Dear friends,

This week we will have a special guest on Monday night.

Melina Bondy, a former monastic who was ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh and has now returned to lay life (see her bio below) will give a short Dharma talk about the Four Noble Truths in daily life: from ideas to action.

Melina writes “the Four Noble Truths can be seen as a list of ideas to believe in but they are meant to be actions to apply in all aspects of life. We'll look at core terms in this teaching, how they show up in our lives and ways to apply this practice on and off the cushion.

Those who are interested are welcome to read about the Four Noble Truths here and/or the sutra we will refer to (see below), though this is not necessary."

This Monday, Annie will facilitate. After meditation, we will recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings together and then focus on the First Mindfulness Training, Reverence for Life.

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.

When I was about 10 years old, we took a family trip to New Orleans. After dinner at a restaurant, our parents decided to take us all (Mom, Dad, Grandma, and four kids) down the very racy Bourbon Street. It was dark and when we came around the corner, we encountered a fight starting at the bus stop.

We all wanted to keep walking -- except my mom. She believed that one of the men, both very drunk, was getting bullied, and she had to step in. She told the other man, several times, to stop it. I can't tell you what happened next because Dad, Grandma and we four kids took off across the street to safety. Mom followed minutes later. My mom's brief action showed me that courageous immediate direct action is one way to protect life.

My mom may have prevented someone from being seriously hurt or killed and another person from becoming a perpetrator that night.

Last week I was moved by the dharma sharing provided by our guest Barbara Newell. It led me to thinking of similar moments in our lives when a low point is reached and we feel in some way empty with nothing more to give.

This could have to do with a relationship, a job, or some other life situation. I am very grateful that I have not found myself in such situations very often and when I have, I have had the resources and support to make it through. In almost all cases, the calamitous scenarios I had running through my head never came to pass. If something bad did occur, I was able to get through it, and it was less bad than I had imagined…

Dear friends,

This week we will enjoy a guest facilitator for our Monday evening meditation!

Barabara Newell, a former monastic at Plum Village, spent twelve years as a Buddhist nun in the community learning directly from Thich Nhat Hanh. Her full bio is below.

On Monday night, after our meditation period, Barbara will offer a Question and Answer session about the practice and teachings.

We would love to hear some of your questions in advance (which will help Barbara plan her time), so please send questions for Barbara to info@openingheartmindfulness.org before Monday. There will also be time to receive questions "live" on Monday evening.

Monday evening we will share the five Earth Touchings together. The touchings of the Earth are a Buddhist tradition where we bow down and surrender to the earth. We join body, mind, and breath to return to the Earth and to all our ancestors knowing that we are not alone. We are in the Earth and all our ancestors, and they are in us. When we touch the earth we breathe in her energy, strength, and stability and when we breathe out we release our grief and suffering that we have experienced collectively.

On Monday we will practice the ARISE (Awakening through Race, Intersectionality, and Social Equity) earth touchings which are an adaptation of the Plum Village Earth Touchings. The ARISE sangha is a "community of mindfulness practitioners and monastics who come together to heal the wounds of racial injustice and social inequity, beginning with looking deeply within ourselves and using the energy of compassion, understanding, and love in action."

In Old Paths White Clouds Thich Nhat Hanh describes how, soon after the Buddha achieved Enlightenment, he played the flute in such a sublime and transcendent way that it left an audience of musicians in awe. The Buddha explained that he had not practiced the flute in nearly seven years since he had left his home and that his performance did not depend solely on practice: “I now play better than in the past because I have found my true self.”

This story reminds me of how my mindfulness journey has helped me find a more genuine version of myself. I had the opportunity to recognize my transformation last summer during a lengthy visit to Puerto Rico to support my elderly mother. She had been deeply impacted by the island’s natural disasters followed by a strict pandemic quarantine. The Catholic dogma of my upbringing would have never sufficed to help me transcend the desolate conditions I encountered…

Dear Friends,

Planetary scientist and stardust expert Dr. Ashley King explains,"Nearly all the elements in the human body were made in a star and many have come through several supernovas." Most of the elements of our bodies were formed in stars over the course of billions of years and multiple star lifetimes.

We all come from a source. We are all related. We are born of stars, and like a star, each of us is unique unlike any other ever from the past or future. Can we see one another as siblings; knowing that we are each a bit different and yet related?

How can we love and embrace our differences and be kind to our siblings so they can suffer less and we can suffer less and stop causing suffering? Is this a time like no other? Or have we been here before?

Dear Friends,

For our month of contemplating solidarity together, I will share some thoughts about the practice and insight of sunyata – aka interbeing/emptiness/boundlessness and how this insight can help us understand solidarity and act in ways that serve all beings.

adrienne maree brown says:

“In nature, we see so clearly how the healthiest ecosystems thrive in biodiversity. There are as many ways of being, growing, processing sunlight and rain in life as there are species. When something threatens the trees, the mushrooms spread the warning and the forest adapts to protect the tree, knowing that each tree is part of the health of the whole – mushrooms flower on the tree’s trunk, sparrows nest in the tree’s branches, fecundity bursts forth in the tree’s shade. No creature or plant in that healthy ecosystem functions as a monopoly, or as an individual. They make it as long and as far as they can grow together.” – from Disrupting the Pattern: A Call for Love and Solidarity (online)

When we know that we inter-are with others, we know that there is no separate giver and no separate receiver of our gifts. We simply are together and naturally work together in solidarity.

