Dear Friends, I’m on retreat right now, but I haven’t forgotten about you! Here’s a reflection for today. I won’t be online to read your emails or comments, but feel free to write anytime. If you post a comment below, your words may inspire another! I’ll be back online Tuesday, so I’ll be able to respond to you… Read More »
Dear Friends, Mark Coleman has said that generosity often radial – it’s often easier to be generous with others but stingy with ourselves. He asks us to reflect: What would it be to practice more generosity to ourselves? What would you give yourself to be generous? For some, it might be more space, or more time. Maybe doing… Read More »
Dear Friends, Generosity is a quality that makes us feel happy, bright, and expansive – whether giving, receiving, or both. Yesterday, one of our participants shared a beautiful reflection about being on the receiving end of generosity. I think this is an important part of this practice of generosity – to be able to receive, with mindfulness, what… Read More »
Dear Friends, When it comes to generosity, we often have a limited sense of what generosity means – that it involves a monetary exchange or some grand act. In one of Mark Coleman’s talks on generosity, he says that our own presence and attention is a most powerful thing to give. In that talk he tells the story of… Read More »
Dear Friends, I’m taking a 12-week on-line class that’s diving into various teachings. The topic this week is on generosity. In this series of emails, I’ve been reflecting on several daily life practices we can do to bring more mindfulness into our lives. Generosity is a beautiful practice in this regard. Rick Hanson says we are “genetically programmed… Read More »
Dear Friends, I was inspired and grateful to the people here in Saskatoon and all around the globe that assembled yesterday for events supporting the Women’s March on Washington. (I regret that I wasn’t in attendance.) I have a set of “Compassion Cards” from Pema Chödrön, which have a set of slogans on one side and brief commentary on each… Read More »
Dear Friends, The ninth talk in Andrea Fella’s Daily Life Practice Retreat from April 2016 looks at what we do in this practice, and why we’re doing it. What we’re doing is exploring wise mindfulness – knowing what is happening in the present moment while it is happening. We know that we know; we are aware that we… Read More »
Dear Friends, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting yesterday evening, and the talk turned to boredom, and the tendency that many people have to fill time by doing “stuff”. In the context of that conversation, Doris mentioned a talk she listened to by Gil Fronsdal, in which he suggested a practice of doing one thing at… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the spirit of Andrea Fella’s seventh talk from the Daily Life Practice Retreat, I’m going to keep this simple. Her advice to the participants was to simplify things as part of their retreat week. The question she suggested they consider was: “is this necessary?” In our daily lives, we have to think. But sometimes we do stuff that’s… Read More »
Dear Friends, Kindness! That’s a good thing to reflect on in the middle of the week of the middle of the month! There are traditional meditation practices one can do to incline the mind towards kindness, sometimes called lovingkindness or metta. The Mindful magazine posted a brief discussion of the steps in the practice here: https://www.mindful.org/the-mindful-practice-podcast-loving-kindness-with-sharon-salzberg/ Outside of a formal practice,… Read More »
Dear Friends, The Q&A section of Andrea Fella’s sixth talk included some comments that certainly reflect many of my experiences. Do you relate to any of these? Take heart, you’re not alone! One meditator commented: In the moments that I have that awareness that I actually am aware, it’s immediately ruined by my judgment around the fact that… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the sixth talk of Andrea Fella’s Daily Life Practice Retreat, she encourages a practice of recognizing mindfulness, of knowing that we are aware. (Andrea F provided a handout to summarize the key points from this talk too.) In sitting meditation or in the daily activities, when we recognize that we’ve been lost in thought, Andrea F says that… Read More »
Dear Friends, A few years ago, Brené Brown shared a quote on her blog from Brother David Steindl-Rast: The root of joy is gratefulness. We tend to misunderstand the link between joy and gratefulness. We notice that joyful people are grateful and suppose that they are grateful for their joy. But the reverse is true: their joy springs from gratefulness.… Read More »
Dear Friends, I’m going to share a bit of advice from Sayadaw U Tejaniya, a Burmese monk. Before becoming a monk, he was a householder and merchant, so he can relate well to the challenges that people like us deal with. Here’s a paragraph from the first chapter of his recent book When Awareness Becomes Natural: A Guide to Cultivating… Read More »
Dear Friends, Yesterday, we reviewed a common occurrence when trying to bring mindfulness to daily activities – we start off with good effort and results, but then the novelty wears off, and we stop being so mindful. I related this to two short-lived types of joy that Chade-Meng Tan discusses in Joy on Demand: the joy of novelty and the joy of… Read More »
