The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how we meet the world during a time when it feels like the ground is crumbling beneath us.  We reflected on how The Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers inform our practice and how they can help us respond to the world with more open mindedness and heartedness.  The Peacemakers are a worldwide movement people who practice meditation, embody and do social action as a path of awakening and service. You can learn more about their fascinating story and work at Zen Peacemakers International.

We also drew inspiration from, Small Practices for Uncertain Times, by  Zen priest and poet Bonnie Myotai Treace.   We ended with Joy Harjo’s magical poem from her latest collection An American Sunrise.  Joy is member of the Mvskoke Nation.  She is the current Poet Laureate of the U.S. and was reappointed to a second term on April 30, 2020

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The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We shared a meditative inquiry about what is true for us in the present moment.  True in the sense that we gradually become aware of what underlies the immediate sensations of tension, lethargy, energy, distraction – whatever registers in our awareness.  As we stay with the present moment experience we can gradually tune into deeper feelings and underlying needs.  We often stay on the surface of these inner waters which can reveal so much about our true selves.  What really matters to us.  Bringing compassionate awareness to our deep needs can be a bridge of empathy.  We realize that we are all worthy of love and flourishing in life.  This awareness and the tools of mindful listening can enable us to intuit the deeper feelings and needs of others.  It can help us to better understand those we may disagree with.  We are relational creatures who grow and learn with kindness.

We drew on the work of meditation instructor and non-violent communication trainer Oren Jay Sofer.  You can find a number of his guided meditations at his web-site.  We also listened to encouragement from meditation instructor and writer Sharon Salzberg.  You can find her article, The Conscious Effort True Love Requires, in the column she writes for On Being with Krista Tippett.  We closed with the beautiful poem, Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye.  

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We had the final meeting of our Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness series at Yoga Bliss today.  The course content is adapted from the wonderful work of Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal.
Last week we focused on mindfulness of emotion. We use the breath to stabilize our attention and then we focused the lens of attention on the compelling emotions, feeling freely in sustained awareness. This week we bring in mindfulness of thought.

Welcome Everything

We try to develop mindfulness to be all inclusive, to include all aspects of our life. To include breath, body, emotions, thoughts, the world we encounter –  sights, sounds, smells, everything. Nothing is outside of awareness.  That is what makes it sacred.   The term “Big Mind” is sometimes used to describe the mind that holds everything.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t act with discernment in the world. We keep our awareness and our hearts open, even though we might say no to something.

We keep our hearts and minds open through the strengthening of mindfulness. As mindfulness gets stronger and stronger, our attention is set free from what we are mindful of.  When we have strong sensation or pain in the body – we often react to it, we tense around it or try to push it away.  We may have feelings of anger, despair or self-pity.  All these strong reactions can become entangled with what we are attending to.  As mindfulness gets stronger, mindfulness itself begins to disentangle itself; it becomes independent.  An analogy often used is that of a lotus flower. A lotus flower grows up out of the muddy water, but as it blooms it’s untouched by the mud. A beautiful white lotus is rooted in the mud, but it’s not touched by the mud. It has this purity. As the mindfulness gets stronger it’s becoming free from the mud, the places of attachment or aversion.  In mindfulness meditation, we aim to be aware of thoughts. To include them in awareness, and in that inclusion, with time, learn to be free of them.  Sometimes the mind does become silent.

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We had the third meeting of our Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness  series at Yoga Bliss today.  The course content is adapted from the wonderful work of Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal.  In our last meeting we focused on mindfulness of the body. We use the breath to stabilize our attention and then we focus the lens of attention on the continuous array of physical sensations. This week we bring in emotion.   We experience such a wide range of feeling.  We rejoice and despair.  With mindfulness we can feel freely and also be free from being driven by emotion.   We find freedom in allowing our emotional life to flow.

Trusting Emotion

Meditation is a space and time to deeply trust our emotional life.  Rather than deny or hold onto an emotion, we can trust this emotional experience can move through us.   All emotions are a form of communication.  We can listen to what is being communicated when we feel angry.  We don’t reactively act on the anger.  We have enough trust in the process to open to it more deeply.   A transformation of emotion is possible in this opening.   We begin to sense the depth of our emotional life  and what underlies our everyday busyness. 

It’s very important to distinguish between what happens in life, the difficulties in being human, and the secondary reactions we have to them that add to our suffering.  How are we reacting that’s different from just letting a difficulty be there in its simplicity?  In mindfulness we don’t judge ourselves negatively for our feelings or reactions.  We try to wake up from the trance of our conditioning.  We try to pay attention and notice what’s actually going on.  It only matters that we wake up.  We notice and don’t add anything more.

