Dear Friends, In Questions and Answers, Jill and DaRa respond to some of the questions that participants had written. Today and tomorrow, I’ll pick out a couple of their responses that have resonated with some of my own questions about the practice. One question was about the hindrance of doubt: Confusion is at times, natural. For example, not… 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 »
Dear Friends, So now that we’ve zipped through four weeks of material, and we’re nearing the end of January, I thought we could take a step back and have a big picture of what we’ve been cultivating this month. 1 – What’s your why – setting an intention can help us stay oriented in our practice and life… Read More »
Dear Friends, Yesterday’s post listed five common categories of challenges we may encounter in our meditation — and in life. Today, I’ll offer a few ideas of ways we can work with these challenges. The first thing is to recognize that these are habitual states of mind, so we don’t have to make this a problem. We do… Read More »
Dear Friends, With the prospect of strong winds and snow across much of Saskatchewan over the next day or two, there’s a good chance things here will look a bit like a snow globe that has been shaken up. We won’t be able to see the buildings or trees clearly as the snow is whipped up and swirled… Read More »
Dear Friends, Gil Fronsdal wrote: Because we tend not to see clearly when the hindrances are present, the Buddhist teachings strongly encourage people not to make decisions while under their influence. If possible, wait to make a decision when the mind is more settled or clear. So if you have something big on your to do list today,… Read More »
Dear Friends, As we enter into the fourth week of our daily emails, our focus now moves to the fourth way of establishing mindfulness, mindfulness of dhammas, which can be translated as mindfulness of phenomena or “stuff”. As Mark Coleman explains in a lecture from Essential Buddhist Teachings, The other three [ways of establishing mindfulness] – we were… Read More »
Dear Friends, In A Path With Heart, Jack Kornfield mentions a Tibetan practice called “Making Difficulties into the Path” and he shared a prayer that is recited before each step of practice: Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation… Read More »
Dear Friends, From Shantideva, an eighth-century Buddhist master: There’s nothing that does not grow light Through habit and familiarity. Putting up with little cares I’ll train myself to bear with great adversity. In chapter 5 of True Refuge, Tara Brach suggests a way of dealing with these “little cares” through a process she calls “light RAIN” – a… Read More »
Dear Friends, In Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, Jack Kornfield explains the first hindrance of desire as follows: The first hindrance is desire for sense pleasure: pleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily sensations, and mind states. What’s the problem with desire–what’s wrong with it? Nothing, really. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying pleasant experiences. … But they fool us.… Read More »
Dear Friends, In her book, Happiness is an Inside Job, Sylvia Boorstein discusses a difficult scenario and different possible reactions one might have in that scenario. I’ve adapted her example below… Scenario: You walk out of your apartment and notice all the tires on your car have been stolen. You’re so upset you… a) walk to the nearest… Read More »