This morning, I sit and write and attempt to let the emotions of the past three days find alignment. So I can release them to the wind.How does one reconcile the terrorist attacks in Paris? How does one react to a world filled with this sort of pain?
I want to recount my movements this past week. How daily life and dharma met.
It began last week, when I was deep in preparation for a meditation retreat. As a volunteer in my local Buddhist center - our Maine branch, I was helping to lead a full-day retreat on Saturday November 14 called Tranquil Abiding - Buddha's astonishingly clear teachings on how to still the mind, to bring it to complete focus.
The meditation we would be focusing on was called 'Equalizing Self and Other'.
I was following my teacher, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's exquisite teachings in his books Joyful Path of Good Fortune and Eight Steps to Happiness. In this meditation, we use logic and reasoning to evoke a mind of love. I had been allowing this logic to touch my mind deeply in the lead-up to the retreat. Here it is quickly, in a nutshell:
I want to recount my movements this past week. How daily life and dharma met.
It began last week, when I was deep in preparation for a meditation retreat. As a volunteer in my local Buddhist center - our Maine branch, I was helping to lead a full-day retreat on Saturday November 14 called Tranquil Abiding - Buddha's astonishingly clear teachings on how to still the mind, to bring it to complete focus.
The meditation we would be focusing on was called 'Equalizing Self and Other'.
I was following my teacher, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's exquisite teachings in his books Joyful Path of Good Fortune and Eight Steps to Happiness. In this meditation, we use logic and reasoning to evoke a mind of love. I had been allowing this logic to touch my mind deeply in the lead-up to the retreat. Here it is quickly, in a nutshell:
