Pulling threads
Notes and news from the present moment, on its swift way to becoming past.
How Spacious the Meadow
To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.
Zen teachings are enigmatic, the language circular and contradictory often, which creates puzzles and potential for sparks of insight. This brief line led to much thought and discussion about the nature of freedom and constraints. What are the right constraints for us to know freedom within? How spacious our meadow?
Asteya - The Yama of Non-Stealing
The third yama in Patanjali's Yoga Darshan is asteya, or non-stealing. Not committing acts of theft seems like an obvious virtue. More subtly, asteya also applies to speech and to thinking — to not claim what is not ours, to not cheat, nor misappropriate. How do we steal, how do we take what is not offered? We may do so in unawareness, unconsciously; or, more deliberately, out of a sense of not having enough, of not being enough. Could this apply to this end-of-year and a seasonal hunger for what we don't have — for the future, for the past, for things as we wish they could be?
Life Is Art Is Life
At the beginning of 2020, besides thinking about the yamas and niyamas, I chose a word to be my focal aspiration for the year. (Much more helpful than a resolution!) My word was “concordance,” which is to bring all parts together in harmony.
In Essence
Essence, harmony, truth … satya is the glue that holds the formed universe together. Precepts and seed-thoughts for thinking through…
Ahimsa and the Centipede
For a period at the beginning of this year, I framed my yoga classes with the yamas and niyamas: ten guiding principles or ethics of yoga philosophy. I listed them at the beginning of each class, and invited participants to choose the most resonant precept, the one that caught their ear, and to draw into deeper consideration of it.
The precept that continues to resonate for me through this whole year, is the one taught first, the seed of all the others: ahimsa, or non-killing, non-harming, non-violence. Read how sangha, aversion, and a big bug show up as teachers.
The Notion of Refuge
I am grateful for a mini-retreat with a gang of you, just last week. Another opportunity to set new patterns, to contemplate teachings, and to simply SIT with it all and each other, five mornings in a row.
I chose the timing of these events deliberately, to build support into a time that was easy to predict would be fraught with tensions and anxiety.
October Retreat
A balm for difficult times — let us rest into supported community practice together, for one week of morning practice in the last week of October.
Happy Thanksgiving
What would an authentic practice of gratitude look like for you? Can we nurture natural gratitude without burying “non-gratitude”? Let's play with this idea!
Riding the Wave
Many feel this season and the next will be long ones. I hear resignation and some dread. I feel these things, yet, I also experience a glimmer of excitement for the deep inward turn that will come with winter. A time to dig deep into rich material, dream-time, integration and quiet creation time.
Late, Late Summer
For the month of September, the meditation circle which I lead has been working with a metaphor practice:
body as mountain
breath as the sea
sky — mind
This is an invitation to think / sense / feel into these archetypes of the natural world, to contemplate their qualities and notice how our embodied experience might echo them. The imagery is boundless, but we can start from here…
August Retreat
Join me August 17–21 for one week of morning meditations, a miniature self-retreat, in community.
Pause and Retreat
In many buddhist traditions, August is a time of retreat. I’m following that lead with a brief pause in weekly sangha, and a one-week morning retreat to reset our practice, later in the month.
Working with the Weather
This week I am thinking about the weather, and what a beautiful metaphor it is for the nature of mind.
Like the Garden Grows
My northern garden grows with such intensity in its short summer season, the transformation is so dramatic, winter seems like a story someone told long ago. I would like to learn from this nature…
Inclining toward Justice
Meditations on compassion, non-violence, courage, and transformation in the third week of global protest against racialized injustice.
Inclining toward Compassion
The work of antiracism is an inside job. It requires compassion-in and compassion-out…
Ever Beginning
In my ongoing exploration of meditation practice I return again and again to the buddhist concept of “beginner mind.” Forever and always, we are new to this moment. There has not been one just like it, ever before. This is true now, was yesterday, and will be tomorrow.
Can we remain curious and open to newness, and to our inexpertise?
