Right Lifestyle: living the fully awakened life in the modern world…
Meditation Practice: Turning Toward or Turning Away?
In a 2017 article, Naropa University Professors Carla Sherrell and Judith Simmer-Brown warned about using meditation practice to avoid pain: “We take up meditation as a way to avoid or dull the pain, and only feel it “works” if we feel better. This approach is an expression of a prevailing culture that quickly takes a pharmaceutical to alleviate pain or pours a drink to numb anxiety. This kind of response to pain favors meditation practices that feature detachment, peace, bliss, and absolutist thinking as defense mechanisms against anxiety, fear, and anguish.” Yet, our world right now is full of anxiety, fear, and anguish. How do we avoid the temptation to turn away from the painful aspects of our personal and societal lives? How do we turn toward our experience and the harsh realities playing out in our community, nation, and world? How do we find insight and engagement in the midst of chaos and injustice? We will explore these difficult but essential questions on this evening of practice and inquiry. Bring an open mind and a willingness to look at the motivation for practice.
How we can move out of our small-mindedness into a more expansive “Big Mind.”
Mindful awareness is at the core of our meditation practice. When cultivated properly, awareness is joined and supported by other mental factors that arise naturally: clear seeing, clear comprehension, tranquility, acceptance, joy, and eventually non-attachment, compassion, equanimity, and wisdom. We will explore the role of awareness in our practice and look more deeply at this circle of “friends” that accompany awareness.
This evening will stand alone and will also serve as an introduction to the daylong on Saturday, August 29.
This day of practice will be in the style of Sayadaw U Tejaniya, a contemporary Burmese monk, with an open schedule conducive to home practice. It should work well on Zoom.
The Value of Faith, The Value of Doubt
Buddhism is unique among spiritual traditions by putting emphasis on both Faith and Doubt. Both are necessary for a balanced practice that benefits ourselves and others. Too much faith encourages certainty without examination of experience. It can lead to mind states such as “if only I practice a lot more, everything will be fine.” Too much doubt can be paralyzing. “Why do I bother? My practice is going nowhere. Nothing has changed!” Knowing how to balance these two extremes brings us to an authentic practice. This helps us not just in our personal practice, but aids in our interaction in the world which seems to insist on extremes at this present time.
Who and What Gets Included or Excluded? Answers that Enrich or Diminish All of Us
Two simple questions lie at the center of our spiritual practices, daily life and the “cultural” conflicts we are facing: Who and what gets included? Who and what gets excluded?
The answers to these questions influence our intentions, perceptions, choices, and relationships. They shape identity, education, social and economic status, access to power and our health and well-being. They determine how we participate, and how fully we are allowed to participate, in family, organizations and the American experience itself. They touch every dimension of our inner and outer lives.
How do we work with these questions of inclusion from a mindful and caring perspective? In our inner life? In outer life? In both our spiritual and real-life challenges of being fallible, while simultaneously seeking to be more fully human and inclusive? The evening will explore the special role inclusion plays in Buddhist psychology and practice.
Part of our evening will explore a caring approach to understanding and working with the hot, controversial cultural issues we’re all facing from a mindfulness perspective. This will include the meaning of “systemic” and “systematic” from the perspective of Buddhist psychology.
In preparation for a portion of the session, it’s helpful to view the following:
- Stone Ghosts of the South – Documentary – 27:14 Minutes (https://youtu.be/K7AHm6Az_Ss)
- Discussion of Ghosts of the South – 8:21 minutes (https://youtu.be/UAFSESwDVcY)
Here’s the flyer to a 9-week course that Dennis Warren will be teaching, Living on the Other Side of Suffering – An Experiment in Opening the Heart and Becoming More Fully Human.
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Insight is central to our practice of mindful awareness at SIM, as it is central to our name. We may frame it as a dramatic experience, “a flash of lightning in a summer cloud” as it says in the Diamond Sutra. We may hold an expectation that it is only available in settings far from our daily lives, on pilgrimage to a holy land or in extended retreat at a meditation center. What if it is available in the most ordinary of circumstances? What if we are setting the conditions for insight in the most mundane activities and familiar places of our lives? What if we let our expectations drop away and came into just this moment? In this evening’s talk and discussion, we will explore the terrain of the ordinary.
We are living through an incredible period, with impermanence being displayed in all its glory on a daily basis. Each day brings another jarring event, both sociologically, medically and personally. It’s truly revolutionary what’s taking place. The Buddha lived in revolutionary times as well, and there are some parallels which can provide guidance during these challenging times. How do we live lives of meaning when fear prevents us from socializing? How do we contend with those with whom we firmly disagree? How can we welcome others not just into our sangha, but into our lives? Essentially, we are looking for ways to create a kinder wiser society which is beginning to emerge from the current chaos. It’s a real revolution!