Week 1 (1/12/26)
Aging with Wisdom and Compassion Week 1 (1/12/26) Home Practices
****Reminder: Although the class starts at 10:30 (ET), I will come to class at 10:20 to answer questions each week. ***
Next Class: 1/26/26
Click here for a PDF of the Home Practices
- Sitting: For a minimum of 10-20 minutes per day. Do your best! Keep your meditation simple (no apps or if you use them only a couple of times a week).
- Practice Gratitude: Text or e-mail your buddies, 3 things you are grateful for every day. They can be anything. Helps to lighten the heart!
- Contemplate the following:
- “Aging sickness and death are treasures for those who understand them. They’re noble truths, noble treasures. If they were people, I’d bow down to their feet everyday” –Ajaan Lee
- “I am of the nature to age. I am subject to aging. Aging is unavoidable” –Buddha
- “All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Their nature is to arise and pass away. Living in accordance with this truth brings the highest happiness.” –Buddha
- Continue to reflect: What are some of the joys and challenges you have faced with aging. How are you relating to the joys and challenges of aging?
- Four simple practices that may help us cultivate a more thoughtful, aware attitude toward aging and life. See if any of these touch you, then bring them into this unfolding New Year. Have FUN!
- Honoring your inner life: Practice can help to hold life’s complexities and challenges. A practice of mindful meditation shows us that something beyond our limited self- you can also consider prayer, Tai Chi, Yoga. Setting time for even for 5 minutes — for some form of contemplation, brings inner balance and more resilience to our days.
- The Practice of Pausing: Stop & breathe, inhabit the body. Stop to look at the sky. Stop & see or listen to a bird outside. Stop & look into the open face of a child or pet. Simple acts. How often do we truly slow down, stop, listen or look? Or Breathe & recognize that these precious moments can be moments of nourishing calm, mindfulness, don’t know mind or not knowing. Throughout your day, pause, take a break from your usual thoughts and wake up to the vastness of the world around you. Look outside! This easy, spacious type of mindfulness practice is an important practice during this time.
- The Practice of Mindfulness in Daily Life: This is a reminder to bring your attention to daily activities that can transform the littlest moments of a day (brushing teeth, washing dishes). This is about doing one thing at a time with a full, loving attention. It’s amazing how wonderful the simplest things are! Be aware of your hands or feet in action and appreciate all they do for you.
- Cultivating lightness and humor: When we choose a light-hearted response to a challenging or tense situation. In that split-second between reacting and responding, see if you can open to the possible lightness or humor in what’s unfolding. Notice how the body softens, the breath deepens, and a sense of release & relief floods over you.
Appreciating you & am grateful for your Practice!
Week 2 (1/26/26)
Aging with Wisdom and Compassion Week 2 (1/26/26) Home Practices
****Reminder: Although the class starts at 10:30 (ET), I will come to class at 10:20 to answer questions each week. ***
Click here for a PDF of the Home Practices
- Sitting: For a minimum of 10-20 minutes per day. Do your best! Keep your meditation simple (no apps or if you use them only a couple of times a week)
- Practice Gratitude: Text or e-mail your buddies, 3 things you are grateful for every day. They can be anything. Helps to lighten the heart!
- Continue to Contemplate the following:
- I am of the nature to age. I am subject to aging. Aging is unavoidable- Buddha.
- All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Their nature is to arise and pass away. Living in accordance with this truth brings the highest happiness.- Buddha
- Reflect: Our culture that glorifies youth-we are exploring if it’s possible to get to know aging in a different way. That is not to say that aging is easy. But to see if we can use our practice to cultivate inspiring attitudes to see the beauty as well as the challenges of aging.
- An Elder is a person who is still growing, still a learner, still with potential and whose life continues to have within it promise for, and connection to the future. An Elder is still in pursuit of happiness, joy and pleasure, and her, his, theirbirthright to these remains intact. More over, an Elder is a person who deserves respect and honor and whose work it is to synthesize wisdom and compassion from a long life experience and formulate this into a legacy for future generations. – Barry Barkin
- Olivia Hoblitzelle: invites us to explore new ways of being. Try some of these this week!
- Can you see the need to slow down as a gift, for those whose lives are squeezed by hurry?
- Can you see that acceptance of being in the present moment is as precious as doing in a society that measures according to how productive a person is?
- Can you appreciate a sense of time that allows us to stop and enjoy a small delight like a cloud in the sky, a snowflake, or a dewdrop on a branch?
- Can you accept the gift of time- time to be-to watch the wind in the trees outside the window instead of rushing to the next task?
