Vegan. Digital craftsman. Tea explorer. Avid learner of things. Writes code @automattic.
This week, Sam shared parts of a video recording of a recent talk by Joseph Goldstein on “Why we meditate”. He discusses how it’s not just for peace of mind but also for understanding how our mind works, how habits dominate our minds, how the mind can be trained, and how the mind can be made our friend. Further, Joseph devotes some time to discussing suffering, impermanence, and “no-self”.
The talk is here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/90332.html
Every moment of life is filled with a constant stream of experience. Some pleasant, some unpleasant, some neutral, and we aren’t really AWARE of most of it. We just “wake up” every so often and discover a world around us that has a particular bearing on our heart. Then we struggle through that world until it changes and we repeat the process. But we DO have moments of awareness. There are brief instances in every life where experience has not stopped, but our heart is not dragged around by it.
We might call these moments Nibbana, and we might call the other moments Samsara, but since both are experiencing the same things, what’s the difference? How could Nibbana and Samsara co-exist? Perhaps neither of them are a state and both are actually actions.
Payton guided our Sangha this week as we investigated the nature of awareness and misperception. We listened to Carol Wilson discuss the topic in a recent talk from the IMS Forest Refuge.
You can hear the full talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/90176/
In all that we do or say or experience – what becomes our Karma, and what simply passes by and drops away? Are there behaviors we can’t help enacting? What does the voice in our head repeat and repeat? Is there a way precisely that irksome repetition can become the raw material for transforming our own lives?
Sometimes met as an exotic concept, mysteriously tangled with past lives and such, Karma can be understood as a workable force in the life which we are living — or which is living us — right now.
Drawing on the experiences and insights of a variety of practitioners and teachers, Michael guided our reflections this week as we explored Karma together.
Below are Michael’s notes from the talk:
The Buddha offers for our use these Five daily Reflections
“These are the facts that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.
These are the facts that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.
—Anguttara nickaya numerical discourses 5.57
A poem by Jane Kenyon embodying a skillful approach to impending death:
Otherwise
—Jane Kenyon wife of Donald Hall
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
Attributed to Lao Tzu in the Dao De Jing.
Watch your thoughts, they become words
watch your words, they become actions
watch your actions, they become habits
watch your habits, they become character
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
And poetry from a 14th Century Samurai, used today to talk about finding allies that can bring you to more skillful action.
I have no parents I make the heavens and earth my parents
I have no home I make awareness my home
I have no life or death I make the tides of breathing my life and death
I have no divine power I make honesty my power
I have no means I make understanding my means
I have no strategy I make opportunity my strategy
I have no principles I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles
I have no tactics I make emptiness and fulness my tactics
I have no enemy I make carelessness my enemy
I have no armor I make benevolence my armor
I have no castle I make immovable-mind my castle
I have no sword I make absence of self-concept my sword.
What is the opposite of freedom? Exploring this question leads to insights into the 2nd noble truth regarding craving. Are craving and desire the same? If not, how to tell the difference? How exactly do we let go of craving as the Buddha instructs? Is the path just a grim struggle until nirvana, or can we find relief, even pleasure, along our way? Eric drew on a talk by Matt Brensilver to explore these questions this Sunday.
You can listen to the talk here:
https://dharmaseed.org/talks/86614/
And the book Eric mentioned:
Universal Yoga, The Bhagavad Gita for Modern Times by Prem Prakash
Each day the world’s news offers us new provocations to distress. Relentlessly.
It’s so easy to be knocked off balance, and sometimes hard to find our way back. A kind of fixed rigidity can tempt us, as can the conviction that we could fix the situation, if only the world would listen. But these are paths that lead us into thickets of views, even further from balance.
Darryl, drawing on a talk by Rebecca Bradshaw, guided our reflections on a kind of discernment that can allow us to find the natural balance within, from which we can act skillfully and without distress.
You can listen to Rebecca’s talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/89301/
Being in nature seems always, since our beginnings, to have been profoundly relaxing and regenerating. When we look into this, do we
feel we are spectators, standing just outside nature, looking at it? Or are we an aspect of nature, aware of itself?
And what about the experience of the body? Am I located in my head, aware of the rest of me below? Or is the body self-aware?
The more we explore these questions experientially, the more we may come to see our body as a dimension of nature, which may not exactly answer the questions, but can deepen them.
Using an excerpt from a talk by Tara Brach, Jackie led us in exploring these questions in our own experience.
A link to the talk is here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/86325.html
When was the last time you listened to the sound of the wind in the trees? How about watching the gentle movements of a leaf or a pine needle? When our senses meet an experience, a complex chain of events occurs nearly instantly including the “feeling tone” of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral and leading all the way to thoughts and reactions. This is going on constantly, without cease. There’s no way we can be consciously aware of all of these events, these micro-judgments that color every moment of our lives, but we do pay attention to some of them. What do we pay attention to? An important question in meditative practice. But perhaps even more important is the question: what do we not notice? This week, Payton guided the Sangha’s investigation of what experiences we allow to filter into our conscious awareness and what other experiences there are.
Payton played a talk by Nathan Glyde which you can listen to here:
To begin to practice the dharma is a huge, significant step – and some of us can date the time of our beginning. What we don’t usually mark with anniversaries is the ways in which we discover to deepen and strengthen our practice, though this is what keeps us going year after year, and what truly transforms our lives.
Drawing on a dharma talk by Jill Shepherd, Don guided our exploration this week of maintaining and deepening our practice at various stages —as beginners looking for a recipe satisfying enough to keep us returning to the cushion, as longer term students who want to move beyond methods that have come to seem mechanical, to meditators with years and decades of experience who are rewarded by finding greater subtleties in practice—or by seeing how practice and daily life can work together to transform one another. Sharing off-the-cushion time with sangha can contribute to one’s depth of practice in many ways, as the Buddha recommended.
And then there is the question of finding an appropriate teacher, if that would seem helpful at certain stages. Where to find them? How to connect? & Finding a meaningful relationship are key questions when the time comes for some one-to-one guidance.
A link to the talk is below:
Ever seeking to keep practitioners on the path, The Buddha offered to his followers in ancient times, and to us today, Five Recollections. Calling these to mind every day can keep us alert to the difference practice can make.
Three may seem obvious, one shocking, and the last deeply reaffirming. This week, Sam guided our reflections, with excerpts from Dharma Teacher Devin Berry.
The recollections are:
I am of the nature to grow old, I cannot avoid aging;
I am of the nature to become ill, I cannot avoid illness;
I am of the nature to die, I cannot avoid death;
All that is mine, dear and delightful, will change and vanish;
I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related to my actions, and live dependent on my actions.
You can listen to Devin’s talk here:
In Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, Dhamma means both the teaching of the Buddha and the laws of Nature. And from the beginning, those training in the Dhamma were encouraged to spend significant time in out of doors.
Today too, immersing ourselves in Nature, we encounter vast treasures of teachings and inspiration that regenerate us. Drawing excerpts from talks by Buddhist teachers Mark Coleman and Michele McDonald, as well as lessons learned from her own little monarch butterfly garden, Lorilee shared with us this week ways in which we can open ourselves up to experiencing nature, without and within.
https://dharmaseed.org/talks/41161/
Rest and Courage by Michele McDonald
https://dharmaseed.org/talks/89241/
Being the Earth – Rapture, Rupture, Regeneration by Mark Coleman
