After tea, we looked at a modern version of a technique called Chod, which was developed in the 11th century by Machig Labdron, one of Tibet's most well-known female mystics.
Lama Tsultrim Allione is a contemporary author and Buddhist teacher, and she created the Feeding Your Demons process (whi...
"Who are you without referring to any thought to tell you who you are?" After our sitting and walking meditation - and a tea break, naturally - we'll contemplated this question through a guided meditation by Adyashanti.
Adyashanti is an American-born spiritual teacher who has been teaching for...
This week, after sitting and walking meditation, we'll use VOICE (Voice Of Innate Clarity Exercise) to work with the Tao Te Ching. This classic text, something like 2500 years old, has been a perennial source of wisdom and curiousity. The writer and lifelong fan Ursula Le Guin wrote:
It is the mos...
We explored how our interpretations and the stories we tell ourselves affect our ability to deal with challenges. We'll do this using an excerpt from an article titled "The Benefits of Optimism are Real" and a technique from therapist and creative coach Eric Maisel that he describes as follows:
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Our topic this week, after sitting and walking meditation, is how to work with change and loss. We used a podcast by Tara Brach, titled Skeleton Woman, to lead us into this unavoidable part of every human life. Brach says:
There's going to keep on being this stream - there's going to be pleasa...
We read An article by the writer Austin Kleon after meditation. In it, he ponders how we can think of ourselves as a thing (noun) or as an action, a process (verb):
Religious people now think that they have to “believe” a set of incomprehensible doctrines before embarking on a religious way of...
This week, we explored how meditation & mindfulness help us work with the tendency to tell ourselves unhelpful stories. In an article titled, "What old story about yourself are you still believing?", psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School professor John Sharp is interviewed:
It’s normal to fe...
This week, we used VOICE to explore the ways we separate our inner and outer worlrds, and the ways we make connections within and outside of ourselves. Finally, we look into how these two habits can be brought together and used skillfully to provide boundaries and relationships, safety and movem...
This week, our discussion looks at anger and how it can be expressed with an open heart. Here is an excerpt of the topic article, Processing Anger with an Open Heart:
We need to remember that the anger we feel toward someone else is not an accurate evaluation or judgment of who that person actu...
This week, we read an article by Edward Espe Brown. In it, he looks at how cooking, from a Zen perspective, is a metaphor for life. Brown notes:
See cooking as a chore or a waste of time, and you will find the task tedious—so tiresome that you will probably not even get into the kitchen! See coo...