“Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath.”
— Charlotte Joko Beck
Encouraged to remain unmoving and withhold any attempt to make it go away.
Whatever your experience is, open up around it, just make space for it. Be the space for your experience. This added inner space has the power to transform conditioned reactivity.
Christian Dillo received Dharma transmission through Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Many readers will know Shunryu Suzuki as the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, one of the most popular books of Zen spirituality ever published.
When talking about “liberation” from suffering, for instance, Dillo focuses on the positive more than the negative. Liberation is not only about what to avoid in or prune from one’s life; liberation is also about “the path of nourishment.” How can we make our experiences more nourishing to our lives? Allow them to “complete themselves and develop into bodily expression,” he explains.
He points to the example of crying: “We generally don’t like to experience sadness or grief. We tend to resist not only the painful sensations that come with loss but also the bodily convulsions involved in crying. Have you noticed the difference between a way of crying that feels purifying and one that leaves you depleted and distressed? The difference lies in the willingness to let the painful sensations sequence through your body.” Dillo then offers further teachings from the Buddhist practitioner who taught him this way to cry.
Taken from a review online:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59386092-the-path-of-aliveness
The practice of Zen Buddhism can transform your life in the direction of less suffering and greater vitality in this very moment. The Path of Aliveness presents a fresh Buddhist path of rigorous exploration of experience at the sensory, emotional, and cognitive levels. Christian Dillo offers four tenets as guideposts for this exploration. It is possible, he writes, to:
– Cultivate a path of transformation.
– Liberate ourselves from unnecessary suffering.
– Live in accord with how things actually exist.
– Work for the benefit of all beings.
Dillo revisits classic Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths and the foundations of mindfulness meditation, reconstructing them as forms of embodiment training that are essential for transformation. This contemporary reconstruction of the teachings is always in the service of helping the reader make experiential distinctions in their own body-mind. This secular approach respectfully plumbs Buddhist tradition while opening itself to dialogue with science, psychotherapy, and other aspects of modern life. From this vantage, Buddhist practices appear as intentional cultivations moving us toward freedom, wisdom, and compassion. Dillo demonstrates how the space opened up by such practices can lead to skillful responsiveness, whether toward the problems in one’s life or broader issues like the ecological crisis.
“The humming sound of Brāhmarī or Bee’s breath, unfolds the ether element in all bodily channels so life energy, prāna, can flow freely. It soothes the nerves and calms the mind.”
— Yogatattvopanishad
Enryu shared some teachings from the Lojong practice: Lojong was originally brought to Tibet by an Indian Buddhist teacher named Atisha. It is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and is based on a set of aphorisms formulated in the 12th century. The practice involves refining and purifying one’s motivations and attitudes. She shared an excerpt from from Norman Fischer’s book, Training in Compassion, where he discusses lojong,and how it involves working with short phrases (called “slogans”) as a way of generating bodhichitta, the heart and mind of enlightened compassion.
Though the practice is more than a millennium old, it has become popular in the West only in the last twenty years or so, and it has become very popular indeed, because it’s a practice that one can fit very well into an ordinary life, and because it works. Through the influence of Pema Chödrön, who was one of the first American Buddhist teachers to teach it extensively, the practice has moved out of its Buddhist context to affect the lives of non-Buddhists too. The 59 proverbs that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering.
One can’t pick just one…Here are some Slogans shared during our gathering:
“Don’t try to be the fastest —Don’t compete with others”
— Slogan from Lojong Practice
Tilopa (988–1069) was an Indian tantric practitioner and discovered the mahamudra process, a set of spiritual practices that greatly accelerated the process of attaining enlightenment.
Enryu opened the discussion sharing his “Six Precepts” quoted in Powell Zen and Reality (1975):
Without mind, without meditation, without analysis, without practice, without the will, let it all be so.
The “Six Precepts” of Tilopa
The Eight divine qualities that bless a healer (Ashta Devatas) from Ayurveda teachings were also shared:
8 Divine Qualities of a Physician
“No thought, no reflection, no analysis, No cultivation, no intention; Let it settle itself.”
— “Six Precepts” of Tilopa
“The life of all living things is food and all the world seeks food. Complexion, clarity, good voice, long life, understanding, happiness, satisfaction, growth, strength and intelligence are all established in food.”
— Charaka Samhita (text on Ayurveda)
Does the food you ate today affect your meditation?
Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient religious philosophies and one of its broadest. Based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India, Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions.
Swami Sarvapriyananda was the featured teacher last week He is the resident minister at the Vedanta Society of New York.
The subject of “Letting go”, of renunciation is universal.
Does it mean one has to put on long black or orange or other various coloured robes and leave family behind? No!
This video is from a Q&A session where someone is asking about becoming a Sannyas or a renunciate and Swami Sarvapriyananda responds by saying that it is about attitude of mind and inner space that lives in compassion and wisdom. Enlightenment is for everybody.
“The relationships we can develop with the natural world can help us to heal our wounds of disconnection.“
— Anna Breytenbach, How To Hear What Nature Is Saying