Dear Friends,

The teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh that speak most to my heart are those that remind me of an experience I had with one of my students.

This student was incarcerated between the ages of 14 and 17 years old, and I corresponded with him throughout his sentence.

The decision to continue our teacher-student relationship was not easy for me since that school year I was serving a dual administrator/teacher role and was due to a big promotion. My principal was not happy when I opted to testify in court when I was subpoenaed and was furious when she found out that I was corresponding with my student without letting her know.

This was my chance to decide to either treat this young man as ”someone else’s child” or as if he could have been my own. The teacher in me saw his redeeming qualities, his capacity for Buddhahood. This experience and my continued relationship with this young man for the last 12 years have deeply influenced my dedication to restorative justice and advocacy for youth.

Dear friends,

Tonight we will follow on the theme that Susie so beautifully offered last week. We will continue to use our breath to bring us calm, to bring us stability. Breath is the link that brings our body and mind together. By calming the mind, we calm the body and by calming the body, we calm the mind. As Thay often reminds us, breathing is our anchor. I’m reminded that breathing is an object of meditation that I can use on and off the cushion. It only takes me a minute to stop and do one or two slow, deep breaths. So simple, yet so calming, grounding. Too beneficial to only use on the cushion!

We will start the evening with a guided meditation from Plum Village that uses our breath as a support to deepen our connection to Mother Earth. I enjoyed it very much and hope you will too!

Our 20 year old daughter who’s studying in London was the first In our family to shelter in place. Her concern for us, as well as the lessons learned in Europe, led my ‘cluster’ here in DC to begin staying home earlier than locally mandated. I am grateful that we are all working hard to follow the guidance to stay home and to stay safe as being the best practices to protect ourselves, our families and our larger community. At the same time, I am deeply aware of those working in essential services who are helping others, at risk to themselves. Deep gratitude.

Everyday I am a different person. Each experience and thought is a learning moment for me to grow and change and be challenged to evolve in this body and mind experience.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve listened to the news each morning. And one day I didn’t. And I was happy. I realized all that I am grateful for. I returned to my practice of breathing, and noticed the positive outcomes of breathing — calm & centered. Whether in the midst of a pandemic or in my normal life, I always have the choice to enjoy my breath.

I read a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, and it reminded me of something that happened when I was in my 20’s.

Thay said, “When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive.”

We are all suffering right now, and none of us know how the future will unfold.

As a mammal in a time of great uncertainty, swimming in a 24/7 news cycle, I am tempted to focus on my worries and fears. There’s a part of me that’s convinced that, if I can just read enough articles from enough legitimate sources, I’ll be better prepared, better able to take care of my family, friends and those in need. For a few days, I identified with that part and became addicted to the news before realizing, thankfully, that this was a form of “unmindful consumption” and made things worse: I felt more isolated and drawn toward a “fortress mentality” that ran counter to my core.

This Monday night we are making some changes to the format of our ‘typical’ Sangha in acknowledgment of concerns surrounding group gatherings and the Coronavirus. Rather than just taking a brief hiatus we have decided to take our Sangha online and to convene via video conference using Zoom (Instructions as to how to join are available below but you can do this either via computer or phone). The format for the evening will be the same as usual and comprise a guided relaxation meditation, followed by mindful movements (rather than the usual walking meditation), followed by a second shorter sitting meditation. We will then have 45 minutes for dharma sharing.

There is no registration required, just click here for the details on how to join us online.

The topic for this week's sharing was scheduled to be one the Five Mindfulness Trainings, but we have decided to push this back later into the month. Rather we thought it timely to revisit the issue of uncertainty and calming the fearful mind. This particular topic is one which has been explored over the millennia by buddhist practitioners and has been widely written about by Thay. Infact Thay wrote a book specifically on this issue to address the post 9/11 realities and as a response to fear of terrorism. One of Thay’s best known quotes on the subject is:

“The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm

Please join us for a special evening on Monday night, when we will celebrate our beautiful, new space and our precious sangha.  At 6:15, we’ll start with social time and snacks. At 7pm, we will shift to the formal part of the evening, which Annie will facilitate. We will have a short sit and a ceremony, where we will formally welcome the space, followed by a second sit and dharma sharing, which will end at 8:30. You are welcome to join us for any part of the evening or for its entirety. 

To help us plan, please:

(i) RSVP by COB Sunday (acceptances only) so that we get a headcount for the evening (please RSVP here)

(ii) volunteer if you’d like to help with set up, clean up or bring a specific item (please sign up on the google doc here)

Right now is a wonderful opportunity to pause and reflect on our sangha. In Creating True Peace Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

“If we are a drop of water and we try to get to the ocean as only an individual drop, we will surely evaporate along the way. To arrive at the ocean, you must go as a river. The sangha is your river. In our daily practice, we learn how to be a part of this river. We learn how to look with sangha eyes, how to walk with sangha feet, how to feel with a sangha heart. We have to train ourselves to see the happiness of our community as our own happiness and to see the difficulties of our community as our own difficulties. Once we are able to do this, we will suffer much less. We will feel stronger and more joyful.

