One of the aspects of the practice that I’ve missed, over the Covid months and years, is singing together as a sangha. Creating music together - or just listening - felt soooooo good! I’ve adapted, as have we all, in different ways, from early morning chanting with Melina Bondy (all are invited - learn more here), to singing songs to myself throughout the day, to creating playlists of music from different traditions, and this has been wonderful.

And, something in me still yearns to share music in community. So, this week I’d like to try an experiment: let’s share music that supports our practice.

I sometimes wonder if I am meditating and practicing in this tradition to transform suffering in myself and then help others, or am I avoiding something - like facing my own trauma or difficult issues at home? Do I use my spiritual practice and energy to ignore things that need to be resolved? These are some thoughts and questions that I don't have the answer to - yet am desirous and very eager to explore.

The term spiritual bypassing was coined by a psychologist named John Wellwood and defined as: “the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks."

Any of us can fall into spiritual bypassing from time to time, whether we are on a spiritual path or not and find ourselves repressing our emotions. Jon Kabat Zinn says we sometimes use meditation to avoid deep pain or suffering and instead of practicing mindfulness we practice mindlessness and build a story around how mindful we really are.

Thich Nhat Hanh says that in order to feel true love we need to cultivate understanding. In my desire to truly love those who have suffered systematic forms of discrimination, I would like to explore the wisdom that so many oppressed people derive from their deep connection with the earth. I hope that the lessons I share here can help us expand our circle of interbeing and heal our planet.

THE GIFTS OF THE HUMBLE

The gifted individuals who inspire me to become a better person have shared their gifts through humility.

The Buddha, of noble birth, performed the ultimate act of humility when he described The Path to aspiring bhikkhus by using the words that Svasti, an untouchable boy, had used to describe how to take care of water buffalo. Taking care of water buffalo was a role performed only by untouchables. Thich Nhat Hanh, my humble teacher, opens and closes his Old Paths, White Clouds with the experiences and perspectives of Svasti. Svasti and Buddha formed a transformational bond through their humility and deep connection with the earth they sat on together. Svasti made a cushion for Buddha from the grass he fed the buffalo, and offered Buddha his rice, thinking, “Surely he won’t find my rice too humble.”

Dear friends,

I was the semi-finalist in my third-grade Spelling Bee. Standing on the raised wooden stage, I was given a word I couldn’t spell — “enough.” I looked into the audience and saw the disappoinment in my father’s eyes. As I recall, our class lesson hadn’t yet introduced the f sound made by gh. I knew ph made the f sound, otherwise I might have gone with E-N-U-F. When I think about that day, I still cringe.

In May, when Taylor Swift addressed NYU’s ’22 graduating class, she spoke about cringeworthy moments. Swift said, “Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively.”

I can cringe and let go, and know that cringe is part of life. I make mistakes, I am vulnerable, I am not perfect. However, I am exactly who I am meant to be, right here, right now, with all the elements and conditions for happiness. Through our practice, I can begin to embrace the moment, feel like enough, love myself, accept my imperfections as lessons and teachers.

Dear Friends,

This Monday evening will be a celebration. On Friday, June 10th, 2022, Annie Mahon, the founder of the Opening Heart Mindfulness Community, participated in a Lamp Transmission ceremony at Plum Village, France, and was recognized as a Dharmacharya, a Teacher of the Dharma. The ceremony is part of an ancient Zen tradition through which the spiritual elders in the community entrust certain students with transmitting the practice of mindfulness to the next generation. Currently, in the Plum Village community, Order of Interbeing members are nominated to receive lamp transmission when the practice of mindfulness has permeated their lives, and when they have the capacity and willingness to teach…

Dear Friends,

This Monday, July 4, Annie and Allyne will co-lead sangha and we will enjoy a celebration of Inter-dependence Day!

"Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world." -- bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism.

To celebrate our Inter-dependence Day, we will enjoy watching a clip from this video of Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) about living happily in the present moment and choosing happiness instead of simply survival.

As Thay says in the video: “What’s the use of having 100 years to live if you are not capable of drinking this cup of tea in peace?”

