#WinterImmersion2016 – tscottmiller

Winter Immersion: February + March Study Schedule

To “blow the dust” from each other’s eyes as we walk the path of love and understanding is indeed the suchness of sangha!

Join in the practice of seeing clearly and listening deeply to foster compassion, wholeness, and safety through these important and often difficult explorations into matters of inclusion, freedom, belonging, and healing.

Study Schedule

February 14th ~ Beginning Anew : A Mindfulness Practice in Celebration of the Buddhist Lunar New Year

February 21st ~ Toward Wholeness: Inclusion + Freedom + Belonging [Part I]

February 28th ~ Toward Wholeness: Inclusion + Freedom + Belonging [Part II]

March 6th ~ Toward Wholeness: Race, Sexuality, Gender + Spirituality [Part I]

March 13th ~ Toward Wholenes: Race, Sexuality, Gender + Spirituality [Part II]

March 20th ~ Toward Wholeness: Race, Sexuality, Gender + Spirituality [Part III]

Winter Immersion [1/24]: Faith + Discernment

“For faith to be alive and to deepen we need to use our power to inquire, to wonder, to explore our experience to see what is true for ourselves. This requires us to approach life with an inquisitive, eager, self-confident capacity to probe and question. It requires us to examine where we place our faith, and why, to see if it makes us more aware and loving people.

To develop VERIFIED FAITH* we need to open to the messiness, the discordance, the ambivalence, and, above all, the vital life-force of questioning.

If we don’t, our faith can wither. If we don’t, our faith will always remain in the hands of someone else, as something we borrow or abjure, but not as something we can claim fully as our own.”

~ Sharon Salzberg, “Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience”
[*emphasis mine]

THE DHARMA FOR REAL

3jewels.winterimmersion.brave — sarasvati + durga (a card i received from a friend last fall)

It’s been a tough season for so many of us navigating illness, loss, uncertainty, and atrocious acts of injustice that get closer and closer to home. Anger, fear and doubt easily arise. It presses on the soul and depletes our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual resources.

So grateful to many, many loved ones who bolster me with laughter, inspiration, and perspective. Offering special appreciation to a dear friend + interspiritual minister, Holly Makimaa, for immediately suggesting and sharing her copy of Salzberg’s book on faith when I spoke with her about sangha’s study and practice of the 5 Spiritual Faculties.

FAITH (Pali: “Saddha” with TRUST or CONFIDENCE offered as surrogates for those who are less comfortable with the deeply religious connotations of faith) can feel the heaviest and most complicated — as frustrating and elusive as any attempt to meditate when the mind feels restless and foggy!

Last Sunday, we contemplated CONCENTRATION + DILIGENCE with a fresh understanding that the root meaning of the latter is “love, take delight in.”

Calling on the energy of delight how might we “brighten” and “verify” faith (a trajectory that Salzberg delineates in her book) and sharpen discernment through our practice of mindfulness?

Join us this Sunday, 11 – 12:30 PM, at Heartdance Studio for 3 Jewels Yoga Sangha’s final dharma discussion on the 5 Spiritual Faculties as we explore the relationship between DISCERNMENT + FAITH.

NEXT PRACTICE: February 14th ~ “Beginning Anew” to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
RSVP on Facebook ~ 3 Jewels Yoga Sangha | Winter Immersion

embodied practice: four foundations of mindfulness

3jewels.winterimmersion.faith1 As sangha opened the 2016 Winter Immersion series last week with the 5 Spiritual Faculties, I pointed back (as I often do) to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness to anchor us in the spacious awareness of body, breath, emotions, and mental formations as we develop and strengthen Concentration and Diligence/Effort.

Here are a few resources on the Buddhist discourses on the Mindfulness of Breathing (Ānāpānasati Sutta) and the Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta). This list was originally compiled for a previous post on the wisdom of the exhale.

3 Jewels Yoga

Embodied Meditation: Sutra on Mindful Breathing (AUDIO)

Bhante G

Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English (BOOK)
Four Foundations of Mindfulness (PODCAST)

Gil Fronsdal

Four Foundations of Mindfulness (PODCAST)
Mindfulness of Breathing (PODCAST)

Updated 15 February 2019

Perspectives on the 5 Spiritual Faculties

The Five Spiritual Faculties are a vital part of my personal practice — invoked as a mantra, they are an aspirational reminder to ground and center myself in these noble attributes. When we water the seeds of Faith/Trust, Discernment/Wisdom, Mindfulness, Concentration, Diligence/Effort, these skills blossom into indelible powers that strengthen our capacity to transform our unskillfulness and protect ourselves against unskillfulness of others.

READINGS

Indriya-vibhanga Sutta: Analysis of the Mental Faculties by Thanissaro Bhikku

The Way of Wisdom: The 5 Spiritual Faculties by Edward Conze

The Five Faculties by Gil Fronsdal

Spiritual Faculties by Ayya Khema

The 5 Spiritual Faculties via Wisdom Through Mindfulness

*The photo above is my rendering of an image found on the Wisdom Through Mindfulness website.

Study Schedule

Recommended Group Readings

THE DHARMA FOR REAL