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 »
Dear Friends, New Year’s Resolutions, Goals, Intentions… Likely your news feeds have had many suggestions about what to do to make things stick in the new year. So let’s start this month together by looking at intentions. In an article titled “The Power Of Setting An Intention“, Jeena Cho writes: As we come to the end of 2016,… Read More »
Dear Friends, I’m so glad you will be part of this month-long adventure! We have a great little community that has signed up to be part of this daily email list. Many of you have returned after last year’s initial offering (thank you), and I’m glad to see we are joined by many new folks too (welcome!). The… Read More »
Dear Friends, For many of us, the new year is a time of new beginnings, of a fresh start. It’s a time we can remember what matters to us and set our aspiration for the year ahead. Many of us would like to develop a daily meditation practice. To support us in this endeavor, I will be facilitating a… Read More »