Dear Thay, dear friends,

This week, we will recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings, concentrate on the Second Training, True Happiness and continue our exploration of this week. If you were not with us last Monday, we explored part of Thay’s poem: Please Call me By My True Name

“...I am a frog swimming happily, in the clear water of a pond

And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog…”

As some of you know from previous sharings, I’ve been practicing (and not practicing:) with impermanence as my elderly mother changes in body and in mind. She is visiting us at present, and recently, I came face to face with my expectation that she would get “better” and my reaction to this “not happening”.

Please join us in mindfulness on Monday evening as we sit and breathe together.

On my way to Plum Village, I stay at a hotel in Bordeaux. My room is sparsely furnished and decorated; instead there hang on the walls a few drawings of ordinary objects. This makes me think of Becoming Animal, where David Abrams writes about how most humans tend to conceptualize and represent nature instead of perceiving and experiencing it. I ponder the relationship between we humans and nature, reflecting on how many of us barely speak or think about nature with reverence, or cultivate our possibilities for interbeing. We often forget that verbal communication is just one form of expression among many, and that other organisms detect in us nonverbal manifestations such as our chemical emanations and waves of energy.

Many human cultures teach their children to view nature as something to objectify, own, and master; a stock of resources waiting to be utilized. Children are rarely provided with vital information for the health of our planet, or taught to appreciate that “no one is too small to make a difference,” as suggested in the title of Greta Thunberg’s book. Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that the earth is not just a space we occupy.

My elderly parents have suffered a number of illnesses in the past couple years. Most from falls working in their garden.

I have spent much time going back and forth (they live about eight hours north) to help them as have my many siblings. One of my favorite things to do is to help with the garden; planting, watering, weeding and just digging in the dirt with my hands. Their soil is amazingly smooth and rich, a chocolate brown color, and so easy to work.

I have noticed recently that at times I felt angry at mother nature - as their work in the garden caused them many injuries. However, mostly I feel much happiness and try not to attach to how or where they were injured, and then think about watering my wholesome seeds of happiness and joy…

This Monday will be Memorial Day and Annie will facilitate. We will read the Five Mindfulness Trainings together and the ARISE contemplation on the First training: Reverence for Life (both below).

On Memorial Day, we traditionally honor those who have died fighting for the United States in wars and conflicts. This Monday, we will use the lens of the First Mindfulness Training to honor those who have sacrificed their lives and consider how we ourselves can protect and honor the lives of all beings.

How can the Mindfulness Trainings help us understand how to prevent and heal from this week’s killing of 19 small children while they were at school, or the racist and antisemetic killings at a Buffalo grocery store, a synagogue in Philadelphia in 2018, and the Charleston AME church in 2015?

Inclusion is both a community process and a community outcome.

OHMC is undergoing a process to help us ensure that our three sanghas are as welcoming as possible to all. We are dedicated to offer a safe, brave space for all who attend to feel welcome just as they are across the spectrums of gender, race, class, sexuality, different abilities, etc. You may wish to reflect back on your first experience of attending OHMC sangha. Did you feel welcomed? During this week, after sitting and walking meditation, we will ask sangha attenders to share their experiences and ideas in small break-out groups to identify ways to train our facilitators and improve our ability to welcome all people..

As I reflected on what I wanted to write for this week’s OHMC newsletter, I decided to share my personal experience with inclusivity. And times when I experienced only tolerance or even exclusion. For those of you reading who do not know me, I am a woman who chose another woman from another country, language and culture to be my life partner of 35 years. We, in turn, chose to adopt two infant girls from different countries, languages, and cultures. It all sounds so simple as I write this, yet it masks the deep family hurts and public prejudices we experienced along the way. To be excluded from Christmas dinner one year in France, for example…

Dear Thay, dear friends,

This week we will practice the Five Touchings of the Earth (see full text below). This practice was developed by Thich Nhat Hanh to help us connect with the whole of ourselves, our planet, and everything in between (people, places and animals and more…) When we are connected to our roots, to all that sustains us, we are happy and solid, no longer isolated and lonely. When we touch the Earth, we breathe in all the strength and stability of the Earth and breathe out our suffering... We can practice to celebrate the positive and transform what needs to be transformed." (Thich Nhat Hanh).

While I know, intellectually, that I am connected with the earth and all that it holds, I don’t always feel that connection (serious understatement!) It’s easy for me, especially during times of stress, to start spinning and lose touch with the roots that are always there to support me, if only I could feel them.

