Nourishment
Our Connecticut Day of Mindfulness was this past Saturday. The intention was to provide an opportunity to ‘provide more spiritual nourishment to our sanghas.’ In this regard, and many others, it was successful.
Tom Duva and Mike Geres organized and led our time together. We shared a variety of practices that were grounding, thought-provoking, and inspiring. It was a time to reflect, revise, and renew our aspirations. It was fitting that this was the first full day of summer and the weather was all that one could wish for in a summer day.
Our practices
Following is a brief description of the practices that were offered throughout the day:
- Seated meditation. This practice stressed the importance of truly giving ourselves consent to be present for what arises.
- Meditation in the four body positions. Each person led themselves and explored the experiences of meditating while in a seated position, while standing, walking, or while lying down. The goal was to ground oneself in the body and its movements and also to help us bring this level of mindfulness into our daily activities.
- Guided meditation. The intent was to help us see both the conventional aspect of phenomenon, as well as its essence. Doing such will allow us to see past illusory boundaries and experience freedom, fearlessness, and awakening.
- Slow indoor walking meditation.
- Dharma talk.Tom gave a talk on the limits and suffering caused by clinging to the misperception of viewing ourselves as separate from all that’s around us. It connected with the earlier guided meditation on seeing past apparent boundaries, stressed the goal of ‘Don’t know mind’, and emphasized that truth, instead of being what we know, is actually to be found in living fully each moment, with friendly curiosity.
- Gatha practice. Tom talked about the value of using gathas (short verses) to connect with both the conventional, and the ultimate aspect of daily activities. These practices can lead us in the direction of a union of act and actor.
- Outdoor walking meditation. Our beautiful walk together reminded us of the beauty and joy present all around us.
- Lunch. Gatha practicecontinued with mindfulness of food as we ate together
- Deep relaxation: A guided exploration of our physical bodies.
- Mahasati. This is a moving meditation that uses 14 singular movements of arms and hands to bring our attention to each movement as it happens.
- Serving/drinking tea:This simple, but deep practice dissolves the boundaries between the server and the served, and allows one to simply be the experience of tea drinking.
- Dharma sharing: A practice of deep listening and of mindful speech from our heart mind.
Some photos
Taken late in the day by our unshown dharma brother, Steve Kovatch.
Some quotes shared
I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
A bodhisattva is able to see the nature of all that is and therefore is no longer afraid and no longer desires to hold on. Thus she can ride on the waves of birth and death with complete equanimity.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Always start from not-knowing. Don’t start from knowing.
Can we start from the depth of not-knowing—the womb of darkness that is the source of living and dying? It opens eyes and ears. If I do not know, then I am open to what is going on, maybe hearing something never heard before and seeing something never seen before simply because I am here without knowing.
Amazing silence that does not know.
Except from The Silent Question: Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing
By Toni Packer
Widening Circles
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Rainer Maria Rilke
Book of Hours, I 2
The Four Noble Truths
- Suffering
Life always involves suffering, in obvious and subtle forms. Even when things seem good, we always feel an undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty inside. - The Cause of Suffering
The cause of suffering is craving and fundamental ignorance. We suffer because of our mistaken belief that we are a separate, independent, solid “I.” The painful and futile struggle to maintain this delusion of ego is known as samsara, or cyclic existence. - The End of Suffering
The good news is that our obscurations are temporary. They are like passing clouds that obscure the sun of our enlightened nature, which is always present. Therefore, suffering can end because our obscurations can be purified and awakened mind is always available to us. - The Path
By living ethically, practicing meditation, and developing wisdom, we can take exactly the same journey to enlightenment and freedom from suffering that the buddhas do. We too can wake up.
Excerpt from:
What Are the Four Noble Truths?
By Melvin Mcleod
3/12/2018, Lions Roar Magazine,
Another Day of Mindfulness is coming
Tom and Mike will facilitate a similar Day of Mindfulness in New York sometime in August. Details will be posted as soon as they are available.