To enter with mindful intention into the new year, Joey drew from Sally Clough Armstrong’s dharma talk on the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness. This talk offers an overview of the many roads that through practice can lead to liberation.
Sangha New Years Eve Day 2017/8
In this season of sincere resolutions often not skillfully made, our focus was on wise intention, the second step of the eightfold path. Michael led our reflections, beginning with a look at the inscription on the wooden Han which is struck with a mallet to call monks to meditate at Soto Zen monasteries (Here, Tassajara).
Listen Everyone. Birth & Death is Given Once. This moment Now is Gone.
Awake each one Awake! Don’t Waste This Life
We explored the ways in which advice about how to make and keep resolutions seemed to support or ignore wise intention. Most of the advice given is of the ‘true grit’ variety, just bring yourself to follow your resolutions with will power. Research has shown this approach lasts on average until January 8 before the resolutions collapse.
A more discriminating approach can be found in the NYT article titled “How to Make and Keep a New Years Resolution” which focuses on the processes by which bad habits are cued, and (those cues seen) can be replaced by more wholesome habits.
https://www.nytimes.com/guides/smarterliving/resolution-ideas
The Buddha’s advice about modifying one’s own behavior can be discovered in his counsel to his son Rahula, which is the subject of dhamma talks by Ajahn Lee Dhammadaro and Ajahan Thanissaro. Here, a rational and an empirical analysis of one’s behavior and its effects on oneself and other can lead to action purified of delusion and harm.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/pathtopeace.html
A contemporary approach which is consonant with dharma wisdom while being offered in a secular forum, is offered in the New York Times Sunday Review for December 29,2017, under the title “The only Way to Keep Your Resolutions.” David DeSteno’s extensive research has led him to focus on the emotional ground or mindset in which resolutions are being undertaken. His research has demonstrated that self control and delayed gratification, characteristics of most people who reach their goals and achieve a real measure of happiness, are richly supported by taking time to reflect on gratitude, compassion, and justifiable pride or sense of accomplishment. As you know, at least two of these reflections are supported by classical Buddhist meditations. He makes the most complete connection between the overall mindset out of which action proceeds, and the effect of those actions on the person undertaking them. His article is worth reading in full
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/opinion/sunday/the-only-way-to-keep-your-resolutions.html?_r=0
In sum, since the Buddha himself placed Wise Intentions early in the path of practice, we might do well to give it the kind of thoughtful attention that could really improve our lives and the lives of those around us.
Christmas Eve Day Sangha
Michael guided our reflections this morning, with a focus on faith or trust, with an aim toward looking into what it is that we trust in ourselves, and what we have learned not to trust.
The holidays present us with the apparent demand that we trust in religious faith, or communal celebratory spirit, and it can be useful to have a balance against that pressure, to allow us to look into our selves, and find what, amid the changing surfaces of life, seems constantly reliable. Strategies for protecting that space are the subject of this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye:
The Art of Disappearing.
When they say Don’t I know you? say no.
When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they say we should get together.
say why? It’s not that you don’t love them any more.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees.
The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.
When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
The process of establishing boundaries sketched in, we then turned to contemplate what it is we might trust all the way down. Prompting our conversation on this subject was an 11 minute video by spiritual teacher Gangaji. The particular talk that we watched is not available for circulation, but there are plenty of talks on trust by Gangaji available on YouTube. Here’s a link to a talk she gave introducing a retreat devoted to the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8vG1X75oOE&t=24s
Our conversation ranged broadly, anchored by a respect for right wisdom about how best to spend our time to cultivate a new birth in our own lives.
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.
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.
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