Dear Thay, dear friends,

As you may have seen in an earlier email, we will explore the theme, practicing solidarity, throughout the month of May. We will “second body” Nueva Vida, the same organization that we worked with last year. Our hope is that by practicing solidarity with Nueva Vida as individuals and as a community, and by learning about how our practice affects us, we can nourish ourselves, each other and the larger society of which we’re a part.

On Monday, we will look at our own experiences of being in and out of solidarity. While I’d like to believe that I’ve “graduated” from one to the other, deep within, I know that it isn’t so easy...

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”---Mary Oliver

Pay attention. Pay attention. There’s a good chance that you heard this familiar command when you were a child. There’s also a good chance that you were never taught how to pay attention. It has been said that “attention is the new currency”.

Countless apps, websites, etc are designed to steal your attention.

The booming popularity of Mindfulness raises the question -What is Mindfulness?

A commonly used definition of mindfulness states that mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to things as they are in the present moment, with kindness and non-judgment.

The practice of mindfulness is a practice of learning to stay in the present moment

through developing our capacity to pay attention. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about how listening to the bell reminds us to come home to the present moment and to enjoy our breathing. He continues in saying:

The sound of the bell brings about appropriate attention, the kind of attention that turns on good things like mindfulness and joy. But there are other sounds and sights that bring our attention to negative things like craving, fear, anger, distress

On Monday night, I will share with you a practice of ‘skillful speaking and deep listening’. I have been trying it out over the past year. I was inspired to take this up by a sharing guideline for multi-cultural gatherings that Valerie Brown offered during our 2021 OHMC annual retreat:

Practice “Both / And”: When speaking, substitute “and” for “but”. This practice acknowledges and honors multiple realities.

Sounds simple and straightforward enough, doesn’t it? I never dreamed it would be so challenging! My hablt energy when someone offers a new idea or way of doing something is to flip into ‘critical thinking’ mode-- perhaps linked to years of program evaluation work and deep seeds in my store consciousness? Rather than listening deeply and acknowledging the speaker, I get busy inside my head coming up with a response that often may start off “Yes, but….”. I may interrupt the speaker with questions or offer alternative views before they have had a chance to finish. Clearly, in this pattern, I am not being very mindful to acknowledge nor honor multiple realities.

We can see ourselves as gardeners and those we are in relationship with as our garden. Knowing that whatever we water grows, what kind of seeds do we want to water and cultivate in our dear ones? What kind of seeds do we want to avoid watering and cultivating?

The practice of Beginning Anew, developed by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village sangha helps us to take good care of our relationships by bringing the best of ourselves to the other and bringing out the best in our beloved ones. We know that we have many wholesome qualities inside of us and so do the people in our lives. If we ignore these qualities and only focus on what is not going well, we do ourselves and others a real disservice, missing many precious opportunities to enjoy and delight in each other.

Just as in spring we consider what seeds we want to plant to enjoy later in the year, be it flowers, fruits or vegetables, so it is with selecting which seeds we need to plant or nurture in our deep consciousness. As Thay writes: “Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility, and sadness in us are strong, then we will experience much suffering”.

Every act we make through our body, speech and mind sows seeds in our consciousness, and our store consciousness preserves and maintains these seeds. Our (hopefully) daily practice is to recognize and water the wholesome seeds in ourselves and in others. Our happiness and the happiness of others depends on this!

The first step toward becoming an accomplished gardener is to develop our awareness of how the quality of our lives is influenced by the seeds that have been watered. Everything that affects our consciousness enters metaphorically as a seed. The work of the gardener is that of gatekeeper and protector of the garden of our consciousness. Thay explains “Our mind is a field, in which every kind of seed is sown—seeds of compassion, joy, and hope, seeds of sorrow, fear, and difficulties.”

Dear Friends,

Intention or aspiration is one of the four kinds of nutriments that the Buddha explored in the Discourse on the Four Kinds of Nutriments.

As a way to remember my intention and aspiration to wake up, I have recently started to chant before each sitting an adapted version of the ‘Incense Offering’ (I call it the ‘Heart Offering’). This Monday evening I will share this chant at the beginning of our meditation period.

I also regularly recite “Invoking the Names of the Bodhisattvas,” where I remember and cultivate awakened qualities embodied by the Five Great Bodhisattvas of Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Samantabhadra, Kshitigarbha, and Sadaparibhuta.

