Todd's Practitioners Group

Current assignments, activities, and other announcements for the Center for Sacred Sciences Practitioners Group, from the group's current teacher.

• — Practitioners Group 'assignment' for the week of Feb 2-8

     (Thursday, February 02 2012 20:32)

  ~Meditation and Precepts: Continue Tonglen practice.  As always, we want to take the time to settle the mind before beginning tonglen with difficult persons, but tonglen for ourselves, in some cases, can itself be stabilizing and provide some degree of openness, as long as the emotions are not too energetic.  When difficulties ensue in practice, 'flash openness.'  Use your own introspective judgement. 

  ~In tonglen practice, we repeatedly discover the same charitable aspiration that operates in the precept practices of charity and blamelessness.  The more we pay attention through the eyes of kindness, the more inclined we are to see how reactive conditioning is sustained. Intelligent compassion tends to soften judgments we hold of others and of ourselves.  True selflessness is discovered in the open seeing of the emotional displays of self in the moment they arise; not in turning away from them.   It's helpful to notice that in the absence of compassionate regard, we tend to look away.
  

  ~For example, if we find ourselves irritated because we can't stay with the sensations of breathing while meditating on the breath, right here we can discover self and how it is being created; how we can become identified with reactive emotions.   When we can witness irritation arising in the moment without turning away (for example, by blaming the breath practice, or blaming 'ourselves'), we can discover first hand, the mechanistic and impersonal nature of self as it unfolds.
  

  ~With a little bit of kindness (and humor), whenever we experience self-denigration: right here, we can remember that this is an opportunity.  Instead of identifying with it so much, we can feel the emotional sense of identifying and recognize it as a conditioned pattern of self arising. 
  

  ~Reading:  We will continue our discussion of Love and Faith by Thinley Norbu next time, and over the next month or so.   Within the context of practice, see if you can discover what he refers to as 'sublime beings' within your own experience.  Remember, we aren't striving to become Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in this group, but rather, we are borrowing some of the finely honed teachings found in that tradition to assist our Awareness practices and our practices of Compassion.
  

  ~By the way, a good time to discover 'sublime beings,' aside from always, might be in the immediate post-meditation period, or during periods where you are quietly performing a simple task such as gardening, raking, Qigong-ing or walking.   I look forward to hearing your experiences with practice and your commentary on the reading.  See you on Wednesday!

  Peace, Todd
  

  
  

  

• — Practitioners Group assignments for the week of Jan 11-Feb 1

     (Friday, January 20 2012 02:36)

  ~Remember Community Night on the evening of January 25 at 7:00 at GPI

  ~Reading:  For discussion next time, be reading the handout entitled Love and Faith by Thinley Norbu.

  ~Meditation and Precepts: Continue practicing tonglen for self, friend, stranger or difficult person, both formally and also informally when you are moved to do so through events in your life.  In our precept practice, we have been practicing with the first precept and the process of blaming others.  Through this practice, and our willingness to be aware of the dynamics of blaming, we can find a link with our practice  of tonglen; for example, to feel the emotional sense of blaming or the desire to blame while breathing in, and on the outbreath, we can send kindness and warmth to the one we blame.  Experiment with this and see what you may discover. 

  

• — Practitioners Group assignments for the week of Jan 4-11

     (Friday, January 06 2012 00:33)

  ~Reading:  For discussion next time, read the handouts by Simone Weil and John Dado Loori (Waiting for God by Simone and excerpt from "Invoking Reality" by John).    

  ~Meditation: Continue practicing tonglen for difficult persons.  Before our formal session, we are best served in the practice if we first review how it is that this person has become our adversary.  We examine how we blame them for our unhappiness.  Then, once clarified in this way, we drop all stories and rest in one-pointed concentration practice until the mind is settled. Then, we may fruitfully begin the tonglen exchange.    Notice here, our first precept overlaps with tonglen with the difficult person.

              The challenge in working with the difficult person is that the practice goes totally 'against the grain' of our conditioning and we may periodically fall under the spell of discursive thought and their associated emotional flavors. For this reason, we may need to periodically 'flash openness' to ground attention in spaciousness once again.  It helps to remember, throughout the process, that as long as we reify resistance for anything or anyone, we strengthen the imaginary distinction of self and other.

  ~Precepts:  It may appear that we are shifting focus from the precept of Charity to the precept of Responsibility, and it is just an appearance. In fact, we may discover that non-blaming is itself a practice of charity and generosity.  Initially, the practice is to notice how often we judge others and blame them for our own discouragement and anxiety. Remember, we are not talking about societal definitions of blame, but rather, the emotional component of assigning blame and judgements, complete with reactions and self-enhancing strategies as we assign external causes to our emotional discomfort.  As long as we blame others, we are unable to see that all of our suffering is self-generated. 

