Dear Friends, My Facebook feed on Friday had the following news: beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has passed away peacefully at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam, at 00:00hrs on 22nd January, 2022, at the age of 95. We invite our global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful… Read More »
Dear Friends, In Equanimity, Upekkha, Jill illuminates the qualities of equanimity, and the way wisdom is supported by equanimity. It’s another rich talk, so I’ll parse out some of the qualities today, and the wisdom aspects tomorrow. Then we’ll have another couple of days looking at the heart quality of equanimity. I could use a little extra shot… Read More »
Dear Friends, In Afternoon Instructions – Mindfulness of Mind, Jill looks at different mental processes and leads a reflective practice for the participants. Jill speaks again about the “wheel” model of how body and breath are related to getting lost in proliferation. It might look something like this: Here’s how Jill explains this: To continue exploring the model… Read More »
Dear Friends, In Guided Meditation – Mudita, DaRa offers some opening comments, then sparks some generosity and gratitude through a story and reflection, and leads an appreciative joy practice that radiates joy to beings in all directions. She says we’re up to something radical here by intentionally cultivating joy, gladdening the heart. There are many joyful moments in… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the latter part of the talk on Sympathetic Joy, Mudita, DaRa describes some of the impediments and allies of mudita, appreciative joy. The impediments include judgment, comparing, prejudice, demeaning, envy, avarice, selfishness, boredom. Thinking about boredom as an impediment to mudita is interesting! When we stop paying attention to the little things in life, and… Read More »
Dear Friends, Today and tomorrow, I’ll turn to DaRa’s talk on Sympathetic Joy, Mudita. Mudita is a way of cultivating joy. It’s sometimes translated as sympathetic joy, appreciative joy, altruistic joy, empathetic joy. It’s a joy that arises when we can resonate with someone’s happiness and success. Here’s a little story that wakes up this quality of joy… Read More »
Dear Friends, We’re midway through the month, and we have covered a lot of ground. We have reviewed: intention mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samadhi) meditation anchors (body, breath, sound) the balance wisdom and compassion the feeling tone (vedana) of experience – pleasant, unpleasant, neutral the hindrances – experiences that can be obstacles in meditation – and BELLA to… Read More »
Dear Friends, Today, a brief summary from Jill on Working with Compassion, and a guided compassion practice. In the first talk on the The Brahma Viharas for Insight and Wisdom, Jill shared a set of reflections from Caroline Jones and Paul Burrows, that outlined the interrelationship between the four heart qualities of loving kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and… Read More »
Dear Friends, DaRa continues the exploration of mindfulness of mind states in the talk on Working with Emotions. She starts by giving a bit of a tour of the tools covered so far – sitting, walking, body, including all the sense experiences and breath, feeling tone (pleasant/unpleasant/neutral), working with thoughts, and heart practices of goodwill and compassion. And… Read More »
Dear Friends, Continuing with Jill’s talk on Compassion, Karuna, today we turn the ways to practice compassion, what sort of obstacles might arise, and how to work with them. One of the ways we can practice developing compassion is through the repetition of phrases. Jill give us her four phrases, and explains what each phrase means for her.… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the talk Compassion, Karuna, Jill says, “compassion is what flowers when metta, or goodwill, comes into contact with dukkha, with suffering.” Today, we’ll follow Jill’s unpacking of suffering, and then tomorrow look at the how-to of compassion. The term dukkha is often translated as suffering, but it has a much broader sense of the term… Read More »
Dear Friends, After Jill’s broad tour of the various qualities of heart we can cultivate (discussed in the Jan 5 post), the talks we’ll review today dive deep into metta, loving kindness. DaRa sets the stage for practice by offering a few words on setting up for practice – checking in with posture, the breath – inviting a… Read More »
Dear Friends, There have been times, when I’ve mentioned to friends or co-workers that I practice meditation and mindfulness, that I get the reply, “Oh, I could never do that – I can never stop thinking.” Jill addresses some of misconceptions we might have about thinking and meditation in the talk Mindfulness of the Mind. Many meditation instructions,… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the latter part of DaRa’s talk on The Five Hindrances, she describes 5 aspects of practicing with them, based on an acronym coined by Gill Fronsdal. B.E.L.L.A. Gil describes these steps more fully in this post:https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/hindrances-to-mindfulness-and-clarity/ Gil says, BELLA [is] the Italian word for “beautiful.” When the hindrances are overcome and mindfulness is strong, the… Read More »
Dear Friends, DaRa’s talk on The Five Hindrances looks at what the hindrances are, and then she shares a technique to work with them. So we’ll unpack that today and tomorrow. As we sit to meditate, we will certainly come across any number of challenges that get in the way of mindfulness and concentration. There’s a typical list… Read More »
