The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored how “to attend to what is while stretching to what can be.”  How we attend is vital to responding to with compassionate action.  We can come alongside each other in courage and en-couragement. We begin with this moment: a pause to breathe and feel.

We heard from John Paul Lederach’s recent Upaya Dharma talk:  A Call to Hearten:  Let Tender Tenacity Walk with Fierce Compassion.  John Paul is professor emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is a pioneer in conflict transformation.  He’s been involved in conciliation work in Columbia, the Philippines, Nepal and various African countries.

We drew from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We practiced sitting with the truth of our experience.  We contemplated what it is to expand our view in space and time.  We can practice hope by keeping our hearts open.  We can offer ourselves compassion when they close.  We are, each of us, part of the fabric of being.  Each thread makes the whole.

We heard from Jane Hirshfield’s Emergence Magazine interview, On Time, Mystery, and Kinship.

We heard from Jane Goodall’s Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times,

We heard J. Drew Lanham’s word of hope:  To Walk in a Mad World. You can learn more about poet, professor and writer J. Drew Lantham by listening to his On Being interview with Krista Tippett:  Pathfinding Through the Improbable.  Check out his memoir The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature at the library.

Once again we drew insights from  Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.  This beautiful book will help readers to bring compassion and mindfulness to their response to the many environmental and social crises we are witnessing today.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on the vital importance of having spiritual friends.  We reflected on the Eight Worldly Winds of change that create stress in our lives.  We contemplated the teachings on equanimity as a way of restoring balance.  We can cultivate qualities of resilience to change what we can and to accept the truth of our experience.

We heard a quote from history Adam Tooze’s address to the World Economic Forum.

We heard Kaira Jewel Lingo’s teaching on the Eight Worldly Winds from her book We Were Made for These Times.

We heard Gil Fronsdal’s teaching’s on equanimity from his Tricycle Magazine article, A Perfect Balance.

I shared Los Angeles Times journalist, John Corrigan’s, story What We Can Learn from Africa’s Likoma Island.

We heard a Rumi quote from Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s Emergence Magazine essay, Unborn and Undying.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on the vital importance of having spiritual friends.  Good spiritual friends support us in living with authenticity and compassion.  Spiritual leader, teacher and author, Thich Nhat Hanh, encourages us to draw on our inner meditator, artist and warrior while serving in the world.  He urges us to cultivate relaxation and joy so “our actions become a true expression of our love, care and awakening.  It’s not that we have to take action.  If we’re awakened, action will naturally take us.”

Once again we drew insights from  Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.  This beautiful book will help readers to bring compassion and mindfulness to their response to the many environmental and social crises we are witnessing today.

We heard Joseph Rubano’s beautiful poem, Friend by Friend.  Joseph is a counselor who also offers True Heart/True Mind Enlightenment Intensive Retreats at the beautiful Manzanita Village Retreat Center in Warner Springs California.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We drew on the body and the breath to bring us into the Here and Now.  We affirmed our deep caring for each other.  We explored loving awareness as a way of creating the space in which loving presence and compassion arise.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola’s poem,  Big Lesson.  This poem is an affirmation of our natural inclination to care for each other.

We heard Julia Fehrenbacher’s poem The Cure for It All.  This poem is an invitation slow down, to be accepting and gentle with ourselves, to call on the breath to find equanimity.

We ended with Matty Weingast’s poem Mitta – Friend. This poem is from Matty’s book, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, a reimagining of the Therīgāthā.  This poem is about how we support one another as spiritual friends on the Path.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the Earth’s inspiration for bringing mindfulness practice into daily life. We looked deeply to find aspirations that nourish our well being and inspire compassionate action.  Like sunlight shining through a forest, our loving awareness can shine on all beings.

We can choose love again and again.  Love can help us realize our inter-being and live with open hearts.

Our guided meditation was inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.  This beautiful book will help readers to bring mindfulness to our climate crisis.  Thich Nhat Hanh  and his students teach us how to face challenging feelings and create a sense of freedom and possibility. It aims to help us to engage in compassionate action.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem, As You Have Done for Me. Since 2006, she’s maintained a poem-a-day practice. Since 2011, she’s posted those poems for all to enjoy.  You can enjoy her lively interview with Tara Brach: The Courage to Say Yes.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We contemplated the need to look deeply at our stories and conditioning.  We can open our hearts and minds to the inspiration of Earth’s powers of healing and renewal.  We can engage our imagination and compassionate action to help restore Earth and her human and more than human inhabitants.

We heard a quote from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Robert Bly.  You can read the complete poem at the Mindfulness Association website.

We heard from social activist and writer Rebecca Solnit’s Tricycle Magazine interview:  It is called  Life As It Is:  From Despair to Possibility.  We also drew from her book, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.

I referenced Roshi Joan Halifax’s comments about imagination in the program she and Tara Brach offered:  The Sacred Work of Bridging Divides.

Our guided meditation was inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.

We heard poet Jan Richardson’s invitation to “let there be an opening.” Jan is a poet, writer and artist.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We contemplated the fifth of the Five Remembrances:  My actions are my only true belongings.  There is no way to escape the consequences of my actions.  They are the ground of which I stand.  We considered this ground to be compassion.  Looking deeply into our response to our impermanence and suffering we can touch each other.  We recognize a sixth remembrance: We are of the nature to give care and need care.

We heard from My Actions Are My Only True Belongings, a talk given by two senior meditation instructors.  Jaune Evans is part of the Every Day Zen community.   Chris Fortin is part of the Dharma Heart Zen community.   This talk was the sixth and final talk on the Five Remembrances.

We heard the Five Remembrances from the Anguttara Nikaya  translated by Zen meditation teacher and scholar, Thich Nhat Hanh.  The Anguttara Nikaya  is the fourth of the five Nikāyas, or collections, that comprise the Pali Tipitaka of Theravada Buddhism. The Five Remembrances are contemplations which help us touch the nature of impermanence, overcome our fears and cherish the preciousness of life and relationships.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored loving and witnessing.  We can offer our open hearted presence to ourselves, each other and more than human beings.  We come home to the world when we can gently remind ourselves:  “You Are Here.”

We heard Mark Nero’s words on love from Things That Join the Sea and the Sky:  Field Notes on Living.  Mark gently reminds us that there is no end to love.

We heard part of Andrea Mathieson’s essay, Listening for the Long Song, from her work Dark Matter: Women Witnessing.  You can find the entire essay at Kosmos Journal:  Listening for the Long Song: The Art of Earth Communion.  Andrea ends the essay with step by step instruction for “yin-listening.”

We heard Dane Anthony’s poem, Right Here.

We heard poet laureate Ada Limon’s poem Sanctuary.  Ada read this poem in her Tricycle Magazine interview, Returning to Wonder.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the relationship between our need for meaning and our capacities for love and wonder.  Love and wonder can help us to meet life  just as it is.  Love and wonder can be a practices that help us to bear suffering and perhaps, one day, be free.

We drew inspiration from the Ten Percent Happier interview, Why Your Brain Turns the Miraculous Into the Mundane – and How to Fix It.  This was a discussion between journalist and meditation teacher Dan Harris and poet and writer Maria Popova.  Maria is a scholar and curator of texts on culture, science and what it is to be human.  She and Dan explored how wonder can be a portal to meaning.  Wonder is unconditional.  Our capacity to love enables us to see each other as beings of wonder.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem, Belonging. Since 2006, she’s maintained a poem-a-day practice. Since 2011, she’s posted those poems for all to enjoy.

The guided meditation is draws on the teachings of Roshi Joan Halifax, founder of Upaya Zen Center.

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