~~Jon Kabat-Zinn, “At Home in Our Bodies”

Such a radical idea. . . saying, “here I am, come join me.”  Leaning in to that which makes us feel uncomfortable. . .

The fear of losing someone.  the fear of a particular diagnosis.  the fear of  a difficult conversation. . .

The pain of saying goodbye.  The physical pain that comes from illness.  The psychological pain that comes when we are betrayed. . .

When you think about it, some of the things that mindfulness asks us to do go totally against what is innate in us.  Think about a one-celled organism.  If you poke at it, it will try to move away.  There is some threat there, despite not having what you or I would think of as an ego.

But this is the point of mindfulness, isn’t it?  To get ourselves off of automatic pilot, to free ourselves from suffering?  To bring ourselves out of the lull of our average everydayness to be fully present with what is.

But what about when we are our at our most vulnerable times?  Can we remain open-hearted, set that welcome mat out to our suffering and say, “enter if you will”?

One of the key elements of mindfulness that we don’t practice in our average every day life is gentleness.

There is a compassionate gentleness and kindness that is cultivated with mindfulness so that we don’t bully or bulldoze into that pain, suffering, or fear.

We lightly entertain these thoughts, feelings, and sensations as we start to become familiar with them.

We learn not to get hooked into beating ourselves us for what’s there when we sit long enough to be present to our thoughts or feelings.

We allow them to be, but we are no longer ignorant of them.

We have a conscious awareness  of them and with practice, we can offer ourselves lovingkindness and equanimity and welcome those sore spots into the totality of our experience.

Remember back to one of my really early posts… Frank Ostaseski teaches “Welcome everything, push away nothing” in his trainings on being a compassionate companion to the dying.  These are truly wise words to live by and to cultivate in our hectic, chaotic lives.

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Reblogged from LifeCraft: creating a more soulful life:

The distance from your pain, your grief, your unattended wounds, is the distance from your partner. And the distance from your partner is your distance from the living truth, your own great nature. Whatever maintains that distance, that separation from ourselves and our beloveds, must be investigated with mercy and awareness. This distance is not overcome by one “giving up their space” to another, but by both partners entering together the unknown between them. The mind creates the abyss but the heart crosses it.

Great blog post. I really enjoyed seeing this today!

Reblogged from Christy Heyob:

Absolutely beautiful – the colors, the light, the bokeh. Mmmm. Sharon Johnstone is a Birmingham, England based fine art nature photographer. She completed her Fine Arts degree at the University of Creative Arts in 1993, specializing in printmaking. Of her dew drop photographs, she writes: ‘With macro photography I escape to another little world. I love exploring the tiny details in nature that often get overlooked. I love finding beautiful colors and abstract compositions within nature. I think I am at …

Enjoy this beauty that was gifted to us by Christy!

Reblogged from A HOPE FOR TODAY:

Author Maya Angelou offers a wonderful hope for not complaining: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” What excellent advice Maya gives, but it is often not easy to follow.  Sometimes people are powerless to change things, and sometimes they have strong, unyielding opinions that are difficult to change about those things. The secret is in the last sentence of Maya’s quotation:  “Don’t complain.”  Things may not change, attitudes may not …

Reblogged from Christy Heyob:

I enjoy reading articles that recommend I get a massage… Our bodies hold all of the information we need to function at our best, but too often we ignore their messages and plow ahead with what our minds tell us. Because most of us are taught from an early age to focus on external demands, we frequently ignore what our bodies are saying. More often than not we treat the physical symptoms rather than looking for the internal cause of pain, depression, and weight gain. We take another extra-strength …

Great Advice!

Reblogged from The Zenful Blogger:

This is it. This is my life. It is what I will or won’t make of it. This is it. Think it over. Talk it through. Work it out. This is it. This is my life! This is it.

Image via Wikipedia

I love the idea of short meditation practices.  They are so practical for today’s life.  

Taking time throughout the day 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, another 5 before after dinner or before bedtime is better than no time at all.