- Is it possible that we are being invited to live in a new dimension, one that is teaching us to let go of the way we have always done things? Ultimately, we are moving toward the final letting go, whether we are conscious of it or not. Death may be years off and every time we let go of an old pattern, we open to a more spacious, allowing and loving way of being. Can we live more in alignment accepting the unknown, more open to the great mystery in which we live and die into?
- Reflect on Conscious or Mindful Aging and the following:
- How do we accept the natural process of diminishment? Of our own diminishment? Finding grace in diminishment is an invitation to affirm what is positive. We are on a scared journey. This week, Pay Attention, find meaning in what sustains you,inspires you, uplifts you?
- Can you accept things as they are? Accept help from others? Can your heart hold whatever is happening with a sense that you are a part of something far more spacious than the limitations of the body?
- Can you cultivate don’t know mind, openness to the new and unknown, an attitude of letting go, letting be toward how we are living? Can you honor nature, the life force with in us, honor the life cycle- attune to the rhythms of your years in balance with the natural order of things and align with your life’s purpose- with presence, deep listening, respecting your changing needs, and honoring what is most important to you?
Appreciating you & am grateful for your Practice!
Week 3 (2/2/26)
Aging with Wisdom and Compassion Week 3 (2/2/26) Home Practices
****Reminder: Although the class starts at 10:30 (ET), I will come to class at 10:20 to answer questions each week. ***
Click here for a PDF of the Home Practices
- Sitting: For a minimum of 10-20 minutes per day. Do your best! Keep your meditation simple (no apps or if you use them only a couple of times a week)
- Practice Gratitude: Text or e-mail your buddies, 3 things you are grateful for every day. They can be anything. Helps to lighten the heart! Thank someone every day!
- Continue to Contemplate the following:
- I am of the nature to age. I am subject to aging. Aging is unavoidable. –Buddha
- All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Their nature is to arise and pass away.
- Living in accordance with this truth brings the highest happiness. – Buddha
- Remember: The Four Noble Truths:
- The 1st Noble Truth. The truth of suffering (dukkha) means: suffering, sorrow, anguish, discontent, insecurity, and unsatisfactoriness. Suffering is a reality in life. We all experience the pain of birth, old age, death, sorrow, grief, despair, separation from those we love, and not getting what we want. Dukkha also means understanding that everything is changing, impermanent. No experience, no matter how wonderful, will bring us a deep lasting satisfaction because it is always changing. Recall that constantly trying to get what we like and avoid what we don’t like in the world will involve suffering, because trying to arrange the constantly changing world to our satisfaction is an attempt to achieve the unachievable, so we will constantly be frustrated and disappointed.
- The Second Noble Truth states that our clinging, craving, attachment to our desires are the very cause of our unhappiness.
- Happily- The Third Noble Truth states the good news. That there is a way out. This is the path of happiness – not the path of misery!
- The Fourth Noble Truth is the Eightfold Noble Path to Happiness.
- Receive Suffering with Equanimity (spaciousness, balance, poise) The wonderful news is that you can experience dukkha with equanimity. Equanimity is a form of happiness. If you can receive dukkha-suffering with equanimity, it’s no longer suffering-dukkha. Impermanence can be a devastating fact of life. Impermanence can also be amazingly beautiful— if you receive it with equanimity. It can be ease-peace itself. How? Try the 4 ways below this week!
- First, we can practice turning our attention toward whatever suffering we encounter. What- ever form it takes, anxiety or fear, impatience, frustration, we can make our suffering an object of our Mindfulness. Rather than try to get rid of it, we can do our best, to understand it, to open to it, make room for it, with spaciousness, balance, let it reveal itself to us. The aim is not to dwell on our suffering or its causes; rather, it is to see & clearly recognize our experience for what it is.
- Second, we can cultivate an attitude of acceptance, of allowing. Confronted with diminishment of any of our senses, or a personal loss, or a grave diagnosis, we may adopt an attitude of resistance or of passive resignation. But there is a 3rd possibility, a wholehearted engagement. We can accept the reality of what has occurred, while acting to “effect “the best possible outcome.” By fully accepting the facts, we can ground our hopes on actual conditions.
