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Overview | Location/Dir. | Protocol | Newcomer Info | Subs. | Teachings | Summary
Sangha Teachings
05/23/10 Preference, Perception, and Practice: Home Practice
2. Notice that your perceptions are not empty but are biased.
3. Notice what you’ve noticed.
4. In this moment of noticing, can you let loose of a preference?
The point is not to dismiss it, or be harsh but to gently let loose of it, as best as you are able.
03/21/10 Being Stuck: Home Practice
2. Explore your relationship to "stuckness." Notice how you respond to feeling stuck. Notice your attitude.
3. Notice when you experience "stuckness" in another person. What is your reaction?
03/08/10 Unfinished Business from Childhood that Arises during Middle Age: Home Practice
See how it is affecting your life.
Not judging, but discerning.
Just looking. Noticing.
Observe how do you respond when this unfinished business comes up?
Does it give you certain privileges: a right to feel sorry for yourself, be in a bad mood? Do you respond by getting busy, collapsing?
When you discover a piece of unfinished business. can you say, in the moment, a few lines of loving-kindness, or phrases of compassion? Say it for the person who has been evoked, or you, now.
Not some theoretical, idea, but right now, in the moment, as soon as you notice.
12/13/09 Time & Death; Dealing with the Darkness: Home Practice
1. When you are feeling the darkness, what can you be grateful for?
Look for something to be grateful for.
2. In what way could you serve someone else who is feeling the darkness?
3. Create a ritual for yourself that will turn the holi-days into holy days.
10/18/09 The Suffering of Judging, Comparing, and Fixing: Home Practice
Notice what is true.
Connect to your felt sense of judging or comparing or trying to fix.
Sustain your attention on this.
Fully receive it.
Continue to explore and Investigate what these mind states feel like and how they feel in the body.
Do this with equanimity.
Always support your exploration and endeavor with loving kindness and compassion.
9/20/2009
The Meaning of Sangha
Dharma Talk by Phillip Moffitt
The sangha is hosting each one of us and each one of us is "hosting" the rest of us. Whatever it is that you're working on, you are hosted. This is the gift we give each other. Sangha is an opportunity to care for and receive the care from others. On Sunday nights, we come together: Our mind's focused together, our hearts open together.
And that our sangha has reached a new level of maturity. And Phillip spoke about an invitation to go the next level and deepen your relationship to sangha: Delve deeper in your interactions, participate in more programs, volunteer more, take a leadership role, develop programs that interest you.
The question is: "How will you utilize Sangha as part of your spiritual growth?"
As you step into this question and take action , you are opening yourself up to a wider and deeper opportunity to develop.
And then he spoke about what it takes to say "yes" to community. It involves giving up some individual will- and sometimes this does not seem desirable or comfortable. But he also stressed the benefits of being part of community, in a deeper way. He says it is "rich" but not always pleasant. It can be frustrating, it can take a long time to reach a consensus, it takes being accepting of others' differences, it takes an awareness of not excluding others, not having to be "right"…and all of this is a great opportunity for practice.
Sangha is a different kind of community, separate from the material world. We have common language, common goals, common values. Sangha represents a chance to influence and help and be influenced and helped.: An opportunity to be available and support people, peer to peer, without fixing or judging or comparing… These are the qualities we are practicing: to have an open heart, to be open to one another, to be non-judging. He says that within sangha, there is a higher chance of feeling seen and being accepted and that unexpected things happen when like-minded people gather, together.
He then spoke about development. And that if one wants to develop their spiritual practice, they must study and they must practice. And that Sangha represents a place to not only meditate together, but to study together, to have a dharma buddy and to have dharma friends. And that your level of participation and commitment is an on-going choice, and that Sangha is always available to you.
The Darkness of Ambivalence, Ambiguity, and Ambition in the Light of the Dharma.
8/30/09 Ambiguity Part 2: Home Practice
Look at the psychological relationship you have with ambiguity.
Do you use it as a marker? Do you notice it as a signal?
Can you take it as a message?
Have there been times in your life when it has been a message?
Is there a relationship between your ambiguity and fear?
What is that relationship?
Is there resistance in some area of your life that you haven't noticed as "resistance" because you've been so ambiguous around that area?
8/23/09 Ambiguity Part 1: Home Practice
1. Notice when Ambiguity arises.
2. When you experience ambiguity, what happens in your body? Explore and get to know this feeling so that the next time you feel it, in your body, you can know that it's ambiguity.
3. See if you can differentiate between ambivalence and ambiguity in your own experience in daily life.
4. Do a reflection and name for yourself an area of your life where ambiguity is the dominant experience: Where is the ambiguity so strong that it would be proper to name it "dominating ambiguity" or "limiting ambiguity"?
8/09/09 Ambivalence Part 2: Home Practice
Notice your reaction when people are ambivalent to you.
Notice when someone you care about is ambivalent, in general.
Practice finding resolve around something you're ambivalent about that's small:
Some issue or aspect of your life that's not too charged.
Practice making a resolve around that issue, as described in the talk.
8/02/09 Ambivalence Part 1: Home Practice
Notice all the different times/ways that ambivalence shows up.
When you feel ambivalent:
Notice that it is there.
Notice where you feel it in your body.
Notice how it is affecting your thinking and your mood, at this moment
REFLECTIONS FOR DEEPENING THE PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS
1. Mindfulness is the quality of relaxed embodied awareness.
2. With diligent practice, this awareness becomes infused with wisdom and compassion.
3. Diligent practice requires commitment, which is composed of faith, energy, investigation,
will power, and patience.
4. Wisdom is seeing your true nature and the nature of all things with clarity, acceptance, and humility.
5. Wisdom comes through insight, which is the fruit of right mindfulness.
6. Compassion is the heart’s quiver that responds to suffering.
THE FIVE PRECEPTS
The Precepts are a tool for combining mindfulness with ethical behavior (sila) in daily life. They are taken at the beginning of every meditation retreat in order to create a safe community (sangha). Likewise, you can utilize these precepts in your daily life to discover those situations where your mind contracts into grasping, therefore causing suffering for yourself or others..
The Five Precepts:
1. I take as a training precept to refrain from taking life.
2. I take as a training precept to refrain from taking that which is not freely given.
3. I take as a training precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.
4. I take as a training precept to refrain from unwise/unskillful speech.
5. I take as a training precept to refrain from intoxication that clouds the mind.
Some people find that they are more comfortable stating the precepts positively because they find it more inspiring. Likewise, some people have crafted their own expanded or elaborated positive version because it adds momentum to their mindfulness in daily life.
The following is a sample of positively stated and elaborated version of the Precepts. Feel free to use these or make your own.
The Five Precepts Stated Positively
1. To the best of my ability, I will protect and support life and encourage the fulfillment of potential for love and understanding in others.
2. To the best of my ability, I will take only what is freely given and vow to practice gratitude and generosity.
3. To the best of my ability, I will respect and support on-going relationships, honor my commitments, and practice discernment between the beauty of Eros as a feeling and the compulsiveness to act it out.
4. To the best of my ability, I will say what is true, useful, and timely and practice deep listening such that both my speaking and listening reflects loving-kindness and compassion.
5. To the best of my ability, I will maintain a clear and alert mind that is aware of its motivations, moment to moment, such that it can discern between what is the cause of suffering and what is not the cause of suffering.