  Consider this as an example:  there is no inherent blame or suffering if your friend is chronically late and disregards your needs, and causes you to be late or inconvenienced in some way.   Clearly there is a need to communicate within this relationship to somehow resolve these problems, but blame is extra.  If this is not your experience and you suffer from these inconveniences and you blame your friend for feeling angry and upset, this practice is valuable for discovering the true source of your suffering.  With attention, you can discover for yourself that this suffering is due to your own attachments, expectations and preferences.  To blame your friend for these can be seen as clearly dishonest once this is recognized.    So, in the practice, when we withhold the blaming, we can see what is really driving our need to blame, be it an underlying fear or anxiety, or something else.  In this naked seeing, we are discovering the truth of blaming; cutting through the conditioning that continues to define the story of I as long as it remains subliminal and unseen.

  So, the practice is to first notice when you are blaming; then to interrupt the process of blaming and to feel what arises.  If resentment comes up, then notice its mechanistic and conditioned nature.  It is conditioned to arise to itself.  Notice that it is with an open, empathic heart that we are able to witness reactivity nakedly, as it arises, instead of clinging to and reifying stories of causation and blame. Seeing nakedly relaxes the story of I and allows humility and openness to flourish. What we find is not a denying of stories and images, but rather, insight into how these imaginations are taken to be 'substantial and real.'  
  

  
  

  
  
  

• — Practitioners Group for the first week of December

     (Thursday, December 01 2011 14:42)

   Greetings everyone,
  

  here's the overview for next time—

   ~TONGLEN PRACTICE:  For this week, let's do Tonglen for one who has hurt us in some way; someone we consider to be an enemy of sorts. This may feel particularly difficult and impenetrable for practice, and this is why we especially need a bit of concentration practice first, to cultivate openness (spaciousness) with a bit of stability prior to invoking the enemy.   If you find that, despite the concentration practice,  the heart quickly closes down and we find it too difficult to work with the one you've chosen, then try taking someone who is a bit less disturbing and see if you can discover compassion for them first.  Though this is a process of opening the heart, it requires skillful means and wisdom- and these come from experimenting with what works and doesn't work.

  ~Reading-  The handout:  'How Can I Extend Love to Someone Who Has Hurt Me?' is from a book called "Awakening Through Love," by John Makransky, a Western Tibetan Lama.  The article presents a kind of overview of all these practices we've been doing-- bringing love and compassion to our full spectrum of 'others:' self, friend, stranger, and enemy.  He begins with a discussion of how to work with our limiting habitual samsaric perceptions through love and compassion, and he ends with a discussion of how to see into the nature of blamelessness- even for our enemies.

  ~PRECEPT PRACTICE:  We are continuing the precept of Charity, but now, as we begin practicing for those who have hurt us, we will be well served by also looking into the precept of responsibility. 

  See you next week

  Peace, Todd

  

• — Practitioners Group for last week of November

     (Sunday, November 20 2011 18:23)

  Greetings everyone, here's the overview for next time—

   

  ~Don't forget:  No  class Wednesday, Nov 23rd-

   

  ~Practicing Thankfulness and Gratitude on Thanksgiving!  Tae Yun Kim, Korean Martial Arts Master tells us:  "The direct experience of the consciousness of love is gratitude. Gratitude is the process of recognizing what is true."  Have you ever noticed the similarity in the feelings of gratitude and the feeling inherent in generosity?  Is there in fact a difference?

   

  ~PRECEPT PRACTICE:  We are practicing the precept of Charity.  In our reading of the handout by John Dado Loori, on Charity, see if you can apply these teachings and principles to your practice of charity, for yourself and for others. 

   

  ~TONGLEN PRACTICE:  Over the week, rather than moving on to tonglen for difficult persons, our assignment is to continue to practice tonglen, both for strangers and for loved ones (or self or friends), as a means of contrasting what feels different between them, if anything.  

  While doing tonglen, take your time and examine the differences in feeling textures that may exist between loved one, friend and stranger.   It may be useful to alternate the practice between stranger and loved one or friend, and to see if you can discern what feels different about them.  How do we separate and restrict our love as we move from loved ones to friends to strangers.  Can you feel a numbing out or a closing down as you move away from the familiar?  If so, allow attention to settle into these experiences of resistance. 