- Third and most importantly, we can use “balm” of meditation (not the bomb): The most effective way of being with the truth of suffering is a basic meditation practice. Just silence. To simply sit in the present moment of being alive here, now. Feeling the support that comes from the life force in us, that we are alive, that we are breathing—when we do that, we can experience whatever arises and passes away in the body, mind, heart, without fear, stories or proliferations. Over time, we can discover for ourselves that our own suffering and the suffering of this world, can be met by the healing presence of a balanced, spacious heart and mind
- Fourth: when the unbearable enters our lives: At times, we experience unbearable suffering as grief, loss, dread in turning the Mindful awareness toward experience of great difficulty, one can get flooded and overwhelmed. It is not helpful to feel paralyzed—physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. When we are overwhelmed, we must skillfully address not just the issues facing us but the experience of being overwhelmed. By using the practice of wise withdrawal. We withdraw our attention from the flooding of the senses due to something devastating. Not with the intention of escaping or pushing away. We withdraw with the compassionate, tender intention to be aware of our own limitations and abilities in the moment. We do not withdraw with the purpose of repressing or denying the experience. We wisely withdraw so that we might be able to re-engage and return our attention when we have the strength, the skills, and the capacity to turn more fully toward a predominantly overwhelming First Noble Truth.
This ebb & flow of practice, turning toward and wisely withdrawing—is like the opening & closing of blossoms in nature—is the ebb & flow of life itself. It is the natural capacity for us to take care of ourselves and to live life fully- the 100,000 sorrows. It is the very definition of resilience in the face of hardship. Or called “skillful means.” We make a wise and compassionate choice based on what is possible, what is beneficial, in the moment!
“That choice can only be made with Mindfulness. That choice is practice itself”- Larry Yang
💓 Thank you for your practice. Feeling Grateful for all of you 💓
Week 4 (2/9/26)
Aging with Wisdom and Compassion Week 4 (2/9/26) Home Practices
****Reminder: Although the class starts at 10:30 (ET), I will come to class at 10:20 to answer questions each week. ***
Click here for a PDF of the Home Practices
- Sitting: For a minimum of 10-20 minutes per day. Do your best! Keep your meditation simple (no apps or if you use them only a couple of times a week).
- Practice Gratitude: Text or e-mail your buddies, 3 things you are grateful for every day. They can be anything. Helps to lighten the heart! Thank someone every day!
- Continue to Contemplate the following:
- I am of the nature to age. I am subject to aging. Aging is unavoidable –Buddha.
- All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Their nature is to arise and pass away. Living in accordance with this truth brings the highest happiness. – Buddha
- The 5 reflections: I am of the nature to age. Aging is unavoidable, I am of the nature to get ill. Illness is unavoidable. I am of the nature to die. Dearth 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. – Buddha & Narayan
- Impermanence: All things do not remain the same from one moment to the next but are constantly changing. This is a fact of life. The way things are. Through not being aware or accepting this truth, we become attached to people and things. Wishing them to remain the same and last forever, we become disappointed when they do not. Or wishing ourselves to remain the same and last forever, we become disappointed when we do not. Getting to know impermanence enables us to be more realistic and frees us from a great deal of unnecessary suffering.
- Reflections:
- Our bodies are steadily degenerating. The Buddha taught us to see that the body doesn’t belong to us. It’s natural for the body to be this way. There’s nothing wrong with the way the body is. It’s not the body that causes us suffering, t’s our wrong thinking. When we see the right wrongly, there’s bound to be confusion.
- Having been young your body has become old and now it’s meandering towards its death. Don’t go wishing it was otherwise. The Buddha told us to see the way things are and then let go of our clinging to them. Conditions don’t belong to us. Take this feeling of letting go as your refuge.
- The Buddha taught that our real home is inner peace. Our body is not our real home. We take it to be self, to be “me” and “mine,” but in fact it’s not so at all. Your body has followed its natural course from birth until now it’s old or sick and you can’t stop it from doing that-it’s the way it is. The Buddha encouraged us to contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is “me” or “mine.” They have a merely temporary reality. It’s like your home: it’s only nominally yours, you couldn’t take it with you anywhere. It’s the same with your wealth, possessions and family — they’re all yours only in name, they don’t really belong to you, they belong to nature. This truth applies to everyone!
- Reflections:
- Practice Awe: “From wonder into wonder, existence opens” – Lao Tzu- Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand. We can find it anywhere! Finding awe is easy if we take a few moments to pause and open to wonder. Each of us can find our own way to awe. We can find in the strength, courage, kindness, generosity of others, in collective movement, in actions, like dance, sports, in nature, in music, art, visual design, in mystical encounters, in witnessing a birth or a death or in meeting life & death, in deep understanding or insights. (just to name a few) Wonders are all around us.- If we simply pause open our hearts and minds to wonders we can see deep patterns of life, of nature- Awe helps us when we face loss or trauma, when we face the uncertainties, unknowns, impermanence and transitions of life. Awe can transform our bodies, hearts, and minds. Please reflect on Awe daily. Pause. Open your hearts and minds- form an intention to Discover AWE!