January 29 – The path we’ve travelled
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 2 – Mindfulness is… – I presented my definition of mindfulness – in the course of this month, how have you refined your understanding of mindfulness? 3 – How did the rose ever open its heart? – kindness is an essential part of our mindfulness practice, allowing us to open to our inner goodness, and to meet experience with less resistance 4 – Taking your seat – some posture pointers for meditation 5 – Exhale and inhale – mindfulness of breathing 6 – Embodied awareness – bringing mindfulness to the body in…
January 1 – What’s Your Why?
Dear Friends, A new year tradition for many people is to set some resolutions… lose weight, meditate every day, run a marathon! And before the month is through, many people will have given up on keeping those resolutions. In previous years, I have written about the usefulness of setting an intention – for the year, month, day, or the next meditation session. We set our intention, and we can course-correct as we veer off-course. In an article for Mindful, Elaine Smookler wrote: Intentions help you stay oriented toward your goal when strong emotions, exhaustion, boredom, or hunger threaten to throw you off course. Intentions connect deeply to your true heart’s desire, to what really matters to you, and use that rudder to set your course forward. An intention isn’t a wish or a fantasy. It isn’t a proclamation of who or how you think you should be. It comes from truly…
January 1 – The first step depends on the last
Dear Friends, A talk by Joseph Goldstein this summer started with this quote from René Daumal’s Mount Analogue: Keep your eye fixed on the way to the top, but don’t forget to look right in front of you. The last step depends on the first. Don’t think you’re there just because you see the summit. Watch your footing, be sure of the next step, but don’t let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last. René Daumal, Mount Analogue As Joseph comments, the last step depends on the first – we have to take the first steps… maybe we’re doing that today… Starting the year off with meditation and reflection! That first step also depends upon the last. Joseph says, “The direction of our journey, the direction of our first steps depends on our understanding of what the last step is. It’s helpful to…
January 1 – What is your opening sentence?
Dear Friends, The first lines of a book, a speech, a song, a movie, often points to the subject or theme that will be explored in the work. (You can probably think of several opening lines that have stayed with you over the years.) Christina Feldman starts A Boundless Heart with this paragraph: There is no greater love than the immeasurable friendliness that can embrace all beings, all events, and all experiences with unshakeable kindness. There is no compassion greater than the fearless heart that can turn toward suffering and pain, tremble with empathy, and live with the commitment to end the causes of anguish. There is no greater happiness than inwardly generated joy and peace. There is no equanimity more unshakeable than the profound poise of the liberated heart that can meet the world of ungraspable conditions and events without being shattered. page 1 This is what we’re going…
January 22 – Your meditation is always successful
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 cultivating mindfulness of the body, awareness of the body in the body; awareness of the feeling tone – the qualitative tone of our experience; and … cultivating awareness of mind, mind states, things that are coloring our mind. Mindfulness of dhammas is more of a wisdom element, and a reflective element in the practice. This doesn’t mean thinking about our experience. We’re in particular paying attention to the causal nature of our experience. How things arise and how things cease to be. … Understanding that, we understand a lot about our experience,…
January 15 – Harmful and beneficial feelings
Dear Friends, Welcome to the beginning of our third week together! As you recommit to your intention for practice, here are some helpful words just posted on Tara Brach’s Facebook page: It is helpful to start your meditation with a reflection on what matters to you. Some meditation students bring to mind an all-encompassing aspiration, while others focus on a particular intention for the sitting or the day. For instance, you might connect with your aspiration for loving fully or decide to embrace whatever difficult emotions arise during your practice. You might aspire to the truth— to really see what is happening and what is real— or you might have the particular intention to recognize and let go of thoughts. When you begin by asking your heart what matters, you are already on the path to presence. This week, we’ll continue exploring feeling, and then move into mind states. Chapter…
January 1 – Intention and the breath
