Burlington Buddhist Sangha

This Sunday, Rebecca led our reflections, focusing on a text by Swami Ramachakara (William Walker Atkinson) on Gnani Yoga as a way to approach The One.

She read from “Gnani Yoga, the Yoga of Wisdom,” Lesson 1, “The One,”.

Joey led our reflections this past Sunday. To understand the four Brahma Viharas–lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity–as embraced within the larger framework of Empathy can give new depth to our understanding, new life to our practice.

Here are the talks she played:

Brahmaviharas as relational practices by Akincano Marc Weber

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/360/talk/43576/

Practicing with Views and Opinions: Cultivating empathy Donald Rothberg

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/55/talk/37382/

“For Warmth
I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm –
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems

Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.
– Pema Chodron

This Sunday, Payton led the sangha’s exploration of contentment in two parts.

The first part was a guided meditation by Rick Hanson, a psychologist and author of several books about contentment. The meditation is on Dharmaseed at the following link.

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/312/talk/12170/

The second part was extracts from a dharma talk by Caroline Jones entitled “The practice of contentment”. Caroline quotes Ram Dass as once saying that contentment requires us to “plumb the depths of this moment”. She also quotes Christina Feldman’s classic question, “what in this moment is truly lacking?” Caroline’s talk is available at the following link.

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/362/talk/26871/

Michael guided our discussion November 26 on the topic “Pleasure and Enjoyment in Meditation.” Here are some of the key sources brought together in our discussion.

Many meditators treat practice as a duty, and the role of pleasure is ignored. But both canonical texts and contemporary neurological research point out the importance of pleasure in cultivating a meditation practice.

For example,

The 5th and 6th steps of Buddha’s detailed instructions on breathing meditation in the Anapanasati Sutta are
“[5] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.’ [6] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.’

Contemporary meditation master Sayadaw U Tejaniya, author of “Awareness Alone is Not Enough” among other books, puts it this way:
When you experience good mind states, actively remember them.
Remind yourself that you are experiencing a good mind state, 
that good mind states are possible,
that this is how a good mind state feels.
In this way you reinforce the understanding
of the good states you experience.

The effectiveness of utilizing pleasurable experience to cultivate the meditative mind is corroborated by the neurological research of Ron Hanson, whose 20-minute Ted Talk on the “Hardwiring Happiness” can be found on Youtube.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu stresses the importance of finding and cultivating a deeply pleasant experience of breathing in his transcribed talk “The How and the Why of Meditation.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/meditations.html#howwhy

If you are a subscriber to Tricycle, you have access to the archive of dharma talks on their website. Of particular interest is the last session of a course offered by Culadasa and Matthew Immergut, March 2016, in which our management of mental drifting and forgetting is managed.

Dharma Talks Archive

And finally, the wonderful book “Meditation for the Love of It,” by Sally Kempton offers much good guidance to practitioners in many traditions, including Buddhism.

This Sunday, Steve Barry led our Sangha’s discussions. He brought up perspectives on the variety of modes and methods of practice we might engage as our practice evolves.

Here is the link to the Dhamma talk by Akincano (Marc Weber) on Dharmaseed:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/360/talk/28584/

The talk and the discussion focused on modes of practice, i.e. stillness/samadhi and insight/investigation.

Mike Blouin guided our reflections this past Sunday, focusing on looking deeply into Vedana, the immediate sense of pleasure, displeasure or neutrality woven into every experience. Our preferences and habit, emerge and solidify from this point of origin. What can be done to modify our responses?

One talk he played was a Joseph Goldstein excerpt: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/40392/

And the other was a Brian Lesage talk: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/484/talk/25334/

This Sunday, Patrick led the Sangha on the topic of Engaged Buddhism.

Here is a link to the talk he played:

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/175/talk/2016/

The title is Reverence for Life: The Essence of Engaged Buddhism

This past Sunday, Sam led the Sangha on the topic of “Don’t know mind”.

The three talks we heard excerpts from are:

Jack Kornfield, “On Not Knowing”, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, 3/21/2000,

Eugene Cash, “Not Knowing”, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, 5/14/2013,

Yanai Postelnik, “Not Knowing”, 3/20/2015.

The quote he read was from the book “No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth” by Ken Wilber, Shambhala Press, 1979.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha-to-be, became a yogi when he left his father’s palace to “go forth” in pursuit of liberation….He sought out and studied with the greatest yogis of his day–including approximately five years of study with the well-known yogis Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. Under their tutelage, the young aspirant studied the most sophisticated yogic meditation techniques then known…stages of Dharana and dhyana, and which Buddhist teaching describes as the jhanas (concentrations).” (Stephen Cope: The Wisdom of Yoga.) As a deep yoga practitioner, he became part of a movement known in India as the great “shamanic stream”, a culture of dedicated yogis actively engaged in experimentation with the goal of complete liberation. Following his enlightenment, the Buddha’s teachings were then adopted by some yogic adepts. For almost a thousand years following his death, yogic and Buddhist teachings developed side-by-side, practitioners exchanged philosophies and practices, debated their differences, and shared many common threads.

This past Sunday Lorilee presented an overview of the historic cross-pollination between yoga and Buddhism, and lead our sangha in experiences to taste the effects of yogic concentration and meditation techniques (as described by Patanjali) both similar to, and different from classic Buddhist practices.

Below is attached a PDF that she made for the meeting.

Yoga and Buddhism

Apropos to some discussion last week, this Sunday Mike B led the Sangha on the topic of Engaged Buddhism.

Many have criticized the Buddhist path over the centuries for its inward focus, but in fact the Buddha himself was a powerful advocate for peace and equality. Buddhist leaders like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have had a profound social impact in our current era. The Bodhisattva vows are entirely devoted to changing not just ourselves, but the whole world.
 
The challenge for those engaged in such a practice is to enter the world of conflicting ideas and strong opinions with kindness, compassion, and without becoming overwhelmed.

Here are the talks which Mike played:

Tara Brach’s talk: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/175/talk/27859/

Ruth King’s talk: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/539/talk/26256/

An article that includes the Fourtheen Precepts of the Order of Interbeing: https://www.lionsroar.com/the-fourteen-precepts-of-engaged-buddhism/