Dear Friends,

We will offer sitting meditation and walking meditation, and during our second sitting meditation, we will enjoy the Great Bell Chant to help us relax our bodies and minds.

After the meditation period, we will listen to Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) giving a talk about listening to the bell as the reflection of the voice of the Buddha bringing us back to the present moment.

The talk we will listen to is HERE. We will begin listening around minute 15:00.

"The Buddha said there is a beautiful safe island within yourself in which you can take refuge. And every time you hear the bell you go back to the island within and take refuge and that island is in your heart. In that island you can find yourself. You can find your ancestors, spiritual ancestors and blood ancestors. You'll find whatever you want to find." -- Thich Nhat Nanh

Dear Thay, dear sangha,

This Monday night following sitting and walking meditation, we will enjoy a guided meditation practice. I am delighted to share a 1990’s version of Plum Village’s Three Touchings of the Earth. A bow of gratitude to Mitchell at Stillwater for sharing this version. Click here for the 3 Touchings

I was struck by the depth of the commentary that Thay/Thich Nhat Hanh expressed in his introduction. I include some excerpts of this commentary at the bottom of this reading.

Dear Friends,

Tonight we have the opportunity to reflect on the Third Mindfulness Training, True Love:

Every time I read this training, I wish I had internalized it when I was in my 20s! Seriously, how mindful was I about sexual desire, relationships, and commitment when I was young? Although I did not hop from one relationship to another lightly, I was certainly more driven by emotions and hormones than by the practice of True Love. So today, I want to share with you a personal story. A story about True Love that went unrecognized and was trashed many years ago. Maybe you can relate to my story.

Dear Friends,⁣

Please come join us Monday to practice mindfulness. We will watch or listen to another portion of the ARISE webinar.⁣ Camille will facilitate, and she shares her topic here:⁣

“I often feel angry and lost when I see how we have exacerbated oppression and continue to marginalize individuals. I wonder if I am doing enough in advocating for social justice and social equity or if I am adding to what our speaker calls ‘repeating what has been happening for centuries’.⁣

“So why then do I and others sit with this discomfort without actively engaging in changing our systems, structures, and even our privileges. I am hoping by working and making changes - with others, our mindfulness community, and the Dharma, we can change the situation as Thay suggests ‘without engaging in partisan conflicts’ but by engaging in compassionate ways to heal.⁣..

We will listen to part of a talk by Thay Thich Nhật Hanh: Surrender Yourself to the Present Moment, 2004. You can access the full talk here.

In this talk, Thay shares about the importance of trusting our in-breath, our mindful steps, and our body to heal us. By surrendering to the present moment, we are ale to heal. He says:

Each step is a healer. And when you make a step like that, you don't have to struggle at all because making a step is not an act of struggling, an act of fighting, it is total surrendering. You surrender yourself to the present moment. You surrender yourself to the power of healing that is inherent in your body and in your consciousness."

He also reminds of the power of rest. When resting we "authorize our body to heal." The talk is full of instructions and reminders focused on the basic practice of stopping (samatha) in order to allow for healing to occur.

On Monday, will enjoy a silent sitting meditation, a walking meditation, and then a guided. restful meditation. After that, we will listen to 10-15 minutes of Thay's talk, and then have time to share what we heard and how we respond to the teaching as a community. Sharing is always optional. 

This Monday, we will build on last week’s exploration of the 2nd Mindfulness Training, True Happiness.    We will investigate those moments when we did/did not feel happy and reflect on how we behaved as a result of these feelings.

Last week, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions - from exquisite happiness of being outdoors with my family in the snowy mountains of Colorado - to making harsh judgements about the very same family and wishing they were different from how I view them as being.

While the roller coaster felt extreme at the time, I now see that it is more normal that I’d like to admit.   For someone who has been practicing mindfulness for a long time, this was a “bitter awakening”, as Anam Thubten calls those powerful moments that invite us to wake up.

This coming Monday, after sitting and walking mindfully together, we will recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings – our guidelines for an ethical life. This month, we will focus on the Second Mindfulness Training: True Happiness.

In  other lineages, the title of this training is simply “Not Stealing.” This is where one can appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh's wisdom and skillful kindness: Instead of telling us what not to do, Thay (as his students call him) very gently invites us to practice the opposite of stealing, which is practicing generosity in its many forms, generosity being the root of true happiness.

