Friday, February 10, 2017

A Month of Meditation - January 2017


I have recently returned from Karme Choling, a Shambhala Buddhist meditation center in Barnet, VT. I was one of the meditation instructors for the Winter Dathun, a month-long practice intensive.
When I arrived, I wrote a short note of aspiration:

  • May I find personal healing. May I hold the space for others to heal.
  • May I be ordinary in this extraordinary time and place. May I mix the ordinary and extraordinary with mindfulness and kindness. May I take that out into the world to live in the mind of meditation long after leaving here.
It was a powerful month of people gathering to meditate, to step into a place where they could settle, set aside the usual demands of life, and to experience their own being, one breath at a time, for day after day. It's amazing how people can open to themselves. 

It was also a month of the ordinary. Leading yoga every morning. Finding time to do laundry. Making sure there was a supply of tissues in the meditation hall. Eating a meal. Taking a walk. Putting out the candles on the shrine at the end of the day.

As I was preparing to leave, I wrote some additional aspirations:
  • May I be helpful. May I slow down, feel my heart, rest in the moment, act from stillness
  • May others feel their own brilliance. May they know kindness. May they know love. May they heal their hurts. May they be whole and fully alive.
  • May society call forth our collective wisdom. May we be one global village. May we be undaunted in our quests for greatness. May we live in peace.