We held our January Meditation & Communi-Tea practice yesterday at Yoga Bliss. The last Sunday over every month we will offer students more time to go a little deeper and make new friends. We’re drawing inspiration from Karen Armstrong’s “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”. Ms. Armstrong is a best selling author and TED Prize Winner who created and launched the Charter for Compassion.
You can be inspired right now by watching her brief TED plea: “Let’s Revive the Golden Rule.”
Karen spent years researching and studying religious traditions in many parts of the world. In her initial TED presentation, “My Wish: The Charter for Compassion,” she shares her concern that
” . . . we are living in a world . . . where religion has been hijacked. Where terrorists cite Quranic verses to justify their atrocities. Where instead of taking Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies. Don’t judge others,” we have the spectacle of Christians endlessly judging other people, endlessly using Scripture as a way of arguing with other people, putting other people down. Throughout the ages, religion has been used to oppress others, and this is because of human ego, human greed. We have a talent as a species for messing up wonderful things.”
With the Charter for Compassion, she hopes to create a movement of people who want to join up and reclaim their faith. In the first chapter of her book she describes how every one of the major world religions has, at the core, what’s become known as the Golden Rule. “Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” She talks about her passion to “educate and stimulate” compassionate thinking and living. Learning about compassion is the first step in living a compassionate life. Most importantly, she encourages us to:
Think of ways in which our actions can become a dynamic and positive force for change, not just within ourselves but in the world around us. Make a compassionate resolution a regular part of your life, a new habit can should be effect a transformation within ourselves and our immediate environment.
Yesterday, we sat and walked in silence. We practiced a Loving Kindness Meditation while sitting while doing a “moving prayer.” We took some time to reflect and write about questions concerning our own capacity to care, to listen, to open to the world. We considered what actions we can commit to – steps we resolve to take in learning and living compassion in the coming month.
We shared ideas about what arises in the different forms of practice: meditation, contemplation and mindfulness. We explored some creative ways of working compassionately with our own minds in developing the willingness to be still. Yesterday, the stillness proved to be fertile ground for students’ insights about self compassion and their feelings for others’ pain. We aim to bridge the gap between thinking and doing. Together, we can encourage and support each other to bring our caring alive, to take what Zen Meditation Master Bernie Glassman founder of the Zen Peacemakers Order, calls “loving acts.”
I’ll close with this question posed by Khalil Gibran:
And what is it to work with love? – It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
You can find some practice suggestions and resources at: