Dear Friends, Today we pause our exploration of the elements to cultivate kindness, a quality that can steady and support everything else we are exploring this month. This a way of staying grounded and resourced, so investigation is balanced by care. Insight Meditation teacher Rachel Lewis will sometimes start a meditation with this reminder: “Gravity is the earth’s… Read More »
Dear Friends, In a talk by Gil Fronsdal, he summarizes the four wise efforts as: If you’re not making it worse, don’t.If you are making it worse, stop.If you’re not making it better, make it better.If you are making it better, keep doing it. Talk: First Right Effort and Mettahttps://www.audiodharma.org/talks/9608?code=YLNL The first wise effort involves preventing unwholesome or… Read More »
Dear Friends, Right intention includes abandoning ill-will and cultivating goodwill (metta, also known as loving kindness). There are many ways to practice metta. You may be familiar with using phrases directed toward a benefactor, self, friend, neutral person, difficult person, and all beings. (See this post from 2021 for a discussion on this practice.) There’s also a practice… Read More »
Dear Friends, The last track in the retreat recordings, Reflection on Universal Well-Being Chant, is a traditional Buddhist chant, translated to English. Historically, teachings across many traditions were transmitted orally, and being able to chant the teachings in unison was a way to help the practitioners learn and memorize the teaching. You might have chants, hymns, or songs… 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, Continuing today with the talk on “The Brahma Viharas for Insight and Wisdom,” this time sharing some of Jill’s imagery when talking about the the many ways a kind heart can be expressed and respond wisely in the world. As Jill mentions, through our meditation practice, we can use a range of techniques to help make… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the third talk from the retreat, “The Brahma Viharas for Insight and Wisdom,” Jill brings in lots of ideas to unpack – so I’ll take a couple of days to bring out a few points I found helpful. Jill starts off by explaining two extremes we might notice in our own lives – one of… 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, with great kindness inspired by Gnossienne 2, by Erik Satie the way morning suntouches the sunflower leaf–you may say that’s not kindness,it’s just how it is. exactly.let me love like that Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerhttps://ahundredfallingveils.com/2019/08/26/with-great-kindness/ Somedays, it might feel far away, but kindness is a natural state we can access, and it’s something that we can cultivate… Read More »
Dear Friends, There’s a beautiful poem attributed to Hafiz: It Felt Love HowDid the roseEver open its heart And give to this worldAll itsBeauty? It felt the encouragement of lightAgainst itsBeing. Otherwise,We all remain Too Frightened. Hafiz and Daniel Ladinsky. The Gift. New York, Penguin / Arkana, 1999. (You can hear Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer sing a beautiful rendition… Read More »
Dear Friends, Continuing with Sally Armstrong’s talk, “The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice” – about the practice of metta – and also to balance out the negativity in the news… Sally says, We can be very overwhelmed by the dukkha, the suffering, in the world, the negativity. … where we know every disaster that’s… Read More »
Dear Friends, Continuing with Sally Armstrong’s talk, “The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice” – now turning to the practice of metta. There are many ways to translate metta: lovingkindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, acceptance, heartfulness. I was first taught this as “lovingkindness”, but as Sally mentions, “If we use the term “lovingkindness” – as soon… Read More »
Dear Friends, Continuing with Sally Armstrong’s talk, “The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice“, can you relate to this sentiment… What we often see is our minds are messy. They are relentless. They never stop. Unless we do this deliberate turning towards presence, towards the body, towards simplicity. ~ Sally Armstrong Or perhaps you recognize… Read More »
Dear Friends, As this month of reflection draws to a close, I’m going to circle back to the beginning of the book, where Christina Feldman presented how these practices work together to support one another: Kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are a family of qualities that support, strengthen, nourish, and balance one another. Immeasurable kindness teaches us a… Read More »
Dear Friends, Christina Feldman closes the first chapter on Immeasurable Kindness by discussing bringing metta into what she calls “the world of events and experience”. She notes that aversion can pop up in many scenarios, not just in the realm of human relationships. We can bring this quality of metta to whatever circumstances we encounter. Christina writes, We… Read More »
