Monday, August 21, we will meet online.
Need Zoom tech support? Email Phyllis here.
(support available before sangha starts)
Dear Friends, this week we will meet on Monday evening online 7-8:30PM, Wednesday morning from 7-8AM at our meditation space (3812 Northampton St), and Friday 12-1PM online.
On Monday we will read the Five Mindfulness Trainings and focus on the 1st Training Reverence for Life. Camille will facilitate.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings are one of the most concrete ways to practice mindfulness. They are not commandments, but rather invitations to consider our ways of living. They support us in practicing compassion and understanding.
The First Mindfulness Training: Reverence for Life
“Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.”
Whenever I read the Mindfulness Trainings I’m surprised by something new I learn or wisdom I didn’t really absorb the last time I read it. They are always refreshing and gratifying and often insightful.
I began my summer with many worries, about my parents and their health, our kids as they face new challenges, friends passing, siblings’ sick, my own health and mortality, and devastation in our environment from floods, fires, hurricanes due mostly to neglect in our care of Mother Earth. I can often carry a lot on my shoulders, feeling fear and sadness, and then yearning to somehow find a way out for this world and everyone in it. I sometimes admonish myself for not being able to make things better or heal the world and all in it.
As I read this training - I am reminded of something that Sr Dang Nghiem, a Plum Village nun said, that when remembering this training - I can have reverence for not only the lives of others and the environment, but I can have reverence for myself - my own life and body. When I remember this and listen to my own body it can help heal my wounds, my fears and my sadness and suffering. Thay says “the way out is in” - and as I go back to those words I look deeply at ways that I can go in - and transform my suffering - so that I can be there for others.
One of the ways I resource and find stability within is in the refuge of Mother Earth. As the summer has continued - I have been able to touch this deeply. Being in nature brings me more peace, allows my worries to drop away, and always brings me back to true self as I swim in the cool rivers and springs, hike in the green mountains, listen to the songbirds, enjoy the sunshine and the windy rains, and watch families of deer searching for food for their babies. The more time I spend in nature the more understanding, compassion, and respect I have for all living things. I connect to nature by seeing myself and everyone in nature and nature in all of us. And as the training tells us - I can “cultivate the insight of interbeing and compassion” by “protecting the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals”.
While the natural disasters continue - and people, plants, animals will suffer, I can be aware of the healing that can come from within and the resources that can give me the energy, strength, and insight to live in harmony with nature and still find joy and love to help transform our suffering.
Reading the trainings again and again I learn more each time. I can be “away of the suffering caused by….” (as each training starts) many things - and at the same time have openness and love for Mother Earth and all beings.
I look forward to seeing you on Monday night and reading the trainings together with you.
With love and light,
Camille
PS - just sharing a quote I love and thought you might enjoy by John Muir:
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”