The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/River Tree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Sundays often feel like a holiday for me – the time in my early life when going to grandma’s house was about her hugs and playing with my cousins. Our play was imaginal and improvisational. Hiding and seeking, shouting and running took us to new places. Our weekly class is a bit like those visits – I anticipate seeing your faces, hearing about your lives and the meaning you make of the world and our practice. We learn from each other and we draw comfort from each other.
Today we worked with Eagle Poem by Joy Harjo. The poem is about prayer and it’s an invitation to open. Each line is almost a koan – a question you live with that doesn’t have a “right” answer. When we live with life’s questions we meet each experience with curiosity and care.
We also drew on Rainer Maria Rilke‘s poem, Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower. Rilke lived during the late 19th and early 20th century. He lived during the tumultuous times leading up to WWI and the devastation during and after the war. The poem is like a hymn to being consciously alive. It’s also a challenge to embrace our lives fully. Ultimately he asks us to transform our suffering into strength.
In reflecting on how to go about this feat we looked to the wisdom teachings of Buddhism. First considering the teachings on love interpreted by Haemin Sunim, a Zen Buddhist teacher, writer and founder of the School of Broken Hearts in Seoul, South Korea. I learned of Haemin Sunim by listening to his interview with Dan Harris on the Ten Percent Happier podcast. He suggests that paying attention is a form of love.
Finally we practiced with one of the Brahmaviharas: cultivating compassion as interpreted by Roshi Joan Halifax. Roshi Joan is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver and Abbess of Upaya Zen Center. Brahmavihara is a Pali word meaning “sublime abode.” In practice this refers to four Buddhist virtues of lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Cultivating these qualities is a way of opening and transforming our hearts to grow our capacity to care. You can find the full practice in Roshi’s article, The Four Boundless Abodes.
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