The 2nd Noble Truth is that the most proximal cause of suffering is clinging. Sitting meditation is a powerful place to explore ways in which this might be true for you and how to work with the clinging mind.
Continue reading Sitting Meditation– Seeing into the Mind that Clings
From guest leader Colleen Faltus: In this week’s meditation we explore the wisdom of the body. As Valerie Kaur says, “One of the most vigilant spiritual practices is finding the seconds of solitude to get quiet enough to hear the wise person inside us.” Quieting our inner and outer worlds provides the much needed peace … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Tapping Into the Wisdom of the Body
The teacher asked his students, does it hurt more to be shot by one arrow or two? Of course, two. The first is what has already arisen, what is unavoidably already here. The second is the one we shoot into ourselves in reaction to the first. In this meditation, we use an anchor for grounding … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Two Arrows
We need to look deeply in order to see our true nature and the true nature of the Earth. We need to look deeply to see that we are the Earth. With this insight, love will be born. Our love and understanding will heal us and heal the Earth. -Thich Nhat Hanh Thich … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Touching the Earth
This meditation offers an invitation to explore 2 of the “Three Marks of Existence”– impermanence and the interrelatedness of impermanent arisings.
In this meditation, using the breath, we explore the quote “nothing exists in and of itself, without dependencies.”
Continue reading Sitting Meditation with Inter-being of Breath
Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation — it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it. I look at it like I am a fluid that’s finding the fissures and the cracks and flowing through. -Michael J Fox
It is very helpful to begin to see how the unconscious mind categorizes all moments in some version of pleasant, unpleasant or neither pleasant or unpleasant, also called feeling tones. If we are not aware of this process, then the feeling tone can set off a cascade of reactivity. Learning to catch the feeling tone … Continue reading Sitting Meditation with Feeling Tone
In this practice, we open to letting thoughts be thoughts, feelings be feelings, body sensations be body sensations without adding to a story about any of them. This practice is very useful for learning a skillfulness with untangling our reactivity in life.
Continue reading Sitting Meditation with Choiceless Awareness
This meditation draws from a poem by Mary Oliver, I Have Decided: I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Being Exactly Where We Are