Dear Friends, We’re midway through the month, and we have covered a lot of ground. We have reviewed: intention mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samadhi) meditation anchors (body, breath, sound) the balance wisdom and compassion the feeling tone (vedana) of experience – pleasant, unpleasant, neutral the hindrances – experiences that can be obstacles in meditation – and BELLA to… Read More »
Dear Friends, Today, a brief summary from Jill on Working with Compassion, and a guided compassion practice. In the first talk on the The Brahma Viharas for Insight and Wisdom, Jill shared a set of reflections from Caroline Jones and Paul Burrows, that outlined the interrelationship between the four heart qualities of loving kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and… Read More »
Dear Friends, DaRa continues the exploration of mindfulness of mind states in the talk on Working with Emotions. She starts by giving a bit of a tour of the tools covered so far – sitting, walking, body, including all the sense experiences and breath, feeling tone (pleasant/unpleasant/neutral), working with thoughts, and heart practices of goodwill and compassion. And… Read More »
Dear Friends, Continuing with Jill’s talk on Compassion, Karuna, today we turn the ways to practice compassion, what sort of obstacles might arise, and how to work with them. One of the ways we can practice developing compassion is through the repetition of phrases. Jill give us her four phrases, and explains what each phrase means for her.… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the talk Compassion, Karuna, Jill says, “compassion is what flowers when metta, or goodwill, comes into contact with dukkha, with suffering.” Today, we’ll follow Jill’s unpacking of suffering, and then tomorrow look at the how-to of compassion. The term dukkha is often translated as suffering, but it has a much broader sense of the term… Read More »
Dear Friends, After Jill’s broad tour of the various qualities of heart we can cultivate (discussed in the Jan 5 post), the talks we’ll review today dive deep into metta, loving kindness. DaRa sets the stage for practice by offering a few words on setting up for practice – checking in with posture, the breath – inviting a… Read More »
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 »
