Dear Thay, Dear friends

Over the last six months, I’ve experienced more grief than ever before: from the grief about our planet and the people and animals living on it to the grief of having friends and family members die.

I noticed that how I grieved varied. Did I rush through it? Bury it? Give it time? The impact of my grieving process had a huge impact on how I felt during and “after” the grief (recognizing that there is no ‘after’ - the grief has softened and it is still there). Sometimes, I got in the way of my own experience (for example, feeling frightened to feel pain and then deciding to avoid it) and at others, I was able to care for the pain as well as for the parts that felt scared of it. Sometimes, I grieved alone and at others, I reached out to loved ones to share how I felt.

I became increasingly curious about the whole process of grief and started reading, watching and experimenting with new ways of understanding and being with grief.

Mary invites you to join Monday night for our monthly recitation of the Five Mindfulness Trainings. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are one of the most concrete ways to practice mindfulness. Current times press us all to reflect deeply on which ethical values can support us to cross the wide river of suffering to arrive on the other shore. The 5 Mindfulness trainings serve as a compass to reach the other side, the shore of freedom from suffering and the root causes of suffering..

As we come out of the past six months of daily accommodations to Covid 19 compounded by a deepened reckoning of racial injustice in our country and in the world, I am so grateful to Thay’s skillful transmission of the Buddha’s teachings, to my sanghas and to my practice. Together they create a generous raft of support. They give me confidence that, with diligence, I will reach the other shore…

Dear Friends,

We will explore our mindfulness/Buddhist ancestors, focusing on one of our spiritual ancestors, the mother of the Buddha, also known as Mahāpajāpatī Gotami, and her students.

Mahāpajāpatī was not the biological mother of Siddhartha, but she raised him from the time he was only a few days old, after the death of her older sister Maya after she gave birth to Siddhartha.

Pajāpatī and her sister Maya were both married off to a chief of the Sakya clan, Suddhodana, and lived with him in the capital town of Kapilavatthu. Maya became pregnant and when it was time to give birth, she traveled to her hometown, as was the custom. They stopped at Lumbini for a rest, and Maya gave birth to Siddhartha under an asoka tree.

After Maya's death, Pajāpatī raised Siddhartha as her own child and said good-bye to him when he left home as a young man and new father. When he returned to Kapilavatthu after his enlightenment, Pajāpatī greeted him warmly, and listened to his teachings.

Eventually, Pajāpatī became a student of her son. As a result of her wisdom, she became the one who women came to seeking advice and support. Many of these women had been left by husbands who were looking for enlightenment many of whom had become monks in the Buddha's sangha.

The concept of non-attachment is a core tenet of Buddhism and always an interesting concept to explore. Be it non-attachment to views, in particular ideas and constructs you might feel most ownership of, or to material objects that you might take particular comfort or meaning from is difficult and hard to grasp. Attachment to family, friends, colleagues and pets are also obviously some of the strongest attachments within our lives.

I would guess that all of us are deeply attached to all of the above - people, ideas and things. For example if I lose some meaningful possession, I literally will turn the house upside down for days looking for this item and will either not relax until I either find it or reconcile to the fact that it is gone forever and feel upset.

Marie shares:

Last week we recited the Five Mindfulness Trainings and focussed on the Fifth Training from ARISE “Welcoming as Nourishment and Healing”. When I returned to this Training, the next day, I was struck by this line: “I will cultivate joy to support me toward individual and collective wholeness.”

With all that is going on in the world and in this country, I welcomed this guidance and was curious to learn more. In “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching”, Thay writes “It is true that the Buddha taught the truth of suffering, but he also taught the truth of ‘dwelling happily in things as they are...’ Please ask yourself, “What nourishes joy in me? What nourishes joy in others? Do I nourish joy in myself and others enough?”

What a wonderful question! As I explored it, I realized that, for me, joy and inter-being inter-are. When I feel one, I feel the other, and these feelings ground me in ways that help to deepen my practice, my awareness and my actions.

On Monday, please come experience joy, share what brings you/others joy and explore its impact. After our first sit, you can learn to dance (or watch others dancing) to Jerusalema, a song from South Africa that has swept the world, bursting with exuberance and connecting people as they dance together. The Jerusalema “dance challenge” has become a global phenomenon, and you can learn more about that here.

We will begin by enjoying a relaxing guided meditation to unwind our bodies and prepare us to read the Five Mindfulness Trainings together.

After reading the trainings, we will focus our attention on the Fifth Mindfulness Training. Below you will find both trainings. The highlighted text will be most relevant to our discussion about how to find the middle way of consumption of media.

