Week 1
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 1 (4/28/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
As I mentioned in our first session each week I’ll be sending out a little teaching for reflection/to help inform our practice at home each week. Here is the first one.
As we begin our inquiry I wanted to highlight the power of the mind/heart that has the capacity to change its relationship to our experience. I highlighted how we suffer when we don’t have a clean crisp inner relationship to what we see, and how when we do, experience is the same but our relationship to it can significantly change for the better.
Please use this opening salvo from the classic early Buddhist book, the Dhammapada, to help point us to having a fresh awareness-based relationship to the world and our own inner experience. This is not meant to be moralistic but rather practical.
How can practice, in daily life and formal sessions, give me space, nourishment, moments of freedom in the midst of experience? “Practice” can be mindfulness of breath/body, a kind thought or action, or a simple recognition that awareness is functioning in the here and now, independent of what is being known.
“All experience is preceded by mind, Led by mind, Made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, And suffering follows As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the Ox. All experience is preceded by mind, Led by mind, Made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, And happiness follows like a never departing shadow.”
-Dhammapada (first verse, Gil Fronsdale translation)
A second quote from the Buddha brings this into a simple inquiry of cause and effect playing out:
“When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases”.
Samyutta Nikaya 12.61
Again, this is an invitation to work with our inner relationship to experience. For example: If I have a deeply judgmental thought about something and it triggers fear or anxiety, can I use my practice to see: “This is the actual experience, Ok, can I be with it as it is, without adding to or rejecting the experience, even just a little bit. How can my practice help?”
Enjoy the inquiry. I look forward to practicing together next week.
Matthew
Week 2
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 2 (5/5/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
For this week, please use this refrain to support your home practice:
Searching all directions
Rajan Sutta (Buddha talking to queen Malika)
with your awareness,
you find no one dearer
than yourself.
In the same way, others
are dear to themselves.
So you shouldn’t hurt others
if you love yourself.
As we continue to explore the foundation of compassion and non-harming to our dharma lives these words can be very helpful. They honor our own instinct for self-preservation and self-care.
But here, we need to see this through a dharma lens, which would encourage us to actually be kind to ourselves in how we are relating to our experience. After all, each changing moment makes up the sense of ‘who we are’ in any given moment. It is here we must practice ‘holding ourselves dear.’
Home Practice:
If you are drawn to either of the phrases we practiced in class below, please bring them into formal and or daily life practices, as works for you.
May I and all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering
May I and all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness
(this can be done with either phrase first) and/or
The metta phrase:
“may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, and live with ease”
and then possibly “may all beings….”
Here we can see how caring for self and others goes hand-in-hand and works to help us escape the thought bubbles of our self-preoccupation that can become a worldly misappropriation of the dharma use of the term self-kindness.
A complementary approach to any formal metta/compassion practice are the mindfulness practices (breath…) that we do that help us to calm ourselves and see experience clearly. In terms of the themes presented here, this is a natural kind of kindness that allows experience to unwind a bit so that we taste some ease. Present moment awareness helps us to cut the relentless tendency of our thoughts to make us believe in stories that separate rather than unite us (in respect for our common humanity and life in general). When we hold ourselves dear in this way, the sutta states, it is only natural that we extend the same energy to others.
Please enjoy the practice this week, and I look forward to practicing together, reflection and discussion next Monday evening.
Warmly,
Matthew
Week 3
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 3 (5/12/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
This week’s reflection for home practice builds on the wise intention practices we have been exploring, as we move more into the mindful clarity aspect of the series. I’m including the entire Sedaka Sutta (or the Bamboo acrobat sutta) from the Buddha’s early teachings for your reflection.
Enjoy!
Matthew
“Once upon a time, monks, a bamboo acrobat,
Sedaka Sutta (Thanissaro Bhikkhu translator, from access to insight)
setting himself upon his bamboo pole,
addressed his assistant Medakathalika:
“Come you, my dear Medakathalika,
and climbing up the bamboo pole,
stand upon my shoulders.”
“Okay, master” the assistant Medakathalika
replied to the bamboo acrobat;
and climbing up the bamboo pole
she stood on the master’s shoulders.
So then the bamboo acrobat said this to his assistant Medakathalika:
“You look after me, my dear Medakathalika, and I’ll look after you.
Thus with us looking after one another, guarding one another,
we’ll show off our craft, receive some payment,
and safely climb down the bamboo pole.”
This being said, the assistant Medakathalika said this to the bamboo acrobat:
“That will not do at all, master!
You look after yourself, master, and I will look after myself.
Thus with each of us looking after ourselves, guarding ourselves,
we’ll show off our craft, receive some payment,
and safely climb down from the bamboo pole.
That’s the right way to do it!”
[The Buddha said:]
Just like the assistant Medakathalika said to her master:
“I will look after myself,”
so should you, monks, practice the establishment of mindfulness.