We all have 5 minutes.  What if we all made the time for 5 minutes of meditation instead of standing around the water cooler?

Or 5 minutes to practice mindful walking instead of staying after a meeting to gossip (and that’s a whole other post)…

My day job is stressful and often non-stop.  But I am doing a few things to try to change that.  For one, I bought the Enzo Pearl timer that I described a few posts ago.

Another thing I have recently done is to bring my copy of Awake at Work by Michael Carroll to work.  I have it sitting on my desk.  Not on the book case to look pretty but right next to my water bottles on top of my desk.

When I have time between meetings or between reports, I can close my door and pick up the book.  There are 35 small chapters — easy 4-page reads — that I can use for contemplative practices.  Today I might read about being authentic”.  Maybe Thursday, I read about what “kitchen sink” mentality is…

Other days, when things are really chaotic, I might just set the Enzo timer for 5 minutes.  I take 5 of the 15 minutes I have for a break and just sit and breathe.  Right now, I don’t share an office so I can even do a 5-minute round of walking meditation.  I could, on a good day, even do 5 minutes of downward facing dog or warrior pose.

Sure it’s great to do at sunrise or sunset like we do on retreat. . . but if prisoners in a prison dharma program can do walking meditation in their cells, surely I can create a mindful space to walk around my desk for a few minutes.  It’s all about right attitude.

Taking this time during the day helps me to keep a mental and emotional balance that’s really important right now as I juggle work, my dissertation, and things like my blog.  I can remember when I was younger and was actively caregiving when having someone tell me that it was okay to take 5 minutes for myself. . . that the compassionate practice of being was important for me and the person who I was helping would have been a godsend.

So what are any of us waiting for?  Share some lovingkindness with yourself, with those around you, and with your world.  Plan to take 5 minutes during work… 5 minutes after work… and if you can, 5 minutes when you wake up or before bed to do some sort of practice.

Remember that you can also practice mindful eating — I know I have posted on that at least twice, with some references as well as Thich Nhat Hanh‘s rendition of the 5 Contemplations that you can use while you eat mindfully.

If you have creative ideas for what that might be, drop a note here and let us know how you find time.

Take gentle care, Jennifer

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Reblogged from Alzheimer's Speaks Blog:

Naomi is the Queen of compassion and has been actively trying to change our Dementia Care Culture for 30 years!  She is absolutely amazing and I promise you will not disappointed.

Well, but not this year. . . .

Here is a link to find out more about Losar.

But this year, instead of celebrating a new year, a new beginning, we stand together to mourn for all those who have taken their lives in protest of the Chinese Occupation of Tibet and for all of those who have been killed, tortured, and have fled from their homeland.

During the past year, we have witnessed countless reports of young people who have died by self-immolation and more uprisings in the tortured country of Tibet.

I take a moment as Losar begins by to recite The Four Immeasurables for all those who have known pain and suffering during these decades of occupation and cruelty:

May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes

May all sentient beings be free of suffering and its causes

May all sentient beings not be separated from sorrowless bliss

May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment and anger

from www.bodhichitta.net

Here is a Q&A from His Holiness that I found on the net asking about how we deal with those groups who have committed unspeakable acts. . .

From www.viewonbuddhism.org:

“How does a person or group of people compassionately and yet straightforwardly confront another person or group of people who have committed crimes of genocide against them?