As Thich Nhat Hanh explained in a 1998 Dharma talk:

Bodhisattvas are awakened beings. We also have our nature of awakening, no less than they, but we have to train ourselves. One way is to practice invoking the names of the great bodhisattvas—Avalokiteshvara (Regarder of the Cries of the World), Manjushri (Great Understanding), Samantabhadra (Universal Goodness), and Kshitigarbha (Earth Store). When we recite their names in a deep, relaxed way, every word can touch our hearts and the hearts of those listening. In the beginning, we still feel separate from these bodhisattvas. But, practicing steadily, we realize that we are Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Samantabhadra, and Kshitigarbha. It is not important whether they were historic figures, born in such and such a year or in such and such a place. The key is to realize their qualities within ourselves…

In 2020, I attended the five mindfulness trainings and transmission ceremony so that I could facilitate on a night like tonight. The ceremony helped deepen my practice, and wiped me out. I was forced to rest, and at the same time, stay with the practice that took me to a deeper place where I could ground myself and stay solid and present. Since the trainings, I take walks and recite them in my mind, sometimes tripping up on one or more, but eventually remembering them all.

This third training, True Love, is the hardest one for me. While true love sounds like the highest and happiest, most self-fulfilling as the recipient of true love, the description is full of what is hard to know and face and worry about when love is absent. I worry about the children and the victims of rape and violence and misguided sexual behavior. I want our world to be kind and loving.

What is true love? Do we overuse the L word, do we mean it when we say it, or are we putting it out there to get an “I Love You” back? When my son was just born, I said I love you. Like most new parents, I said it numerous times a day, but felt there was something lacking in the word “love”…

Dear Thay, dear friends,

On Monday we will share our memories of loved ones who have passed on and reflect on our experiences with grief. Several local sanghas (Washington Mindfulness Community and Still Water Practice Center) offer this type of evening on an annual basis, and we have found them deeply nourishing and, at times, transformative.

There is something about sharing our experience of grief in community that, as Francis Weller writes, “...helps us to stretch into our bigger selves; we are offered the opportunity to develop a living relationship with loss. We can recover a faith in grief that recognizes that grief is not here to take us hostage, but instead to reshape us in some fundamental way, to help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension between grief and gratitude. In so doing, our hearts are ripened and made available for the great work of loving our lives and this astonishing world.”

(photo: M.Neustadt)

As we come together tonight March 8th, we are 5 days away from marking one year since our lives were changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. March 13th, 2020 was the last day that many of us went to work, saw our co-workers and in some cases our clients or patients in person.

These milestones of anniversaries, birthdays and holidays provide a structure to our lives. They are markers that can move us to reflect on the past, root ourselves in the present, and turn our eyes to the future. There has no doubt been great suffering over the past year. Over the past month many of my clients in therapy have spoken about feeling the cumulative effects grief and loss. With the weight of loss, there can also be hope.

Once, during a Beginning Anew practice on retreat at Plum Village, my 10-year old son shared some suffering with me. He said that he felt hurt that I was always on my email and not paying attention to him. Hearing this made me very sad and I sincerely wanted to change. Over the years, I have gotten better, but giving my full attention to other people can still be a challenge for me. I can get caught up and distracted by what I am doing or thinking and miss the other person right in front of me. I have also seen other people get distracted like this when I am with them. More technology gives us more distractions.

Thay says that when we love someone, we should give them our full presence. Sometimes it is most challenging to be present for our loved ones because we take them for granted. And certainly they need to be our priority. I would like to extend my presence to be fully there for the people I pass the street in our masks or the person checking us out at the grocery store. Our presence is a gift, and to truly be there is a generous act. The first of the four love mantras can help by reminding ourselves, "I am here for you."

This evening I thought I would take us in a slightly different direction than our dharma sharings in recent weeks. For a long long time I have been very interested in certain aspects of Japanese culture. One concept from early on captured my attention, that of Wabi-Sabi. There are many ways in which to think about this idea, but if someone asked me to briefly explain I would say something along the lines of there being beauty in imperfection. If you dig a little deeper into the term you will find it can be used to describe a group of feelings and ideas related to impermanence, imperfection and also extends to include feelings of melancholy.

Interestingly, this concept is placed at the center of many aspects of Japanese aesthetics, art and culture. The idea that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect can be contrasted with what we in the West place at the center of our own notions of beauty and perfection. In his wonderful book Wabi-sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers Leonard Koren explores how this truth comes from the observation of nature:

Dear friends,

I’m not sure how you experienced January 1st this year. For me, it came and went all in a blur of uncertainty and unrest. This year, more than ever, I am so happy to have another chance-- to greet the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Ox, and to honor Thich Nhat Hanh and our many sangha members, friends and family across the world on this important holiday.

We will celebrate the New Year tonight by practicing the Five Touchings of the Earth together. This is a regular practice in Plum Village and a sacred way to express gratitude and generate joy. It’s an occasion that brings us into touch with the earth and its reality. It’s a time to reflect on the land we live on and all of the ancestors who made it available to us. It’s a time to begin anew, with fresh plans and renewed vigor. If you choose to do prostrations that allow your full body to be in touch with the ground/floor beneath you, you may prepare a space before sangha with a yoga mat or rug to support you. Alternate seated or half-prostrations will be demonstrated…