This week Annie will facilitate. She will complete her series on the Three Marks/Seals of Existence (see end of this write up for the full list) with a conversation on Nirvana.

The three marks of existence are the three concepts that are true for everything. In many Buddhist lineages, the three marks of existence are Impermanence, Non-self, and Dukkha (suffering). In fact, I used this model when writing about the three marks in my book (Things I did When I Was Hangry): every thing is impermanent, nothing has a separate self, and every thing is marked with suffering.

Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) disagrees. He says that the three marks are impermanence, non-self, and nirvana. In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (p 20), he says:

It is not difficult to see that a table is impermanent and does not have a self separate from all non-table elements, like wood, sun, furniture maker, and so on. But is it suffering? A table will only make us suffer if we attribute permanence or separateness to it. When we are attached to a certain table, it is not the table that causes us to suffer. It is our attachment…:In several sutras the Buddha taught that nirvana, the joy of completely extinguishing our ideas and concepts, rather than suffering, is one of the Three Dharma Seals.

On Monday, Engaged Mindfulness working group members Allyne, Magda, and Phyllis will guide our sangha. We will explore how we react during global crises such as the war in Ukraine.

We will discuss how we can transform our emotions to reduce the suffering we see around the world and how we can cultivate and dwell in peace so that we may be proactive with our love and compassion. We will also share information on Engaged Mindfulness resources and on organizations we know of who are dedicated to helping those impacted by the Ukrainian crisis.

Dear Thay, dear friends,

Please join us on Monday evening, when we will recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings and turn towards the Fifth Training, Nourishment and Healing. I invite you to reflect on this passage: “I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition and consciousness.” In particular, I’m curious about how we “consume volition” and what impact does this have on our lives?

I hadn’t really thought about consuming volition until recently. During our recent OHMC retreat, Valerie asked us, during her second Dharma talk: what does it mean to live life with intention? She created space for us to explore this in small groups, and that was powerful. A little later, I was and continue to be, struck by quote she shared from Howard Thurman, a great theologian of the 20th century:

“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Our teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) has said:

“Mindfulness is a kind of energy that we generate when we bring our mind back to our body and get in touch with what is going on in the present moment, within us and around us. We become aware of our breathing and come home to our body, fully present for ourselves and whatever we are doing.”

This is really not hard work - we don’t need to study hard to enjoy simple mindfulness practices - we merely need to notice throughout our day that whatever we are doing we can do it with awareness and concentration. With that concentration we can find clarity in whatever we are doing to help relieve our own suffering and that of others. Thay calls this “insight”.

In the book Happiness, Thay writes, “The insight we gain from mindfulness meditation can liberate us from fear, anxiety, and anger, allowing us to be truly happy.”

The mindfulness practices that I most regularly enjoy are conscious breathing (particularly as a yoga instructor,) sitting meditation, and walking meditation. I am pretty good at following my breath during yoga, noticing how the breath enters and leaves the body, conscious of how it brings my body and mind together, and noticing the peace and calm that ensue.

When something bad happens, it seems second nature to look for someone or something to blame. There’s a lot going on right now and there’s plenty of blame in the air. I don’t always see right away how I may be connected and contributing, directly or indirectly, to the cause and the solution. What is it that I could do or stop doing to help make things better? The slogan ‘Think globally, Act locally’ comes to mind.

Pema Chōdrön, a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition, teaches how to use blame to help us awaken and become more compassionate:

“When I first read the lojong, or mind training, teachings in The Great Path of Awakening by the nineteenth-century Tibetan teacher Jamgön Kongtrül the Great, I was struck by their unusual message that we can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts. Rather than seeing the unwanted aspects of life as obstacles, Jamgön Kongtrül presented them as the raw material necessary for awakening genuine uncontrived compassion. It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others. The lojong teachings are organized around seven points that contain fifty-nine pithy slogans that remind us how to awaken our hearts. Here are two of those slogans.

Annie will facilitate and continue with the series on the Three Marks of Existence (more on the three marks at the bottom).

This week we will focus on and practice the second mark: non-self.

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Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) often teaches the concepts of non-self using the example of a flower. He says:

“The flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.

A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.

The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self.”

What does this mean for you and me? And, how does this insight help me live a more conscious, caring life? Here are a few thoughts for us to ponder together…

Please join us in mindfulness on Monday evening as we sit and breathe together.