His Holiness: “When talking about compassion and compassionately dealing with such situations one must bear in mind what is meant by compassionately dealing with such cases. Being compassionate towards such people or such a person does not mean that you allow the other person to do whatever the other person or group of people wishes to do, inflicting suffering upon you and so on. Rather, compassionately dealing with such a situation has a different meaning. When a person or group of people deals with such a situation and tries to prevent such crimes there is generally speaking two ways in which you could do that, or one could say, two motivations. One is out of confrontation, out of hatred that confronts such a situation. There is another case in which, although in action it may be of the same force and strength, but the motivation would not be out of hatred and anger but rather out of compassion towards the perpetrators of these crimes. Realising that if you allow the other person, the perpetrator of the crime, to indulge his or her own negative habits then in the long run the other person or group is going to suffer the consequences of that negative action. Therefore, out of the consideration of the potential suffering for the perpetrator of such crimes, then you confront the situation and apply equally forceful and strong measures. I think this is quite relevant and important in modern society, especially in a competitive society. When someone genuinely practices compassion, forgiveness and humility then sometimes some people will take advantage of such a situation. Sometimes it is necessary to take a countermeasure, then with that kind of reasoning and compassion, the countermeasure is taken with reasoning and compassion rather than out of negative emotion. That is actually more effective and appropriate. This is important. For example my own case with Tibet in a national struggle against injustice we take action without using negative emotion. It sometimes seems more effective.”

Let us hope that it is with this New Year that we find continued hope and renewed action in saving the Tibetan people and their hertiage.  Maybe this will be the year that the world leaders say, enough, we won’t stand by and watch innocent people die.  Maybe this will be the year that we help others selflessly rather than for what they or their country have that we can benefit from.

Perhaps this will be the year when the individual will matter more than the state and we will embrace our interbeing with all sentient beings and learn to live compassionately and congruently.

Metta, Jennifer

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• Compassion Meditation for a Time of War Windmill Buddhist Meditation
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]]> http://namasteconsultinginc.com/2012/02/21/losar-a-celebration-of-new-year/feed/ 0 namasteconsultinginc prayer flags http://namasteconsultinginc.com/2012/02/21/the-four-boundless-qualities/ http://namasteconsultinginc.com/2012/02/21/the-four-boundless-qualities/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:59:19 +0000 Namaste Consulting Inc http://namasteconsultinginc.com/?p=2286 ]]>

March (Photo credit: flavijus)

Thanks so much for your kindness and generosity but most of all your patience.  I’m new to Blog Talk Radio and am feeling my way as I go.  I previously thought that this show had not taped, however, when I went into my archive tonight, I found it wait for me.

As I was doing some research for this show on the Four Boundless Qualities for Blog Talk Radio (click on the Blog Talk Radio Link), I found this information on an upcoming retreat at  San Francisco Zen Center.  They will actually be putting on a retreat during the Saturdays in March on these practices.

Look on their website for the Practices for a Boundless Heart and Mind retreat.  http://www.sfzc.org/cc/display.asp?catid=&pageid=2978

If you’re in the Bay area, check out these Saturday retreats.  Check it out on their website.

Other resources for using the Four Boundless Qualities in your meditation practice include Joan Halifax Roshi and Pema Chodron‘s work:

http://pemachodrontapes.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4

http://manchestershambhala.org

Why I chose these meditations for recitation tonight was because as Ani Pema stated in her book, they are power self-care meditations.

They are essential for those of us who are grieving losses, not just due to the death of someone we love but also the great and small losses we face in our lives every day like betrayal of by those who are close to us or betrayal of our bodies through disease.

We take so little time to be present to our everyday wounds that we are overwhelmed when we suffer one of those great losses in our lives.  So why not create a practice in our lives to be present to and cultivate kindness for those losses and wounds we are constantly living with?

When we foster kindness for ourselves, we start to touch the essence of compassion and with practice, we’ve able to foster that compassion for those around us and eventually for all sentient beings.

These are timeless practices that have so much relvance to our every day lives today, maybe more so than ever before.  People are stretched, stressed, and suffering.

We have less and less time, more and more worries, and we don’t know where to turn.

We don’t have extended families where we see older generations going through things that we will one day nor do we have their wisdom to help us with what we are going through right here and right now.

But what we do have is a global sangha and meditations that have helped ease suffering in individuals for thousands of years.  I hope that the recitation of these phrases will bring you comfort and will broaden your daily practice.

When you have been practicing the phrases for some time, I would love to hear how they have informed your daily life.  Please drop us a note and let us know.

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