaceful hearts

Refresh your practice. Always an invitation to re-commit to a daily practice of sitting meditation even if it’s for a short time. Increase your sitting to 20-30 minutes or more.

Remember how helpful it is to start with the body: a few minutes of gentle stretching or yoga shifts your energy and eases you into meditation more easily.

Simple exercise: breathing in metta, breathing out and sending metta to others

Reflections from the talk on Metta – loving kindness

Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Love is made of four elements: loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita) and equanimity (upeksha). If your love contains these elements, it will be healing and transforming, and it will have the element of holiness in it. True love has the power to transform any situation and bring deep meaning to our lives.”
–From his little book How to Love

Love is a verb – it’s the energy of the heart

Unconditional love: Tulku Thondup’s book titled: The Heart of Unconditional Love: a Powerful New Approach to Loving-Kindness Meditation

“The good heart practice”
We can simply do what’s called ‘good heart practice,” called sampa zangpo in the Tibetan tradition.Tibetan Buddhist masters consider it the most important thing on the spiritual path, the dharma in a nutshell… It’s the universal dharma that can set our heart free from the constraint of self-centeredness, and from the inner poisons, like hatred and envy.” Anam Thubten

Rumi quotation:
“Always check your inner state with the lord of your heart.
Copper doesn’t know it’s copper until it’s changed to gold.
Your loving doesn’t know its majesty until it knows its helplessness.”

Thich Nhat Hanh:
“You need your own love very much. You have to be there for yourself . When you sit for meditation, you practice love.

January 10, 2023 Homework

Heroism, Courage, Love and Fear

Olivia Hoblitzelle: “The later years are most heroic.”

Heroism often requires effort and courage.
How do we remember to be the Heroes of our own lives?
How do we respond to our fears?

Metta – Love or Loving-Kindness – one of the four Brahmaviharas, the four Immeasurables, the Divine Abodes. The Buddha gave his Metta Sutta as the antidote to fear.

Metta as the antidote to fear. To confront Fear with Courage requires Love.

Here are some traditional Metta Sutta and phrase variations. Find or create what works for you.

May all beings be happy.
May they live in safety and joy.
All living beings,
Whether weak or strong,
Tall, stout, average or short,
Seen or unseen, near or distant,
Born or to be born,
May they all be happy.
– From the Insight Meditation Center in California

Some sangha versions:
May I be happy. May I be safe. May I be free.
May we be happy. May we be safe. May we be free.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free.

May all beings be safe
May all beings be happy
May all beings have strength of heart.
May all beings know ease of well-being.

Poem by Michael Leunig:
Love and Fear
There are only two feelings, Love and fear;
There are only two languages, Love and fear;
There are only two activities, Love and fear;
There are only two motives, two procedures,
Two frameworks, two results,
Love and fear, Love and fear.

Krishnamurti: “Fear is an extraordinary jewel … which has dominated human beings for forty thousand years and more. And if you can hold it and look at it, then one begins to see the ending of it.”

Rumi poem: The Guest House – last stanza:
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Even fear is a guest to be welcomed and treated honorably, an extraordinary jewel, a guide. To be welcomed and offered Metta. An extraordinary practice.

Galway Kinnel poem extract, from Flying Home:
From then on, love is very much like courage,
perhaps it is courage, and even
perhaps
only courage.

Reflections:
– Is the word “heroic” meaningful to you? Useful? In what way? Or not at all?
– Was there a challenging situation where you felt afraid, and managed to remember love, find courage?
– How might you have witnessed courage in another/

Homework for Elders:
Most important is your daily meditation practice. Focus especially on bringing awareness to subtle mood/emotional states.
Sometimes helpful to label: “worried” “content” “frustrated,” etc.
Pause practice: stop several times during the day, tune into your body, your feelings, and breathe with loving awareness

3rd Foundation of Mindfulness: emotions

Ajahn Chah: “Anything which is troubling you, anything which is irritating you, that is your teacher.”

“The Guest House” by 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi (searchable online)

6 Steps for dealing with emotions
1) “welcoming practice” or “handshake practice”.
2) “Entertain them all” Invitation to investigate. Bring awareness to the body; come to the breath.
3) Bring awareness to emotions is a process of purification:
4) Meditation: most important ally: creates space. Every emotion has its wisdom — something positive to be discovered. “like a tiny flame of love in the heart waiting to guide you”
5) Expand your field of awareness: Tune into vast field of interconnectedness.
6) Metta/lovingkindness: “May I/you be free of fear and have ease of heart.” Whenever you turn your attention away from self to others, heart feels lighter. Transforms darkness of separation into feelings of connection

Hafiz, Sufi mystic, called it: “the encouragement of light”

Isabel Allende: “We all have an unsurpassable reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.”

