January 30 – The path ahead
Dear Friends, I think many of us come to contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness from a place of suffering, discontent, pain, grief, disconnection. We are looking for some relief. At least that was true for me. And through practicing, I have found certain deeply ingrained patterns that contribute to painful states, and the body/heart/mind is learning different ways to respond with more wisdom. (Still a work in progress, of course.) But as I have continued to practice, it has become more apparent to me the deep interconnection between all of us, and that what we do matters. Mark Coleman closes his book this way: In conclusion, through the journey of mindfulness, as we become more aware, we begin to wake up, personally and collectively, to our common humanity and our shared responsibility. With this awareness, we see our interconnectedness and understand that our role, in part, is to be…
January 24 – Responding from a broader perspective
Dear Friends, A friend of mine welcomed a new granddaughter into the world on Saturday. And at the same time, her 95 year-old mother-in-law is in palliative care. This reminds me of a verse in Sarah Slean’s song “Cosmic Ballet“ Sick woman in a sick bed waitingLight fast fading in her eyesSomewhere else, another light is fallingTurning into newborn cries Sarah Slean. “Cosmic Ballet.” Land & Sea, Pheromone Recordings, 2011. Sarah describes this as the “Ebb and flowing of an ancient ocean / Oh, the cosmic ballet.” And she tells us “A dancer you must be.” We’re all subject to the full range of joys and sorrows in the world. I once thought that if I could “get rid” of the pain, loss, failure, and blame, then life would be good… but of course if we don’t open ourselves to the pain and sorrow, we’re also not open for the…
January 23 – Here comes the judge
Dear Friends, I have noticed a particularly sticky thought pattern. It’s the one that says to me, “You’re not good enough. You should be doing more. You always lose your keys – how can you be that disorganized. You’ll never be able to do that thing, so why even try.” And on and on. Mark Coleman wrote a whole book about the inner critic. (See Make Peace With Your Mind: : How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic) This is a very painful pattern, and it seemed like I became even more aware of this pattern when I started meditating. (Which, of course, cued even more criticism, “You can’t even meditate well! Geesh!”) This voice is a constant buzz – comparing everything “me” to some invented ideal – the one who is skinnier, fitter, smarter, always organized, and effortlessly perfect. And the “me” never can measure…
January 21 – Thinking about thoughts
Dear Friends, Thinking Don’t you wish they would stop, all the thoughtsswirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancerstapping their way across the stage? I should rake the leavesin the carport, buy Christmas lights. Was there really life on Mars?What will I cook for dinner? I walk up the driveway,put out the garbage bins. I should stop using plastic bags,visit my friend whose husband just left her for the Swedish nanny.I wish I hadn’t said Patrick’s painting looked “ominous.”Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called. Does the car need oil again?There’s a hole in the ozone the size of Texas and everythingseems to be speeding up. Come, let’s stand by the windowand look out at the light on the field. Let’s watch how the cloudsover the sun and almost nothing stirs in the grass. Danusha Lamérishttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/152787/thinking-5e501c75668a4 When Danusha Laméris talks about wishing all the thoughts would stop, I think…
December 31 – Welcome!
