Homework

After Workshop

1. Formal Practice: Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 10-30 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. If you use an app, please only use it a couple of times a week. Instructions for newer meditators, see point 8
2. Formal Practice: Standing & Walking: Practice standing meditation at least once in your day. Practice walking meditation at least once during the day as you move through the world.
3. The Seven Factors of Awakening Handout: Please read it everyday until we meet on February 14th at 6pm. In addition, take some time to explore the book that you received.
4. Gratitude Practices
   • Write down, text or e-mail “your buddy” from the workshop
     3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything. You can simply list tem or write a sentence for each one.
   • Thank someone every day
5. Ask yourself: What keeps you, from paying attention in your life? What keeps you from living more fully? What keeps you from living here in the present moment
6. Remember your intention, vow, dedication. If you haven’t completed writing it please do so and store it in a “special place”
7. Have fun!
8. Instructions for newer meditator
   •  It is helpful to find a quiet space or room, a consistent time, and a chair or cushion that best supports your sitting practice. Please use a timer (if using your phone, keep it at a distance away from where you are sitting).
   • 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 of the sensations of sitting such as the body making contact with the mat or the floor, or your sitting bones on your cushion or chair. Then gently bring the attention to rest on the breathing either at the nostrils, the chest area or the abdomen. Use the breath as an anchor.
   • 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 simply escort the attention back to the breath, the anchor. Every time you bring your attention back to the present moment, you are developing mindfulness.

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.
   • Listen to, be aware of and receive whatever presents itself.
   • Be aware of the body & its sensations (sitting or breathing).
2. Standing & Walking: Practice standing meditation at least once in your day. Practice walking meditation at least once during the day as you move through the world.
3. Gratitude Practices
   • Write down, say to a partner or friend or text a classmate 3 things you are grateful for each day. It can be anything.
   • Thank someone every day.
4. Ask yourself & Listen: What keeps you, from paying attention in your life? What keeps you from living more fully? What keeps you from living here in the present moment?
5. Please continue to read everyday & Enjoy your Cards– The Seven Factors of Awakening Handout- Begin to notice or sense in yourself moments when these beautiful qualities, start to make their way into your practice and/or daily life experiences. If you open, look, inwardly- in very simple ways- (perhaps, a moment or two of calm instead of chaos, or a moment or two of joy instead of despair, or a moment or two of ease instead of struggle)- the practice can deepen. In these moments or any moment of knowing of the Seven Factors of Awakening: We are asked to celebrate life, to embody our understanding- and this is a celebration of life itself!
6. First Factor of Awakening-Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening in the present moment.
7. Practice your daily mindful activity. Each day e-mail, or text your buddy what you experienced or learned while practicing the daily mindful activity you agreed to practice with in class.
8. Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s book, Factors For Awakening, will be our shared text. Please read the chapter, Factors For Awakening pages
   1-8 and Mindfulness 9-12.                                             HAVE FUN!

We will send an e-mail to you with homework early next week.

For now, continue below.

• 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.
  • Listen to, be aware of and receive whatever presents itself.
  • Be aware of the body and its sensations (sitting or breathing).
• Formal Practice: Standing and Walking: Practice standing meditation at least once in your day. Practice walking meditation at least once during the day as you move through the world.
• Gratitude Practices
• Write down, say to partner or friend or text a classmate 3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything.
• Thank someone every day

4) Ahhh…our practice is for the heart to awaken. Your life provides the perfect conditions to wake up. Awakening of the heart is only found exactly where you are.

Right now is a perfect time to practice calm and presence in the midst of all the changing conditions, in the midst of uncertainty. Continually greeting whatever is arising with compassion and balance, This is our practice!

Remembering, when we live in the present, the Seven Factors of Awakening naturally arise. What are the factors? Mindfulness, Investigation, Energy, Joy, Tranquility, Concentration, Equanimity.

So, practice mindfulness, presence, interest, curiosity, alertness, rapt attention, calm, steadiness and balance. Do your best to let go of unwholesome actions!

And remember: It’s our chance, statewide, countrywide, worldwide, to learn what it means to take something seriously while, at the same time, refusing to panic or be pulled into excessive fear. It’s not a choice between one response or the other, we must do both, simultaneously.

