Tag Archives: #MarchMindfulness2014

embodied practice: on the suchness of sangha

“I could hear my heart beating.
I could hear everyone’s heart.
I could hear the human noise we sat there making,
not one of us moving,
not even when the room went dark.”

~Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

This gem was quoted in the film Stuck In Love (so-so) and instantly evoked for me the image + energy of mindfulness + compassion that we cultivate in what I call the full embrace of sangha. It is the suchness generated within a community of spiritual practitioners + friends.

 

 


Explore:

Suchness, Tathata, Mahayana Buddhism ~ India Netzone

The Contemplation of Suchness (.pdf) ~ Jacqueline I. Stone

Tathata: The The ~ Richard Collins

inviting mindfulness in a moment of madness: how I learned to live the meditation when sitting was not an option

Looking back on the journey. Appreciating all the lessons lived! #DharmaForReal

dhamma for mama*

I was pissed!

Once again, despite my wholehearted intentions and efforts, another Wednesday evening had arrived and, instead of meditating with my root sangha (Buddhist meditation community), I was at home.

Feeling exhausted, out of sync, and in deep need of restoring myself in a place of uninterrupted quiet where I could relax my busy mind with the steady flow of my breath and invite the precious moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness that defines mindfulness.

So I was unduly pissed at myself for not being organized (or awake) enough to get there, my mate for not making it easier for me, and all those unforeseeable or unavoidable forces that arose in the course of a day and became “obstacles” to my practice. Adding to my irritation: knowing that I now lived a few minutes away from the temple yet was faced with detours and delays that made getting there seem like a…

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embodied practice: the healing power of community

The energy of a community of mindfulness can help us embrace and release suffering that we could not reach by ourselves…

father's day practice.13a

If we open our hearts, the collective energy of the community can penetrate the suffering inside us.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Communicating

embodied practice: a perspective on “engaged” buddhism

It is hard to define engaged Buddhism.
But I think it has to do with a willingness to see how deeply people suffer; to understand how we have fashioned whole systems of suffering out of gender, race, caste, class, ability, and so on; and to know that interdependently and individually we co-create this suffering…
Some days, I call this engaged Buddhism; on other days I think it is just plain Buddhism — walking the Bodhisattva path, embracing the suffering of beings by taking responsibility for them.

—Hozan Alan Senauke in Upaya’s Newsletter (11 March 2014)