  Within tonglen practice for a stranger, if you find yourself holding back, notice how you are encountering your own limiting 'thought-emotion' of them as an image called "stranger."  See if you can FEEL the story of "stranger" as energetic display within naked awareness, and see what effect this might have on opening your heart to the 'stranger' beneath the stories.  

   

  Of course, don't forget to begin each session of tonglen with stabilizing attention.  We have been emphasizing shine` practice in class, but if you already have a practice that works for you, you may stay with that.   Then, once a bit of spaciousness and stability is established, bring attention into the heart space, and begin the practice of tonglen.

   

  See you on the 30th

  Peace, Todd

  

• — Practitioners Group for the week of November 9-16‏

     (Thursday, November 10 2011 20:59)

  Greetings everyone,

  ~Last night we discussed both the handout on Loving kindness and the one on  compassion.  In this discussion and in a short guided meditation, we examined the underlying issue of how we relate to discomfort, and the importance of spaciousness to cut through conditioned reactivity. 

  ~SITTING MEDITATION:  First using Shine` practice or if that isn't working for you so well, any other practice that brings you some degree of spaciousness.  Then, bring up the suffering of a stranger this week.  This is someone that you know only because you see them periodically. If you need some more time to work with the self or a friend or loved one, work with these for a few days as well,  and then shift to working with a stranger.  As I mentioned before, for a clear and detailed instruction and guide for the actual practice of tonglen, I recommend Chapter 19 in Joel's book entitled Sending and Taking; specifically pp. 187-194.   Bring your questions and comments about the practice to class next time. By the way, there are many books, CDs and DVDs of Pema Chodron as well as others in the CSS library just waiting to be checked out!

  ~To recap, shine` practice can be very useful for access to abiding attention within non-discursiveness (spaciousness).  Shine` uses the moment-to-moment sensations of out-breathing as an anchor for stability while serving as a kind of runway leading into silence.  We remain gently attentive to the sensations of outbreath as they dissolve into the space at the end of each breathing cycle. As the sensations of breath dissolve away, attention remains alert and present within the space that remains. If your primary practice is mantra and it allows openness into spaciousness of heart, then by all means continue this practice.  Likewise, if you are an experienced meditator, and are able to rest attention into spaciousness through some other means, then continue that practice. 

  ~READING: We have not yet discussed Going Against the Grain by Pema, so we plan on doing so next time. Also, be reading the handout from last night regarding charity. 

  ~PRECEPTS:  Regarding the practice of charity from last week, we were asked to practice charity for self, and to see what that could mean, and to see how that goes.  We didn't get to that last night, so will bring it up next time for discussion.   Read the handout by John Dado Loori and see if you can apply these teachings and principles to your practice of charity, for yourself and for others.

  ~For those who have been ill recently and absent last evening, I hope you are feeling better, but also hoping you're bringing the discomfort and inconvenience of illness into your practice!!

   

  Peace, Todd

  

• — Practitioners Group for the week of November 2-9

     (Monday, November 07 2011 13:17)

  For Wednesday-

  READING: Be reading the 3rd Pema Chodron email handout for next time:  Going against the Grain- on tonglen.  In this article/chapter, from her book, The Places that Scare You, Pema lays out the importance of Tonglen and the underlying principles of the practice.   For a clear and detailed instruction for the actual practice, I recommend Chapter 19 in Joel's book (The Way of Selflessness) entitled Sending and Taking; specifically pp. 187-194. Here, Joel outlines, step by step, the practice for each of the four phases of application (self, friend/loved one; stranger and 'enemy'). 

   

  SITTING practice:  Prior to embarking on the practice of sending and taking,  rest attention into the practice of shine` (following the outbreath into space and resting attention there until the next outbreath) and open a bit into the spaciousness of settled mind. The importance of establishing some degree of settled openness prior to embarking on sending and taking can't be over-emphasized. First of all, without this undistracted sobriety that Joel describes at the top of page 188, the practice will be personal and potentially overwhelming. It isn't that we are rejecting the 'personal,' but rather that we are dipping in deeper than the 'personal' can hold. We are allowing feelings and difficulties to be in a space that easily contains them. Once we have practiced establishing a degree of spaciousness in our formal practice, we can discover  "flashing" openness (Pema refers to this as 'flashing on absolute bodhichitta') right on the spot while engaged in worldly activities.  We'll discuss 'flashing openness' as we go along, in class.

   Once you feel attention is somewhat settled and open,  move into the sending and taking instructions in Joel's book, on page 188,  for yourself. For this week, we are applying sending and taking for self for a few days, and then for a friend for a few days. Next week, we will move on to strangers and for the following week, enemies or difficult persons.