Follow up to Emma’s’ presentation:
Link to Google Groups Tutorial
Link to join Elders Group
Link to join other Google Groups

Key points for review:
• “This Precious Human Body:” key contemplation in Buddhist tradition
• View: body as a mandala– a sacred universe
• Experiencing “the body in the body”
Reference to the subtle body, or the energy body
Includes chakra system from yogic traditions
Breath: bridge between the physical & subtle bodies

• Honoring the body before yoga, tai chi, chi gong, etc. (the words I use)
Hands in namaste: “With great respect and love I bow to this body, abode of pure awareness, vehicle for awakening.”

Feel free to experiment with phrases that feel right to you.

Pain meditation with Stephen Levine:
https://www.livingdying.org/softening-pain-meditation/

Grace and Grit: A Love Story, by Ken and Treya Wilbur

The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom, by Lama Willa Blythe Baker
Hevajra Tantra says: “Great wisdom lives in the body”

Homework: Find ways to practice mindfulness of the body through your day

Remember the “Pause Practice:” stopping for 3-4 breaths, dropping awareness into the body.

Experiment with taking more time with the body scan at the beginning of meditation, or returning to it, as a way to bring awareness down into the body.

Remember to open, soften, and embrace whatever is happening and send kindness and compassion to your body.

Homework:
Bring careful attention to the nature of thoughts arising in meditation:
Do thoughts tend to go into the past or toward the future?
Notice when there is clinging/attachment or aversion.
Identify recurring mental habits that cause the most distraction, stress, suffering.
What quality do you need to cultivate in working with the mind?

Three resources:
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness
Bhante Gunaratana, The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English
Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

Click here for the Elders Sangha listserv/google group.

Click here to learn more about kalyana-mitta groups at CIMC. 

Play with the concept of centering, finding your center

Notice how meditation strengthens that, even if the mind is busy

Recommit to your practice: both sitting meditation and cultivating mindfulness throughout the day

Reflect on the phrase “the courage to suffer.” How do we find meaning in suffering, and where does our practice come in?

Remember to pause: stop! and simply come to the body and breath, centering yourself.

Quotes:      “A mandala is a secret realm… Let’s each try to regard ourselves as a mandala, the sacred dimension that is made up of many sacred components….Because we are this living, intricate mandala made of so many components, we are ready to fall apart at any given moment…

This Mandala, this sacred universe, is who we are… This realization — knowing that there is no singular self in each of us, and instead we are this complex, beautiful, living

Mandala —  is very liberating. It can give rise to courage, love, and joy in our hearts”

                                                              Anam Thubten 

 “There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a (person) had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. What is to give light must endure burning.”  Viktor Frankl

Google link for Elders Sangha:  http://groups.google.com/group/cimcelders?hl=en

Link to sign up for CIMC Newsletters: www.tinyurl.com/cimcaffinitygroups

Five Wisdom Treasures: Reflections on Practice

1) Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay)
“Approach your practice with a joyful heart. For me, breathing in and out is a great joy. Organize your practice so it is very joyful.”

2) Thay “Bring a unique dimension of love and devotion to your practice. You need your own love very much. When you sit for meditation, you practice love.”

3) Inspiring our practice: how do you do that? Know all your sources of inspiration: teachers, teachings, books, friends, situations, nature, etc.

4) Cultivating the quality of acceptance toward whatever arises either in meditation or during the day. A spontaneous mantra: “accept the losses”

5) Thay’s response to someone in pain: “Trust in the energy of mindfulness to hold everything that arises… Your wounded heart, your pain – that’s what brings you to the heart of the Buddha.”

Contemplate and experience the subtle power of Thay’s phrase “the energy of mindfulness”

Richard Rohr: “Your True Self is Life and Being and Love. Love is what you were made for and love is what you are.”

Homework:
** Choose a couple of ways to inspire your practice.

** If your meditation practice has been intermittent, make a commitment to deepen it. Even 5-10 minutes a day (best at the same time and in the same place), is better than no meditation at all.

** Remember: you can come home to yourself at any moment by simply pausing and tuning into the preciousness of your breath.

** When challenged by difficult circumstances or emotions, remember Thay’s phrase “the energy of mindfulness” and trust that it is stronger than the pain.

Remembering wise view: see impermanence of everything
Seeing world as play of consciousness
Everyone is a holy mystery:
Lakota Chief Noble Red Man
“Everyone is sacred. You are sacred. I am sacred. Every time you blink your eye or I blink my eye, God blinks Her eye. God see through your eyes and my eyes. We are sacred.”