Dear Friends, There have been times, when I’ve mentioned to friends or co-workers that I practice meditation and mindfulness, that I get the reply, “Oh, I could never do that – I can never stop thinking.” Jill addresses some of misconceptions we might have about thinking and meditation in the talk Mindfulness of the Mind. Many meditation instructions,… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the latter part of DaRa’s talk on The Five Hindrances, she describes 5 aspects of practicing with them, based on an acronym coined by Gill Fronsdal. B.E.L.L.A. Gil describes these steps more fully in this post:https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/hindrances-to-mindfulness-and-clarity/ Gil says, BELLA [is] the Italian word for “beautiful.” When the hindrances are overcome and mindfulness is strong, the… Read More »
Dear Friends, DaRa’s talk on The Five Hindrances looks at what the hindrances are, and then she shares a technique to work with them. So we’ll unpack that today and tomorrow. As we sit to meditate, we will certainly come across any number of challenges that get in the way of mindfulness and concentration. There’s a typical list… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the next recording, Jill brings in reflections on feeling tone, vedana. Feeling tone arises when a sense organ makes contact with an object. Light waves bouncing off an object meet the eye – and sight arises – and also a flavour to that contact – pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant or unpleasant (simplified as neutral).… Read More »
Dear Friends, In listening to Morning Instructions with DaRa, I was inspired to be more spacious with my day. This phrase in the talk caught my attention: “The more we experience every moment is worthwhile, the more energy there is.” (at around 11:50 in the talk) On this frigidly cold winter day, I have noticed my resistance to… Read More »
Dear Friends, Continuing today with the talk on “The Brahma Viharas for Insight and Wisdom,” this time sharing some of Jill’s imagery when talking about the the many ways a kind heart can be expressed and respond wisely in the world. As Jill mentions, through our meditation practice, we can use a range of techniques to help make… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the third talk from the retreat, “The Brahma Viharas for Insight and Wisdom,” Jill brings in lots of ideas to unpack – so I’ll take a couple of days to bring out a few points I found helpful. Jill starts off by explaining two extremes we might notice in our own lives – one of… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the second recording from the retreat I’m using for inspiration this month, DaRa Williams guides a meditation (Guided Meditation on Anchors, 17 minutes), inviting “appreciation and gratitude for the time and the wisdom to spend, coming to know oneself. Coming to understand this nervous system, body, breath.” Many of us are inspired to meditate to… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the first recording from the retreat I’m using for inspiration this month, Jill Shepherd provides some general background that can create a useful context for the rest of our month together. The style the approach to meditation that we’re doing here is insight meditation or vipassana. Just as a very simple beginning definition of what… Read More »
Dear Friends, I like to start off the month talking about intention. For me, this has a different flavor than a resolution. In a recent post, Jack Kornfield wrote, We all know about New Year’s resolutions and how short-lived they can be. Consider setting a long-term intention. … Setting a long-term intention is like setting the compass of… Read More »
Dear Friends, I will be participating in a New Year’s Retreat with Susie Harrington this weekend. (Not to worry – I have posts queued up for the next couple of days! But I won’t be monitoring emails or messages Friday evening through Sunday afternoon.) One of the things I love about retreats with Susie is the way she… Read More »
Dear friends, I will be offering daily meditation emails again for January 2022. Are you interested in participating? Similar to previous years, I’ll send out an email each day in January, with a short bit of encouragement in the form of a practice, idea, reflection, poem, or song. I intend to keep it short-ish and light. This year,… Read More »
Dear Friends, In insight meditation, we often practice cultivating four specific qualities of the heart: kindness (a.k.a. metta, loving kindness, goodwill, friendliness), compassion, joy (particularly joy in the joy of others, a.k.a. mudita), and equanimity (having a balanced perspective). In some circles, my fellow practitioners and I have discussed that this list could include a fifth quality: gratitude.… Read More »
Dear Friends, I think many of us come to contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness from a place of suffering, discontent, pain, grief, disconnection. We are looking for some relief. At least that was true for me. And through practicing, I have found certain deeply ingrained patterns that contribute to painful states, and the body/heart/mind is learning different… Read More »
Dear Friends, So now that we’ve zipped through four weeks of material, and we’re nearing the end of January, I thought we could take a step back and have a big picture of what we’ve been cultivating this month. 1 – What’s your why – setting an intention can help us stay oriented in our practice and life… Read More »
