We watched a video featuring Bunker Roy on how he went from a "a very elitist, snobbish, expensive education in India" to becoming inspired to start a "Barefoot College" for the rural poor living on less than one dollar a day. Roy says:
I was exposed to the most extraordinary knowledge and s...
We finished our reading of Pema Chodron's Three Methods for Working With Chaos article:
We are told from childhood that something is wrong with us, with the world, and with everything that comes along: it’s not perfect, it has rough edges, it has a bitter taste, it’s too loud, too soft, too...
We read part of a Pema Chodron article titled Three Methods for Working With Chaos, in which she observes:
When I was a child, I had a picture book called Lives of the Saints. It was filled with stories of men and women who had never had an angry or mean thought and had never hurt a fly. I...
We watched a video with Acharya Fleet Maull on ways to work with negative dramas in our life:
If we're going to avoid getting caught up in drama, we're doing to have to learn to recognize what I call our "drama hooks". We all have them and they're just like fish hook, dangling all over the pla...
We listened to an interview with poet Marie Howe that considers simplicity, paying attention, and the power of words:
Thich Nhat Hanh, whom I know you’ve talked to, says when you wash the dishes, wash it as if it were the baby Buddha or the baby Jesus. And well, that’s what the church used to...
We had a shared reading of a chapter from Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as a Spiritual Path, a book edited by John Wellwood. The chapter looks at driving as meditation. Curious? Here's a taste:
In driving, the discipline that is needed is called Moving Meditation. This discipline takes a cer...
We read an article by Pema Chodron after sitting that looks at how our hearts can be hardened by circumstances, and how they can be awakened again. In it, she writes:
Fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect...
The topic for this week was taken from the first 30 minutes of a film called A Quest for Meaning. The principles explored in this film (which can be viewed online) include:
Self-Awareness: The Ancient Greek philosophers once said that before changing the world, one has to first know and tran...
The topic this week was an article by Joan Sutherland on the goal of meditation:
To meditate is to create the simple circumstances--pretty much sitting still and letting your heart-mind grow quiet--that allow this question to find you over and over again, so it can change you.
Joan Sutherl...
We listened to an audio talk by Acharya Adam Lobel that looks at how we are always practicing. In it, he observes:
As human beings, no matter what we're doing, whether we think of ourselves as spiritual or not, whether we're part of a religion or not, whether we're engaged in deep psychologi...