The ARISE version of the Fifth Mindfulness Training reminds us that most of us have had inadequate education in the history of racial inequalities, and we need to learn the true history and then be aware of how this inequity shows up in many websites, TV shows, films, conversations, etc.

How might we blend the traditional training's suggestions not to consume toxins along with the ARISE suggestion to become more aware of the inequities built in to so much of the communication we consume?

Music is a major part of the Plum Village tradition. Whether it is in singing, chanting, humming, drumming, instrumentals, music is practiced lovingly by monks, nuns and lay people in Plum Village, in retreats, in sanghas, and also of course with families, in ceremonies, in nature with the birds and wild animals, and just about everywhere. When people sing on the streets it brings us together and sustains our energy.

At Plum Village retreats, we sing songs to help us cultivate joy and peace, and remember to be mindful. As our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says a song can help us to remember to "take refuge in ourselves by using our breathing to come back to a place of calm and stability".

During these challenging times, music can be very healing. Scientifically "music and musical elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and tempo stimulate a cognitive and emotional response that comprises the affective component of pain, which helps to positively affect mood and results in improved healing". The bottom line is that in all cultures and all over the world music has a special place among all people and animals as well, and it affects us in very positive ways. We don't need science to tell us this…

Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash-- https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/

In the book Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh shares that “When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand.” He calls this kind of understanding “non-duality.” Not two. Now more than ever we can realize and feel the truth of inter-being. From the Corona Virus, to the civil unrest our thoughts, speech, and actions are connected and intertwined.

Touching the Earth is a body-based practice for healing our relationships through forgiveness and embracing our ancestors, parents, teachers, and ourselves.

My friend and long-time Dharma Teacher, Mitchell Ratner, says this about the practice of Touching the Earth:

“Most often when we meditate we are sitting or standing, holding ourselves upright, against the pull of gravity. These are position of strength and will, indicative of our intent to know ourselves as we really are, to relax our fears, and to nourish our mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.

In the Plum Village tradition, as in many spiritual traditions we also sometimes “Touch the Earth.” We prostrate ourselves in order to offer gratitude and respect, and to relinquish our illusions of separate selves.”

We will read the Five Mindfulness Trainings from Thich Nhat Hanh, and we will review the 4th training.

This training focuses on Loving Speech and Deep Listening.

When we think about this training and the words “Speech” and “Listening” I imagine that what is conjured in your mind is sitting/standing and talking directly to another person. And yet this type of 1-2-1 in person communication is increasingly rare. Although the pandemic has made this situation worse it was already trending in this direction.

This week Annie will facilitate. We will watch together an excerpt from an interview that Sister Peace gave to the HuffPo in 2017.

Sister Peace is originally from the Washington area, and has been an ordained nun with Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) in Plum Village for many years.

In this interview, Sister Peace shares some of her experiences with growing up as an African-American in the U.S, and how listening to each other's pain in a deep way might be a way for us to heal as a country.

Mindfulness is about slowing down and really experiencing what is happening. During these times of great turmoil in the U.S., we sometimes rush to action without taking the time to feel. Using mindfulness, we can slow this process down so we can arrive at a deeper understanding of the situation and each other, and find more skillful action.

I will follow Mick's thread offered last week. We focused on how we engage our mindfulness practice in the present moment. During this time of uncertainty, many of us are frustrated with the rigors of confinement and social distancing and also fearful of the unknown future. The calligraphy above hangs on my bedroom wall as a daily reminder that I can be free anywhere ‘if’ I can fully embody the practice of mindfulness. That can seem a pretty big ‘if’ at all times. It appears an even greater one during the challenge of the current pandemic and a national awakening to social injustices. Be free where you are is the transcript of Thich Nhat Hahn’s talk in 1999 to 120 inmates at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, Maryland. This Monday night, we will call on excerpts of these teachings. Thay skillfully engaged with the tall order to teach people who are locked up in prison about ‘being free where they are’ when many were so full of anger, despair, regret and hopelessness.

Photo credit here

“ We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help”

---Thich Nhat Hanh (Peace Is Every Step)

As I was doing walking meditation last week, I asked myself, “Am I really here in the present moment?”. This question has come up over the past month while doing sitting and walking meditation. In answering this question there feels to be different levels, or depths of presence. They could be categorized as being here and there, present, and deeply present.

Deeper inside this question of presence is the question of what does it mean to be present, or to wake up.

A few weeks ago, when a member of our community asked that we explore the topic of grief, I felt grateful. Until recently, my experience with grief tended to be direct, tsunami-like events that flattened me. Then, with practice and time, came healing. Dry land on which I could find my feet. Gratitude for the presence of that person - which continued long after they had died.