• Please continue to read everyday and enjoy your cards – The Seven Factors of Awakening Handout – Begin to notice or sense in yourself moments when these beautiful qualities, start to make their way into your practice and/or daily life experiences. If you open, look, inwardly- in very simple ways- (perhaps, a moment or two of calm instead of chaos, or a moment or two of joy instead of despair, or a moment or two of ease instead of struggle) – the practice can deepen. In any moment of knowing of the Seven Factors of Awakening: We are asked to celebrate life, to embody our understanding- and this is a celebration of life itself!
• First Factor of Awakening – Mindfulness. Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening in the present moment.
• Practice your daily mindful activity. Each day e-mail, or text your buddy what you experienced or learned while practicing the daily mindful activity you agreed to practice with in class.
• Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s book, Factors For Awakening, will be our shared text. Please read the chapter, Factors For Awakening on page 1-8 and Mindfulness 9-12.

Sending a virtual hug and love to all of you. Keep practicing!

 

Please read Chapter 4: Practicing with Difficult Emotions.

As well, whenever a painful emotion occurs this week, please try to relate to it as nature.

Relating to an emotion as nature is based on the understanding that we don’t have control over what arises. Please look to see if there is a belief accompanying the emotion having to do with what should or should not be occurring, and see if the emotion can be accepted as nature just being nature.

Please read Chapter 4: Practicing with Difficult Emotions.

As well, whenever a painful emotion occurs this week, please try to relate to it as nature.

Relating to an emotion as nature is based on the understanding that we don’t have control over what arises. Please look to see if there is a belief accompanying the emotion having to do with what should or should not be occurring, and see if the emotion can be accepted as nature just being nature.

Although emotions are nature and the arising is out of our control, how we relate and respond is the practice. Our relationship to painful emotions is the difference between suffering and being peaceful. Meditation is an intervention in this way. So please be aware of reactions of grasping, aversion, and identification and practice responding with non-grasping, metta, and non-identification.

Please read or listen to Chapter #5 “Regret.”

During the week, be aware of hearing yourself thinking or saying anything along the lines of: “Things should have been different.” The exact words you hear or say may not fit this exactly, of course, but listen for whatever words hold this meaning.

Whenever you become aware of thinking, saying, or sensing that something should have been different than it was, see if you can pause and recognize that regret is occurring. Be aware of the felt sense in the body and contextualize it by viewing it in this way: “This is a mental state.”

For further inquiry, investigate different kinds of regret. See if you can differentiate between neurotic regrets (example: I should be perfect) and authentic regrets. Authentic regrets clarify a path of greater ethical and compassionate intention and action.

Here is the “Meaning of Life” article – please feel free to share.

Narayan Helen Liebenson: The Meaning of Life… the indestructible nature of your heart

Please read Chapter #6: “Loving Kindness and Compassion” in Magnanimous Heart.

Please continue with the homework of working with regret.

And…see if you can examine regret masquerading as grief and be aware of the grief.

And…please bring in your allies of metta and compassion when exploring the mental states of regret and grief.

Please keep track of how you are practicing with this homework so that you can report on it and identify your questions.

Please remember that we will be meeting on Zoom next Tuesday night, March 31st.

Please practice both metta and compassion this week, not exclusively but including both of these practices each day.

Possible Metta Phrases (but use your usual phrases)

• May I/you/we be safe and protected – peaceful – fully at ease – live in compassion
• May I/you/we be safe and protected – have mental happiness – have physical happiness – be fully at ease

Compassion Phrases

• May I care for this pain (physical pain)
• May I care for this sorrow (emotional pain)

Remember: The feeling that arises when you practice doesn’t matter, these are practices of intentionality.

See if you can sense the subtle difference between these two intentions and apply whichever seems to hit the spot, whichever you intuit to be more appropriate to apply given your circumstances and mental states as well as the suffering of one another. Both are ways to care for your own heart and for the heart of this world that we are all in together. Whether you make use of the phrases is not important, the point is to respond with metta and compassion.

If an earlier homework assignment was helpful for you, please remember it now. I offered a question: What does life want from me in this moment? Versus, what can I get out of life? If this question is helpful for you, please call it up this coming week.

Please remember to practice Metta before you go to sleep and when you wake up in the morning. And especially in the middle of the night if you wake and are thinking.

Please read or listen to chapter 7 “Relinquishing Grief” in Narayan’s book The Magnanimous Heart. On page 93 there are four approaches to relinquishing grief. (The word “grief” can be replaced by any difficult emotion and practiced with in the same way.)

1. The practice of nondwelling
2. The practice of letting go of me and mine
3. The practice of gratitude
4. The practice of going into the very heart of the pain, and experiencing pain as it is

Please choose one approach to take up for the week.