In his book The Mindfulness Survival Kit, Thay writes:

The Second Mindfulness Training is about taking only what is freely given and treating the environment with care. It is about learning to share material goods, time and energy with those who are in need. The aim of this training is to end craving. Because of our craving for natural resources, because of the craving of the market for us to consume its goods, governments don't hesitate to bring an army to invade another country and end countless lives. Because of this craving, we allow poverty and hunger to exist, afraid we won't have enough for ourselves if everyone has what they need. Craving leads to the destruction of the environment and the pollution of water, the soil and the air.

Dear Friends,

This week Andy & Annie will co-facilitate.

On December 16 at sangha, we watched a section of the first ARISE webinar (click here to access full recording of the webinar) on dharma and social justice. 

Who is ARISE? 
ARISE sangha - Awakening through Race, Intersectionality, and Social Equity - is made of practitioners and monastics who come together to heal the wounds of racial injustice and social inequity, beginning with looking deeply within ourselves and using the energy of compassion, understanding, and love in action. Part of their mission is to guide those of us in the larger community in how to do this work as well.

In November, ARISE offered their first webinar (click here to watch.) This Monday, we will watch or listen to another portion of the webinar. 

In the fourteen mindfulness trainings, Thay writes:

Aware that the essence and aim of a Sangha is the practice of understanding and compassion, we are determined not to use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit or transform our community into a political instrument. A spiritual community should, however, take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.

Dear Sangha, Dear Friends: 

What an honor to be facilitating our Sangha on the very last day of 2019! Thank you for allowing me to hold space for all of us. I believe it is important to enter the New Year with intention, while honoring all that has brought us to the end of another year of life on Earth. This is why, every December, I create two separate family glass jars: one to remember our blessings and what we are grateful for, and one to intentionally invite in new experiences and/or attitudes for the New Year. I generally keep my glass jars in a visible place and, occasionally, I open them and read the tiny folded notes inside. They remind me to be present, intentional and conscious because, as my Mom often says: Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows. So true, don’t you think? 

Photo by Henrik Hjortshøj 

With the holidays all but upon us and the end of the year / decade approaching this Monday we plan on having a seasonal sangha gathering where we get to enjoy a little more time than usual enjoying each other’s company. Rather than the usual two ‘sits’ and a walking meditation we will ‘sit’ just once and then spend time sharing food and dharma. With many folks headed out of town, and others having guests visiting we expect this to be a nice small group evening. 

In terms of a dharma sharing I thought it might be fun to ponder on a favorite story shared by Thay:

One day the Buddha was sitting with his monks in the woods. They had just finished their mindful lunch and were about to start a question and answer session. A peasant passed by and asked the Buddha, “Dear monk, have you seen my cows passing by here?”

The Buddha said, “What cows?”

Dear Friends,

With so much conversation around racial and social justice, how do we work with these issues through the lens of the mindfulness and Buddhist practice, and specifically through the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh?

Within the larger Thich Nhat Hanh community, a few years ago, a small group of practitioners came together to create the international ARISE sangha. ARISE - Awakening through Race, Intersectionality, and Social Equity - is made of practitioners and monastics who came together to heal the wounds of racial injustice and social inequity, beginning with looking deeply within ourselves and using the energy of compassion, understanding, and love in action. Part of their mission is to guide those of us in the larger community in how to do this work as well.

Following on Marie’s beautiful thread from last week, I would like to share my personal practice of sitting — a practice that helps me to “build a home inside yourself to love and heal yourself”. During dharma sharing I will invite you to reflect and share your own experiences. Why do you sit? 

I sit because it makes me happier. I sit alone to enjoy the calm. I sit with others to enjoy the peace and rest of connecting with others in silence without needing to engage in conversation. 

I also sit to create new neural pathways, new more skillful ways to act and react to old stimuli in order to decrease the suffering I cause to myself and others. Modern neuroscience has helped elucidate the brain’s process to do this challenging work. Consistent repetition of new learned behaviors appears to be key. Thich Nhat Hahn (Thay/teacher in Vietnamese) teaches the time-honored way to do this using a metaphor of ‘watering seeds’ in our store consciousness/subconscious. By watering the positive seeds within ourselves and others, these seeds or tendencies will grow and thrive. By refraining to water the less helpful seeds in ourselves and others, they will wither from lack of nourishment and fall away. 

Last Monday, Camille helped us to explore the 2nd Mindfulness Training: True Happiness. Several people shared their challenges, and their practice with this part of the training: “…the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering…”

From a theoretical perspective, we know that we “inter-are”with those who are suffering, and we have a clear sense of the implications. Yet from a practical perspective, this can be difficult to do, especially (for me), with those I love the most who have been suffering for a long time.