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We use the breath as the foundation of meditation practice. One of the functions of the breath is to becalm the mind and to sense yourself:   a living being . . . with six sense doors:  sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and in the Eastern contemplative tradition thought, a sense door that perceives what goes on in our minds.  What does it mean to simply sense?

In meditation we let things simply appear through whatever sense door they appear in.  We let them be there.  Notice them when they’re there and when they go away, let them go. The emphasis is on being at ease. You’re not trying to accomplish anything; you’re not trying to force your meditation to become anything, just staying at ease and allowing things to occur naturally.

All kinds of sensory experience arise. There may be a sound outside.  Let the sound come to you; you don’t have to go to it. An itch will occur; let the itch arise. You don’t have to do anything about it, just let it be there, be present for it.  A thought arises, just be aware of the thought.  You may experience restlessness . . . an eagerness to accomplish or fix something.   You may try to block out what you are perceiving.  The idea is to stay present. If sensation arises, be really present for it, take it in, allow it to be there, offer your presence to it. When it goes away, let it go away.

In the mindfulness tradition, this is called choiceless awareness. You don’t choose what arises, you don’t choose what you pay attention to, once you’re here and present you allow, choicelessly, whatever arises to be there. You’re not in conflict with anything. You’re not trying to manipulate anything or hold on to anything; just letting things be. In that radical letting-things-be, you let yourself be. Many people don’t have much experience with letting themselves just be. We’re always trying to fix or improve ourselves, to defend or protect ourselves. Let it be. Then the meditation practice unfolds and deepens with that sense of beingness.

Over time, you may find life unfolds with less stress and more freedom.  Insight arises when we start being present for our life in a careful way.  We develop more concentration and stability in daily life with practice.  Mindfulness in daily life is bout being easy, open and present to what arises without getting entangled.  Rather than withdrawing we connect more fully to life.  Our presence is like when we bring two hands together, relaxed palm to palm, simply making contact with living experience.

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We had the second meeting of our Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness series at Yoga Bliss today.  The course content is adapted from the wonderful work of Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal.  Last week we focused on mindfulness of breathing. We use the breath to stabilize and center ourselves.  We pay attention to how we pay attention. We learn to distinguish fully experiencing breathing from thinking about breathing or anything else.  This week we open the lens of our attention to include the present moment experience of embodiment.  Many of the best qualities of human being come through the experience of being embodied:  intelligence, understanding, love, and compassion.

Embodiment & Meaning Making Stories

We use the breath to stabilize and center ourselves. We aim to feel our body breathing, naturally without technique.  Only feeling breathing and our body’s experience expressed as sensation.  Awareness of the body.  Beyond awareness of the body, we experience emotions; beyond emotions we experience thought; beyond thought we experience mind.  At the center of this constellation of aliveness is our breathing.  When the center is full, it provides us stability.  We can move outward, experience sensations, emotions and thoughts, while remaining grounded.  We begin, again and again, by using the breath to stabilize and center ourselves.

Today we focus on the body and the experience of physical embodiment.  The body is always present.  If we are connected to the body we are in the present moment.  In mindfulness meditation, the very simple practice of noticing, we bring our attention to our living experience. If we are present with our breathing we are taking in the sensations of that experience in a deeper, fuller way.  Like being on the beach on a nice sunny day.  Imagine you’re on the edge of the ocean, standing there and taking in the breeze, the smell of the ocean, the sight. You really register the experience; you take it in.  In the same way, you sit with your breath and take in the fullness of the experience of breathing in.

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We had our first meeting of our Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness series at Yoga Bliss today.  Over the next few weeks we will be developing mindfulness on the meditation cushion and in our daily lives.  As we live with more awareness other qualities begin to arise – caring, intimacy, patience, tolerance – even freedom. We free ourselves from the causes and conditions that lead to suffering.  We begin to recognize and appreciate the conditions for our happiness. Inner resources of insight and understanding start to affect the way we live.

Course Outline

The course content is adapted from the wonderful work of Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal.  We began by summarizing the focus of each week’s focus:

Week 1:  Creating our meditation posture.  Mindful attention to your breathing.  We use the breath to develop concentration and to pay attention to how we pay attention.

Week 2:   Mindfulness of the body. Being connected to the body is essential to developing awareness.   Tuning into present moment sensations keeps us in present moment awareness.

Week 3:  Mindfulness of emotions.  Emotions are a big part of our life. We aim to learn how to include them in the field of attention in a wise way. 

Week 4:  Mindfulness of thinking.  Many people think you’re not supposed to think while you meditate.  We’ll learn a wise way to pay attention to thinking, so that thinking doesn’t carry us away.  We can allow our thoughts to be in our present moment awareness.

Along the way, we’ll explore how we can practice mindfulness in daily life.  And as with anything we want to learn, we begin to truly embody the subject of study with practice, with repetition.

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