You should (also) practice the establishment of mindfulness (by saying)
“I will look after others.”
Looking after oneself, one looks after others.
Looking after others, one looks after oneself.
And how does one look after others by looking after oneself?
By practicing (mindfulness), by developing (it), by doing (it) a lot.
And how does one look after oneself by looking after others?
By patience, by non-harming, by loving kindness, by caring (for others).
(Thus) looking after oneself, one looks after others;
and looking after others, one looks after oneself.”
Week 4
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 4 (5/19/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
Because next Monday is Memorial day we will not meet until the following Monday, June 2nd.
Please continue to work with the dynamics of ‘caring for self and other’ through goodwill, calming mindfulness practices (breath awareness…), and opening to the wisdom of being with things as they are.
Patience is the natural outcome of:
- practicing calming meditation like breath awareness
- making the observation of impatience a practice, rather than trying to force oneself to be patient.
Please add this simple teaching story the Buddha gave to the monk Sona as a support for your practice, both on and off of the cushion:
Sona, the monk, tried very hard to go deep in practice and touch freedom, but he was unsuccessful, and wanted to quit. The Buddha asked him what his profession was before he became a monk, and Sona said he had been a lute player. They discussed how overly tight strings did not produce a good sound, and neither did overly loose strings. The Buddha then said this same example can be applied to how we use our mental energies in our mindfulness practice:
“In the same way, Sona, over-aroused persistence leads to restlessness, overly slack persistence leads to laziness. Thus you should determine the right pitch for your persistence.”
(sona sutta AN 6.55)
So please practice ‘the middle way’ as best you can: Not too tight not too loose, all the while bringing mindfulness of ‘too tight or too loose’ expressions of effort (in formal meditation and daily life) and see what happens to the quality of your attention and experience when you do so.
I look forward to practicing together, and discussing our practice explorations, when we meet again in a little less than two weeks.
Warmly,
Matthew
Week 5
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 5 (6/02/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
We explored different facets of ‘right effort’ this past week, and we continue with mindfulness or ‘right ‘mindfulness’ in terms of the clarity aspect of our three-part inquiry (Compassion, Clarity, Connection).
In the early Buddhist literature on mindfulness there are two distinctive qualities that we can work with. The word mindfulness is a translation of the pali word ‘sati‘, which has two distinct aspects.
The first is ‘remembering to be with what we have set to be with.’ This can be a meditation object or just something we are intending to focus on/do in daily life. It has to do with memory. The second is ‘non-judgemental awareness’. It is the simple ‘being with things as they are’, ‘it is as it is’, etc. It is the clarity of allowing without pushing or pulling at experience.
From the Zen tradition we can explore what Thich Naht Hahn calls: ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’, the simple moments of nourishment in being mindful, as well as the natural corrective nature of mindful clear seeing to those imbalances that weaken clear seeing (How ‘being with impatience skillfully is a form of patience’, etc…).
It is mindful clear seeing that allows this inner transformation to naturally unfold.
Enjoy explore these various aspects of clear present moment awareness, or mindfulness, in your daily life and formal practices.
Enjoy!
Matthew
Week 6
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 6 (6/09/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
Our final two sessions will focus on ‘Connection’. In dharma terms it can point to living very directly, connecting with each experience; of ourselves, the world, and others freshly. It can also point to moments of wisdom when we loosen our grip on experiencing a clinging separate sense of self. This is a natural outcome of the quality of our attention.
As ‘effort’ and ‘mindfulness’ become matured, a kind of steady clear attention meets life, and expresses itself as a form of life. As we all can attest to, through our practice, we begin to experience a more nourishing kind of connection, as we live our life.
Please allow these words of Basho to inform your practice this week.
“Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. In doing so, you must leave your preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise, you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one – when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.”
Warmly,
Matthew
Week 7
Compassion, Clarity, Connection: Living an Integrated Life
Week 7 (6/16/25) Home Practice
Hi Everyone,
For our final week please allow the momentum of: compassionate attitude, wise effort, mindfulness, and connection we have systematically explored over these weeks to inform a simple attitude this week: ‘Practice (dharma practice) should not be separated from living and living should not be separated from dharma’.
Two teachings, one is at the core of a Buddhist notion of freedom (no-self), one is very grounded in daily living, can both support our inner journey of tasting in nourishment and peace in the here and now:
‘In the seen there will be only the seen
an adaptation of the Bahiya sutta, by the Buddha
in the heard only the heard
in the cognized and felt just the cognized and felt
in the sensed just the sensed…
when there is no concept of I, me and mine in the objects perceived nor in the subject perceiving this, just this is freedom!’
Attaining the heart
Dogen, Japanese Zen master
Of the sutra (dharma teaching),
The sounds of the
Bustling marketplace
Preach the Dharma
–Dogen, Japanese Zen master