With all that is happening in this world and in this country, I’m feeling grief more frequently, but the nature of that grief is different. As a privileged person, cocooned on a beautiful farm with work that connects me with nature, these crises have affected me indirectly - largely through the suffering of others. I recently learned the term “second hand trauma” that describes this, in part. Rather than a single tsunami, this can feel like an unrelenting set of waves, towering and fathomless, pounding other people, who have no chance to find dry land.

This week Annie will facilitate. We will read the Five Mindfulness Trainings from Thich Nhat Hanh, and we will focus on the 3rd training.

The third mindfulness training is about sexual misconduct (see below). This training often gets glossed over because many of us mindfulness and Buddhist practitioners feel that we are not likely to commit any kind of sexual misconduct, so we don't need to practice this training as seriously as the others.

I used to feel that way, but today I have a different view.

Even if we ourselves have never participated in acts of sexual assault, we may be unconsciously participating in a culture of rape and mysogeny which pervades much of the U.S. and other cultures. And the only way to be part of healing is to speak openly about what we see and experience.

How do we respond when we hear jokes about women being subjugated or raped? Do we laugh at or sing along with lyrics implying that women need to be controlled or raped? Do we stand up to attacks on women in the comment section of their writing? Do we wonder silently what a woman did to get herself in a position to be raped ("We would never do that."). More examples of our rape culture here.

The concept of no-self is something I find simultaneously both one of the most interesting and complex concepts in Buddhism. This idea sits right at the center of the practice and forms of the three marks of existence, namely impermanence, suffering and non-self (Sanskrit: Anatta).

I read this passage some time ago and found it to at least provide some entry point for my own understanding:

“From the point of view of time, we say “impermanence”, and from the point of view of space, we say “non-self”. Things cannot remain themselves for two consecutive moments, therefore there is nothing that can be called permanent “self”. Before you entered this room, you were different physically and mentally. Looking deeply at impermanence, you see non-self. Looking deeply at non-self, you see impermanence. We cannot say, “I can accept impermanence, but non-self is too difficult. They are the same.”

Essential to the understanding of non-self is our awareness that self is made up entirely of non-self elements and that there is no separation between self and non-self and everything is interconnected…

It has been said that the mark of a true Plum Village practice is that it is a “Coming Home” practice. Last week marked the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year. The summer is a yang time, or time of outward energy. Yang is translated as “the sunny side of the hill”, while yin is translated as “the shady side of the hill”.

Our yang may have been lit to a hotter fire by recent events. The quarantine of the

Spring built up to the explosion of the summer.

Amidst the great grief and suffering of this time what does it feel like to hear the

Words, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment. How can we say Present Moment, Wonderful Moment in such a time of unrest, grief and loss? When we meditate on this phrase we say, breathing in I dwell deeply in the present moment, breathing out I am aware that it is a wonderful moment. Perhaps present moment, wonderful moment does not quite fit for you at this time.

The 3rd Mindfulness Training in this new and revised offering is called "Cherishment as True Love". As I understand this training I think of it as encouraging us to love and care for ourselves and others more deeply and to seek justice and peace by doing no harm, having no hate, and working for liberation and freedom for all. This can be the path of practicing true love.

For me this is the heart of our mindfulness practice. I see so much suffering in the world, why wouldn't I want to nurture seeds of joy, love, and compassion in myself and in others and help myself and others suffer less. It sounds so simple, yet in practice we can often be so overwhelmed by seeing the violence, discrimination and hate in our world that we fall short of seeing how we are part of it, and then we retreat and wish and hope for it all to just go away.

I have participated in many events in the past couple weeks, including marching in protests, writing letters, making masks, participating in food pantry for homeless people, and just when I begin to feel hopeful, like we are working toward a common goal, I read the newspaper and hear of another horrific crime, and then another, and another, against a human being - another black bodied person. I become exhausted, and sometimes feel frozen. That is when I go back into that overwhelm with feelings of despair and deep sadness and then I retreat. I am not watering the seeds of love and compassion for myself and certainly cannot find the energy to help others.

This Monday I thought I would return once more to the subject of equanimity. I was reading the other morning about the last few weeks in the world's stockmarkets. They were explaining the reasons for the extreme levels of volatility which have seldom been seen (in the last few decades) other than at the very worst of the 2008 crash and on 9/11. The commentator laid out their thesis as to why this time was different and that we should prepare for what they described as an “extreme zig- zag world” of highs and lows lasting possibly the next decade and beyond.

We all knew that we likely had a bumpy ahead with issues such as wealth inequality, climate change, societal polarization and systemic racism needing to be tackled — even putting aside the current pandemic. It’s no wonder the volcano just blew its top…