Burlington Buddhist Sangha

Sharing Joy, celebrating the good fortune that comes to others, can be quite individual. But it can also be deeply social – as when we work for social justice to change the lives of others for the better.  We can work with joyful hearts to move beyond racism, economic inequality, gender bias and the like, rather than casting our work as a series of battles.  

This Sunday, Ellen shared excerpts from a dharma talk by Tuere Sala and led us in a Mudita meditation to bring the full and transformative power of the Brahma Viharas to support this shift in perspective.

You can listen to the talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/76912.html

Gratitude is a doorway into our practice. We are always in relationship – interdependent with everything around us.  An attitude of gratitude – fully realizing ‘I am receiving this in this moment’ – can be felt in the body. It relaxes and calms the mind.  We are unstuck, and the world looks new.

With open eyes, we receive, learn and grow.  We live complicated lives; we love complicated human beings.  Grateful attention is a key dimension of skillful mindfulness, at the heart of the Eight-Fold Path.

This week, Eveline guided our discussion, sharing portions of two dharma talks: Shelly Graf on “Pragmatic Gratitude” and Susie Harrington on “Gratitude as Doorway to Belonging”. 

You can find the talks here:

• Shelly Graf: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/83099/
• Susie Harrington: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/69664/

Stress is at the heart of most suffering, and many teachers today have begun to use “Stress” as the best translation of Dukkha.  Stress is stressful not only because we resist it, but because we actually  participate in its creation as well.  Ironically, we may seek to ‘cure’ it by engaging in other activities that are themselves stressful. Or I may ruminate on stressful memories, or dwell on future activities that involve high stresses, like completing the to-do list.  

But if we sit in the present moment and observe, we find there really is no stress inherently here.  To be able to be in the present moment and observe our experience frees us, allowing us to let go of our Self and be empty of stress. Jackie guided this session, drawing on excerpts from a talk by Howard Cohn, pursuing an inquiry into the nature of stress and its resolutions.

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/83128.html

All indigenous healing systems highlight the elements we humans share with the physical world we inhabit, and from which we arise—Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Lorilee facilitated our session this week based in a guided Gaia meditation by Jenny Wilks, exploring our true nature and what we are made of.

You can listen to the meditation here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/84037/

We have each been tasked with a huge project called “my life”. Moment by moment we are steering this project, trying to maximize our happiness. Using feedback from feeling in the body, our thinking mind evaluates our experience and creates strategies. The main tool of the mind is language, our constant self-talk. 

In a talk titled “Language is the hammer and every problem, a nail” Dharma Teacher Matthew Brensilver investigates this usual process and advocates an alternative approach, using non-judgmental awareness. Jeff used Matthew’s talk to frame our reflections as we investigated the benefits of this shift of focus in living more effectively.

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/83885/

Some quotes:

In most moments life feels like a problem to be solved

To solve our problems we need language

To dissolve them we need awareness

Non-judgmental awareness is very foreign to some part of our system

We build stories out of positive or negative feeling, not out of neutral feeling

With compulsive pressure to manage the project of our life, language is the tool that we use to orchestrate our life

When we learn the Dharma we treat all phenomena as false alarms

Matthew also gave a talk at IMC titled “Dharmette: Fear and Language” which complements the “hammer” talk:

https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/20282

Faith is often translated from the Pali language, as saddhā, which means “to place the heart upon”. However, in these times of great change and crisis, what do we place our heart upon? Buddhism teaches that everything is changing and impermanent. So, how do we cultivate the wisdom and the resolve to act, when there is no ground to stand on and we have no control of how things will turn out? This week, Sonia spotlights a talk from Narayan Helen Liebenson about faith, for us to explore these questions together.

The talk Sonia played is available here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/2946/

Sonia also read this quote

a person who falls off of a very high cliff. This person is in free fall, without anything to catch them. Terrified, the body tenses up. The mind is consumed with fear: “This is not going to end well!” However, after falling for some time, this person looks down and realizes that there is no ground. There is just empty space below. At this point, they relax. They begin to enjoy the falling. This person recognizes that they are being held by the Dharma, the nature of things, the way things are.

– Liebenson, Narayan Helen. The Magnanimous Heart: Compassion and Love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation (p. 119). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.

Though magick and mysticism have a place in most world religions, their significance is often not appreciated. Yet the prevalence of such practices in spiritual life —even in the Buddhist canon—raises the question of their appropriate place in our models of practice and awakening.

This Sunday, Tucker traced the magickal elements (commonly referred to as the “psychic powers”) that are present in early dharma, across time and into contemporary buddhism. It can be revealing to consider our engagement (or lack of engagement) to these experiences, as our practice grows and unfolds.

What is the experience of gravity on your mind? It’s very common in our culture to separate the mind from the body as though they were separate entities, living their own lives, just coincidentally in the same place some of the time. While there are certain lenses through which this concept seems true, we often find ourselves suffering when we realize that this is a comfortable fiction. In fact, the interweaving of body and mind may be one of the fundamental laws of the universe, like gravity. This week, Payton engaged us in the practice of bringing awareness to the body and how essential this is to our practice, continuing the theme of embodiment from last week’s Sangha.

Payton played a talk by Yanai Postelnik which you can listen to here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/64417

Many Buddhist teachers remind us in multiple ways that we are not what we seem to be, the separate embodied selves from which our ego identities rise. Instead, we are encouraged to discover that we are the wind, the rain, the ocean, the mountain and the stars. 

What does that mean, and how can we wrap our minds and hearts around it? This Sunday Jane presented a talk by Yanai Postelnik, in honor of Earth Day and Earth Month, called “Being Part of it All,” pointing to ways in which meditation and mindfulness practice can help us to experience the truth of that concept.

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/11579/

Jane also read a poem by Mary Oliver from “What can I say” which you can read here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/920664-what-can-i-say-that-i-have-not-said-before

At first, it can come as a surprise that Not Knowing can be so crucial to Dharma practice.  In most of our engagements in the world – school, work, friendship, counseling, and so forth – the last thing we want to say — to admit — is that we don’t know.  Yet in Buddhism, that very response may be sought, even prized.

Eric guided our reflections on this puzzling feature of the path this Sunday, drawing on insights from biology, Zen koan study, and Vipassana.

Eric read a short excerpt from Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake.

There was a short talk on the classic Zen Koan on Not Knowing (note: paywalled) transitioning us into meditation by Henry Shukman of Mountain Cloud Zen Center.

We then listened to a talk by Matt Brensilver, which you can listen to here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/80528