Episodes

Once there was a wise old sage, and people would travel a long ways to receive his teachings. He always taught one thing, a mantra to say to everything in life: Thank you, I am grateful for everything. One time a man received this teaching and said it with everything for a year. At the end of the year, he was still irritable, impatient, frustrated and tired. So he traveled back to the wise old sage, shared his story and asked what to do now. The sage said, “Thank you, I am grateful for everythi...

How we meet the moment of waking back up, makes all the difference in our practice. This city meditation is an opportunity to deeply explore that moment of re-awakening.

Today we continue to look at how re-anchoring in moment to moment awareness is a powerful practice in finding a better way to navigate any day. This talk draws from Tara Brach’s practice of Four Remembrances: Pausing, Yes to Life, Turning toward love, and Resting in Awareness.

This meditation draws from Tara Brach, teaching on four remembrances for practice: Pausing, saying yes to life, turning towards love, resting in awareness. What It Is It is nonsense says reason It is what it is says love It is calamity says calculation It is nothing but pain says fear It is hopeless says insight It is what it is says love It is ludicrous says pride It is foolish says caution It is impossible says experience It is what it is says love Erich Fried

This talk explores how bringing moment to moment mindfulness into daily life has nothing to do with “being good!” and everything instead to do with “being sane”.

in this practice, we explore opening to the wholeness of what’s here, the gratitude and release as well as the contracted and reactionary.

We were grateful this week to have David Viafora and Jessie Raye from Greatwoods Zen Retreat Center guest lead again this week. Unfortunately we were not able to record their first visit, but this week’s sharing works fine as a stand alone. They shared from Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching called the Seven Mantras of Love. These are: Darling, I am here for you. Darling, I know you are there and it makes me happy. Darling, I know you suffer. Darling, I suffer, please help. This is a Happy Moment. ...

How a brutal motorcycle trail race teaches us all about being alive and using our practice to wake up.

This meditation again draws from the Somatics work of Amanda Blake and Embright Organization, and is offers a strong way to use the body as a rooting anchor of support.

Today’s sharing on safety is an inquiry practice into the qualities that make a friendship a safe place and how these qualities are manifesting, or not, in our mindfulness practice. Note: One quality named was “perspective”. It needs to be acknowledged that a friend offering a larger perspective on an issue can be either helpful or unhelpful— depending on how it is offered…

Opening up to the shared physical nature of our being is an avenue for contemplative experience of safety, connection, and respect.

This time we look at a reliable sense of safety more through the lens of neuroscience/modern psychology as well as introduce the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness– which was originally taught as an antidote to fear. Discourse on Good Will From teachings of the Buddha, complied by Jack Kornfield May all beings be filled with joy and peace. May all beings everywhere, The strong and the weak, The great and the small, The short and the long, The subtle and the gross: May all beings everywhere, S...

How do we learn to meet ourselves, just as we are, in a way that provides an internal sense of safety? Erich Fried, translated by: ANNA KALLIO It is nonsense says reason It is what it is says love It is calamity says calculation It is nothing but pain says fear It is hopeless says insight It is what it is says love It is ludicrous says pride It is foolish says caution It is impossible says experience It is what it is says love

We look again at the necessary nourishment of an internal sense of safety that is not dependent upon having things be the way we want them to be– this time primarily from a spiritual standpoint, drawing from leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, and the writings of Etty Hillesum. Please note: Bad audio distortion from 13:49-14:10.

This meditation draws heavily from Amanda Blake of Embright Organization and the field of somatics. Much as we would know we can rely on the support of a strong mature tree, this mediation uses the imagery of learning how to lean back and rest upon the tree of our spine.

We come back again to safety, connection and respect this week– this time with inquiry questions to consider these qualities for yourself. Consider a time in your life where you know something about these 3 qualities, some place with a palpable sense of these qualities. What is that felt sense of being met in this way for you? How do these come up in your practice? How are you practicing safety, connection and respect with your own self? How might you cultivate each of these more? First Lesson-...

Again, drawing from the field of Somatics’ understanding that an inner sense of safety, connection and respect are foundational for our well-being, we use the body as a focus in cultivating these qualities within ourselves.

Just as sunlight, water and soil are basic nutrients for plant life well-being, safety, connection and respect are basic nutrients for our own human well-being. In this sharing we explore how we might offer this kind of nourishment towards our own selves in order to be more available for meeting these needs in our world.

This meditation considers how opening in the direction of safety, connection and respect is useful in our formal practice.

This week we explore inquiries around the challenges that arise in practice and what skillful ways we might be learning to work with them.

Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings. -Rumi

Chenoos are Native American mythological angry monsters. Looking at a Chenoo story from Joseph Bruchac is a beautiful lesson in how we might use mindfulness to meet both our anger and fear.

From the Tao Te Ching, translated by Ursula LeGuin: …Hard and easy complete each other long and short shape each other high and low depend on each other note invoice make the music together before and after follow each other… The things of this world exist, they are; you can’t refuse them.

Today was an opportunity for an inquiry exercise to explore the intersection of mindfulness practice, spirituality and prayer. This includes how Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, Call Me By My True Name, might be considered as a prayer.