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 »
Dear Friends, In Joy on Demand, Chade-Meng Tan describes four sources of joy, two of which he says are short-lived, and two which are “very important and highly durable.” The two that he describes as short-lived are the joy of novelty, and the joy of perceived agency. The joy of novelty is the excitement of experiencing something new,… Read More »
Dear Friends, We’ve covered a lot of ground these past few days, so let’s take a moment to recap. We started by talking about intention – setting an intention for the year, the day, a meditation practice, a chore – and we also looked at closing the day, practice, etc. with a dedication. We reviewed a few different… Read More »
Dear Friends, How’s it going with your mindfulness-bell activity? Remember, the goal is not to be perfect. If you’ve remembered that you’ve forgotten, just notice what’s obvious now, say “I’ll keep trying”, and then carry on. The recommendation for the activity yesterday was something that was relatively quick and occurred often. The second project Andrea Fella recommended in… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the fourth talk from the Daily Life Practice Retreat, Andrea Fella mentions that the tool of “what’s obvious” can work well in sitting meditation, but often what is obvious is not strong enough in our daily lives to help pull us out of our “habitually lost” mode. In our sitting, we have some reminders about becoming… Read More »
Dear Friends, The Sunday Morning Insight Meditation Study Group listens to a recorded talk in the week, and then meets to meditate and discuss the talk on Sunday mornings. The talk this week is on joy. In the talk, Adrianne Ross shares a slogan from Pema Chödrön: Stop. Notice. Appreciate. Share. Here’s what Pema says about this slogan: Sharing… Read More »
Dear Friends, Walking meditation. There are plenty of instructions on how to do the formal practice. An older article in Tricycle collected thoughts on walking from a number of respected teachers: Walking: Meditation on the Move Achaan Chah, Sylvia Boorstein, Yasutani Roshi, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joan Halifax, Bruce Chatwin, Henry David Thoreau, and Matsuo Basho on walking meditation… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the first guided meditation in the Daily Life Practice Retreat, Andrea Fella encourages the meditators to begin by cultivating a sense of ease and relaxation. Then, once one finds that place of ease, she suggests moving into a simple practice – not directing the attention to anything in particular, but sitting in the midst of our… Read More »
Dear Friends, At the SIMC practice yesterday evening, Bob led us through a body scan practice. Like mindful breathing, body scan has formal practices you can do – I’ve linked in some resources below – and it can be done informally, discreetly, anywhere or any time. One of my favorite places to do a quick body scan is in the… Read More »
Dear Friends, Just a short email today. 🙂 Feel free to keep working on mindfulness of breathing. Gil Frondsdal says that one of his teachers told him that mindfulness of breathing is enough, in and of itself, for a person to become enlightened. In the Search Inside Yourself capstone session, Brandon Rennels, one of the instructors of the in-person class I… Read More »
Dear Friends, I normally don’t meditate in the morning as I often feel rushed to get my dogs fed and get myself to work, but for this month, I’m going to try a simple 5-minute mindfulness of breathing exercise every morning, when the alarm first goes off. (I have back up alarms so I won’t fall back asleep.) Five minutes… Read More »
Dear Friends, At the insight meditation retreats I’ve attended, the first day often starts with reviewing the precepts. For those not familiar with the concept, the precepts are a way to explore creating a community with an attitude of respect and care for the community – a container of safety – oriented towards non-harming. Andrea Fella’s first talk in the Daily… Read More »