   

  PRECEPT practice:  While practicing the 9th precept this week, try to apply charity to yourself, looking closely at how you might approach this, especially if you hold a belief that self is just a delusion.

  In practicing charity for self and others, see if you can feel this spacious quality, immanent, right within the act of giving, and be aware of any resistance and irritation that may also arise. Can you see yourself in the predicaments of others?  If not, ask yourself why not?  How are they different than you, really?  What if you had been born into their circumstance; with their 'genes?'   How could you be different?  How are you really different now?  Feel what comes up when you ask these questions?    

  

• — Todd's Practitioners Group for October 26th

     (Friday, October 21 2011 15:37)

  Greetings everyone,

  ~Last Wednesday, we discussed the poems from the 1^st handout, and examined this relationship between loss and kindness.  It is somewhat of a mystery to the mind, but not to the heart. The more open the heart, the more obvious the connection.

       It is a simple formula.  In loss, we experience sorrow, and sorrow is Love. When we lose something or someone dear to us, it is Love for that which is lost that we feel.  It may feel dreadful, but it is Love speaking in a language we may not yet understand. We may resist it in many ways, with cynicism, arrogance, depression, anger, or fear, but what we discover as we look into this is that each of these reactions to the pain of loss (love) is just another manifestation of it.  We turn the pain into an attribute of self-emotion and story, but the sorrow of the loss remains fully present within that reaction.   In this way, our anger and our resistance are manifestations of this ongoing language of love. 

       What we discover is that the more loss we have, and the more we listen to the pain, the more we 'comprehend' its message, though the mind may resist it, and may not even know what is taking place.  The comprehension is non-dual.  This is because love is non-dual.  Love loves itself in all its forms.   This is not something we understand conceptually.  Those of you who have recognized loss in your life may already recognize this to a certain degree.

       Through the pain of loss, Love is drawing us into itself, even in our denial of it.  As we listen to it in the heart, we are humbled and quiet.   We begin to recognize our powerlessness; our inability to resolve the pain.  We are in a snare.  There is no escape.  Even in our anger and frustration; even in all our striving, we find there is no true satisfaction.  All of our ranting and struggling bring us back to this humility, which is the opening of the heart- our path home. 

       And in this humility, we see and feel others suffering quite organically.   We don't pity them, but rather, we know them, in a sense, as our own self. Kindness naturally arises when we discover this inseparableness from others. 

  ~Readings and Practice:  For next time, read the Pema Chodron handout which presents an overview of Bodhicitta and the practice of Loving Kindness (also called Maitri in Sanskrit or Metta in Pali).  At the end of this excerpt, I have put in a step-by-step outline of this simple practice as she presents it.  Please fashion the statements of intention to words that resonate with you, as Pema suggests in the reading.

  ~Precept Practice:  Also for next time, see if you can take up the precept of Charity over the coming weeks.  Bring it up in the morning when you recite the precepts.  Reflect on it and vow to be charitable through the course of the day.  It is often helpful to come up with concrete ways for doing this such as vowing to donate to a homeless person at least once a day, or volunteering to help others in some specific way, every day.  It needn't be some big undertaking- just a small giving of some kind, and to feel what takes place in your heart. Please take note of your experiences of this practice so that you can practice charity in our next class by sharing them with us.

  ~A couple more quotes for you:

   "This purgative and loving knowledge or divine light acts upon the soul in the same way as fire acts upon a log of wood in order to transform it into itself ... [for the wood] has in itself the properties and activities of fire... [This] divine fire of contemplative love, [then,] ... before it unites and transforms the soul into itself, first purges it of all its contrary accidents."   ~Saint John of the Cross

   

  "Love and compassion appear as selfless service  Yet in love, we do not serve the other, we serve 'us.'   Love's communion brings us together in a whole. Compassion does not see the world's pain and sorrow as other; it is shared, it is ours.  When we allow our shared vulnerability and humanness, love and compassion are as natural as our breath, and without hesitation we act to help."   ~Thich Nhat Hanh
  

• — Course Summary for 2011-2012

     (Saturday, September 10 2011 19:20)

  This section of the Practitioners group will be taught by Todd Corbett and will meet on Wednesday evenings at Tamarack Wellness Center.
  
  We will be taking up a deepening investigation of intrinsic compassion -- our own fundamental essence -- facilitated through practices of clarity and kindness and through select readings of mystics of various traditions (Buddhist, Sufi and Christian). Through the eyes of compassion, all nuances of dualistic grasping are effortlessly transformed and re-cognized nakedly; seen not as error, but as enlightened nature itself. We come to see that our own ignorance is not something to eschew, but rather to embrace fully within the timeless presence of its arising.