January 15 Taking Refuge

This Monday Alison will facilitate.
 

She shares:
 

On Monday night, we will focus on the following excerpt called "Taking Refuge" from Thich Nhat Hanh's book Happiness:

"When we find ourselves in dangerous or difficult situations, or when we feel like we are losing ourselves, we can practice taking refuge.  Instead of panicking or giving ourselves up to despair, we can put our trust in the power of self-healing, self-understanding, and loving within us.  We call this the island within ourselves in which we can take refuge.  It is an island of peace, confidence, solidity, love, and freedom.  Be an island within yourself.  You don't have to look for it elsewhere.

We want to feel safe and protected.  We want to feel calm.  So when a situation seems to be turbulent, overwhelming, full of suffering, we have to practice taking refuge in the Buddha, the Buddha in ourselves.  Each of us has the seed of Buddhahood, the capacity for being calm, understanding, compassionate, and for taking refuge in the island of safety within us so we can maintain our humanness, our peace, our hope.  Practicing like this, we become an island of peace and compassion, and we may inspire others to do the same.

Use this gatha to return to yourself, wherever you are:

Breathing in, I go back to the island within myself.

There are beautiful trees within the island.

There are cool streams of water,

there are birds, sunshine, and fresh air.

Breathing out, I feel safe.

We are like a boat crossing the ocean.  If the boat encounters a storm and everyone panics, the boat will turn over.  If there is one person in the boat who can remain calm, that person can inspire other people to be calm.  Then there will be hope for the whole boatload.  Who is that person who can stay calm in the situation of distress?  Each of us is that person.  We count on each other."

Look forward to seeing everyone on Monday night.

Namaste,

Alison

January 9: Interrupting Injustice, Healing Harm

Dear Friends,

This week Kaira Jewel will facilitate.  We are delighted that she will be our teacher at our April 2017 retreat.  We hope you join us.  To register for our retreat please go here.

Kaira shares:

This Monday we will share stories of compassion that "interrupt injustice" and help "heal harm".

We will listen to true stories of how compassion, born from the deep understanding of interconnectedness, can transform hatred and violence at its root, so that it doesn't arise again.  Gathering stories from war time, from the Civil Rights movement, from ordinary people armed just with compassion in the face of white supremacy.  We will explore ways that we can see the good in every person, no matter how horribly they are acting.  We will also look at what helps people filled with hatred and discrimination to connect to their humanity and love again.

In our sharing time, we will reflect on our own experiences of forgiveness, transformation, reconciliation, and healing.

Quote from Shambhala Prophecy:

With that wisdom you know that it is not a battle between "good guys" and "bad guys," because the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. 

AND 

From The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

January 2

Dear friends

This week Annie will facilitate.  We will talk about how mindfulness can help is set intentions for the new year. 

As we know, our thoughts and feelings usually lead to actions, so being mindful and having clarity about what our deepest intentions are will help us act and speak in the ways we most deeply want to. 

I heard Thich Nhật Hanh say that we meditate in order to heal and transform. How can our thinking inspire more healing and transformation in 2017?

We can start to think about our intentions in the following categories using the technique that social psychologist and author Kelly McGonigal of The Willpower Instinct suggests.

McGoinigal says that to get to our deepest intentions, we ask ourselves: How would I like to feel about:

• My body- health, vitality
• My environment (possessions, home, etc)- what Thich Nhật Hanh calls our "cows"
• My relationships- partners, family, friends, sangha
• My relationship with myself - how well do I understand myself? 

Once we have a sense of our deepest intentions, we can find ways to support staying awake to what we really want. Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project says that we have a tendency to respond to expectations (or New Years resolutions) in one of four ways:

1. Upholders -- these are the people who have no trouble keeping resolutions and always do what they are "supposed" to so. They may be exhausted but they are relentless. 
2. Questioners -- they will do something only if it makes rational sense, they've done their research on the resolution and it's benefits 
3. Rebels -- these people resist all expectations and resolutions because they don't like to be told what to do. 
4. Obligers-- they respond to outside pressure and will do something because others want them to, ignoring their own feelings about it 

In which category do you normally find yourself?  Knowing how we usually operate will help us know what supports to put in place to make it more likely for us to make progress on our intentions. 

Upholders can learn to question their deeper motives more, questioners can practice acceptance, rebels can try to act out of love, and obligers can build in external accountability to support their transformation. 

Kelly McGonigal says that willpower is "the ability to do what you want to do when part of you really doesn't want to do it." Another way I've heard this said is, "Discipline is remembering what you want." To me this is also the definition of mindfulness, and the antithesis of addiction, where we do things we know will cause us (and others ) to suffer because some part of us is craving a transient moment of sensual pleasure. What McGonigal calls willpower is really what I would call staying in presence, in that state which knows what we really want for ourselves and for the world.

So what do you really want to feel? For me, I want to feel a sense of belonging and ease. And knowing I have questioning and rebel tendencies I try to remind myself of the benefits the world will experience if I keep practicing, and also keep tapping into the love that I have for myself and others, underneath all that rebellious energy. 

This Monday, we will enjoy a guided meditation on finding our deepest intentions, and after the meditation period,  we will have a chance to discuss and share how we would like to heal and transform in 2017 and what practices will best support us. I hope to see you there!