Dear Friends, Welcome to 2018 and the first email of our month together! You have reasons why you signed up for this series. Perhaps you are seeking steadiness in a turbulent life, forming deeper connection with others, creating conditions that will lead to peace, or many other reasons. Try to articulate this reason, as this intention will help you stay motivated when life gets busy or turns upside-down. In an article entitled Intention Setting 101, Melissa Eisler writes, An intention is a guiding principle for how you want to be, live, and show up in the world—during meditation, yoga or any area of your life. Ask yourself, what matters most to you? Your answer could form a powerful intention, for which you can align your thoughts for your meditation—and the intention doesn’t need to stop when the meditation ends. It can then guide your actions as you move through your day. She…
January 31 – Month end recap
Dear Friends, Today is the last day of the 5 day retreat with Adrianne Ross, so I’ll be back to the land of technology later this afternoon. I thank you for your patience! Meanwhile, here’s a reflection for today! I look forward to catching up with your responses. It’s hard to believe we’re at the end of January! It’s been a busy month, with lots of opportunities for exploration. I hope you’ve found some practices that resonate with you. Today, I’ll briefly recap some of the key points and practices that we’ve covered. Start with intention – we started (and ended) the month by exploring intention; it’s a great thing to reflect on – at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of a meditation, whenever. Complete the day/meditation/whatever with a review or dedication. It’s a way to affirm the skillful things you did, and to reconnect with our…
January 30 – Reconnect with intention
Dear Friends, I’m on retreat right now, so here’s a post to keep you inspired while I’m not engaging with email and the internet. I won’t be able to respond to your emails or posts until Tuesday afternoon. Feel free to share your thoughts below to inspire the others reading these posts. Well, here we are, almost at the end of January. That went fast! 🙂 We started the month connecting with our deepest values and using that to set an intention that’s aligned with our values. That intention can then become a source of motivation, energy, and resilience to keep going when daily life stuff gets in the way. We can set intentions at the beginning of a meditation period, at the beginning of a day, at the beginning of the month. Regardless of the time period, it’s a good idea to revisit your intention along the way to see what’s working well…
January 2 – Creating a container of safety
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 Life Practice Retreat includes a discussion of the precepts: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/6526.html She says: precepts aren’t a list of “should”s or shouldn’t”s but are often described as “training rules” – an exploration – what does it mean, how does it work, what happens? Toward the end of the talk, she explains how the precepts apply more broadly, beyond the retreat setting: “the precepts are a place of cultivating wholesome and beautiful qualities in relationship with each other, not only in this room, but in the world.” In the January 2017 issue of the Lion’s Roar magazine,…
January 1 – Start with intention
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, it’s a wonderful time to pause, reflect, and set an intention for 2017. An intention, unlike a goal, isn’t about achieving the next big thing, or moving up the ladder. It’s about how you’re being, in this moment. In a similarly titled article, “The Power of Intention“, Rick Hanson, Ph.D. writes: To make the most of your life, to nourish the causes of happiness for yourself and others, it takes strength, clear intentions, and persistent effort. In the fuller article, he suggests a practice to help you frame your deepest intentions, something he…
January 2 – goals, intention
Dear Friends, One of my big tasks at work this month will be working with my team to our articulate goals for 2016. Goal setting is something many people do. Intentions are different than goals. I found a good description of the distinction between goals and intentions, by Phillip Moffitt: Goal making is a valuable skill; it involves envisioning a future outcome …, then planning, applying discipline, and working hard to achieve it. … Committing to and visualizing those goals may assist you in your efforts, but … . They both involve living in an imagined future and are not concerned with what is happening to you in the present moment. With goals, the future is always the focus: Are you going to reach the goal? Will you be happy when you do? What’s next? Setting intention, at least according to Buddhist teachings, is quite different than goal making. It…
January 1 – set your intention
Dear Friends, This past May, I had an opportunity to sit with Susie Harrington and Anne Cushman at the Lost Coast Retreat. As we neared the end of the retreat, Anne shared her tips on “How To Maintain A Daily Practice of Almost Anything“. The first step is “Set Your Intention.” Many of you are familiar with Jeanne’s analogy: she likens intention to geese flying south for the winter. Jeanne reminds us the geese are often off-course, having been buffeted by various weather systems along the way. Yet, through their innate intention, the geese are able make the necessary corrections to ultimately arrive at their destination. I invite you to consider what your intention is as we embark on this month-long journey together. What will help you make the necessary corrections as you get buffeted by the inevitable weather systems? Anne Cushman suggests, “Get very clear about what you want…