Dear Friends, The practices of mindfulness and meditation have been such incredible supports for me in the challenges of life, including 2020! That is what has motivated me to study and practice and share with others. This is the sixth year I have offered this daily email in January, and I’m honoured that you have chosen to join me in this iteration. This year, I am going to be gathering and sharing resources and practices that will be useful when I have an opportunity to teach to a six-week introductory training in mindfulness course later this spring. It is my hope that you will find this useful in establishing and strengthening your own practice, and that together, we will plant seeds of kindness and wisdom in ourselves and in the world. Here’s a poem to invite us into this month together: There is no such thing as a “safe space”…
January 4 – Mindfulness: kind, interested, relaxed attention
Dear Friends, Continuing with Sally Armstrong’s talk, “The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice“, and her discussion on mindfulness… Sally shares various definitions of mindfulness, but I really resonate with the definition that Jeanne Corrigal offers: Mindfulness is paying attention, with open, curious interest, to what is happening within and around us, with the intention of responding wisely to our experience. ~ Jeanne Corrigal Jeanne’s definition brings in many of the points that Sally highlights in her talk. Sally mentions, “We want to be in the present moment, but we need to know what for.” Sally also describes this as “an inner knowing and an outer connectedness to what’s happening in the world” – an engaged practice. Sally describes the aspect of “wise mindfulness” as “onward-leading” – in the direction to the increase in skillful qualities like kindness and wisdom, and decrease in unskillful qualities, like greed…
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 19 – Recognition without self-deception
Dear Friends, Chapter 9 of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English is titled “Mental States”, and it delves into the specifics from the discourse, where we are instructed to know whether the mind is greedy or not greedy hate or not hateful deluded or not deluded contracted or distracted (or not) great or narrow surpassable or not surpassable concentrated or not concentrated liberated or not liberated The Entering the Path class describes this section as “recognition without self-deception”. Bhikkhu Anālayo it’s just about recognizing – we don’t have to do anything about it at this point. We need to first recognize it. He says, If as soon as I recognize that I’m angry, I immediately bash it out, and next time I recognize, I immediately bash it out, next time, I won’t recognize it anymore, because I have trained myself in the fact that recognizing any defilement in myself, I’m…
January 26 – Generosity to yourself
Dear Friends, Mark Coleman has said that generosity often radial – it’s often easier to be generous with others but stingy with ourselves. He asks us to reflect: What would it be to practice more generosity to ourselves? What would you give yourself to be generous? For some, it might be more space, or more time. Maybe doing less. Maybe resting more. When Susie Harrington was in Saskatoon to lead a retreat last November, she told us how her upbringing led her to be very frugal, and she would often find herself ordering something off a menu that she didn’t like because it was a dollar cheaper than something she liked better. In another talk, Mark Coleman mentioned that when he first moved to San Francisco, he would often buy groceries that were cheaper and scrimp on the nutrition to save money. For both teachers, it became a practice to…
January 25 – On the receiving end
Dear Friends, Generosity is a quality that makes us feel happy, bright, and expansive – whether giving, receiving, or both. Yesterday, one of our participants shared a beautiful reflection about being on the receiving end of generosity. I think this is an important part of this practice of generosity – to be able to receive, with mindfulness, what is generously offered. I think, in many ways, being on the receiving end of generosity is difficult in our North American culture. I remember one time when I went out for supper with my parents, and an aunt and uncle and cousin. At the end of the meal, my cousin paid for everything! Alas, my dad wasn’t very gracious about this… on the ride home, dad was so busy fretting whether my cousin could really afford it, that he missed the joy my cousin experienced in doing this special thing. Likewise, some people…
January 24 – Gift of presence
Dear Friends, When it comes to generosity, we often have a limited sense of what generosity means – that it involves a monetary exchange or some grand act. In one of Mark Coleman’s talks on generosity, he says that our own presence and attention is a most powerful thing to give. In that talk he tells the story of a woman who generously gave of her time and presence to a stranger she met at a laundromat. I found this story particularly inspiring. It’s worth reading in full here: https://whitepage4u.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/the-gift-of-acceptance-real-story/ One little clip from the story, which shows what a gift our presence can be: You asked me for nothing and gave me something that I will carry with me until I leave this earth. You gave me acceptance, respect and treated me with a gentle regard for the person I was. … No-one has ever been so kind without expecting something…
January 20 – take 10
Dear Friends, Here’s a short exercise to bring mindfulness to the changing nature of feeling tone. Mark Coleman, in week 8 of the on-line course Essential Buddhist Teachings 1, said, “Another thing about pleasant experiences is how quickly we acclimatize.” For this exercise, he suggests that you eat one of your favorite pieces of food, and notice the difference between the first bite and the 10th bite. First bite might be, “wow, this is really good – no wonder it’s my favorite food” Second bite might be, “yeah, it’s pretty good” Third bite might be, “it’s good”. At some point it might be, “what’s next?” He suggests the senses become dulled by contact. Perhaps you can try this today! What do you notice? With best wishes, Andrea G
January 16 – body and the elements
Dear Friends, Another way to contemplate body, as specified in the Satipatthana Sutta, is in terms of the elements: And further, monks, a monk reflects on this very body, however it be placed or disposed, by way of the material elements: “There are in this body the element of earth, the element of water, the element of fire, the element of wind.” Why would we contemplate the body in this way? I like this description from Ajaan Lee of : Think of this analysis, not as an attempt at biology or chemistry — the sciences we use to analyze the body from the outside — but as a way of analyzing how the body feels from the inside. In Awake in the Wild, Mark Coleman offers this explanation: We can come to better know our connection with all life forms by considering the universal elements of life: earth, fire, water,…