Peacetree Meditation Circle now meets 11 a.m. each Saturday

Places to Meditate

The PeaceTree Meditation Circle takes place 11 a.m. Saturdays

Starting this week, the PeaceTree Center in Huntington, W.Va., has teamed up with the Meditation Circle of Charleston WV to offer weekly meditation gatherings form 11 a.m. to noon every Saturday, at the center at 5930 Mahood Dr. The center is about 5 to 10 minutes west of the Huntington Mall just off East Pea Ridge Drive.

We meet starting 11 a.m., every Saturday with sitting and standing meditation, followed by a metta (loving-friendliness) meditation , Dhamma quotes and brief discussion. Beginners are welcome and basic instruction is offered in breath-centered Buddhist meditation inspired by the Theravada Buddhist tradition. All are welcome and you need not be a Buddhist to enjoy the benefits of Buddhist mindfulness and meditation practice.

Come join the PeaceTree Meditation Circle.

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QUOTE/UNQUOTE

“The mind captivated by a state of craving has no clue as to what pain and pleasure really are. When we hanker after objects, do we experience peace and bliss? Are we in control? Do we feel at ease? Or do we feel restless? Stressed and worried? Insecure and desperate? The slippery thing about attachment is that, in our bewilderment, we can’t tell the difference between pleasure and pain, love and desire, happiness and sorrow. The craving mind can mistake anything for pleasure—even pain! It’s like an addiction.”

~Dzigar Kongtrül
from “Light Comes Through:
Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence”

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Ordinary attention is not enough

Quote/Unquote

“We may like to believe that all we have to do to progress on the Buddha’s path is pay attention. Paying attention certainly sounds easier than making strong effort. But the hard truth is that simple, ordinary attention is not enough. We must learn to pay mindful attention–both when we are engaging in meditation or other spiritual practice and when we are going about the activities of our everyday lives. The Buddha knew that unless we make the mindful effort to eliminate negative states of mind and cultivate positive ones in every aspect of our lives, our minds will never settle down enough to allow us progress.

About now you might be thinking, “I knew there was a catch! This sounds like a lot of work.” Of course, you’d be right. It’s certainly easier to bury our negative qualities deep in the unconscious mind than to let them go. Greed, anger, hatred, sloppiness, arrogance, snobbishness, spitefulness, vindictiveness, and fear may have become our familiar everyday habits. We’d rather not make the effort to give them up. Yet, at the same time, we want to be happy and to move toward our spiritual goals.

Skillful Effort is the stick-to-it quality that makes the whole path possible. It is the gumption to say, “These unwholesome habits of thought and behavior must go, now!” and the wisdom to see that only by cultivating positive and wholesome ways of thinking, acting, and speaking can we hope to achieve happiness.”

~Bhante Gunaratana
from “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness” pp. 150-151
(Wisdom Publications)

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Steps along the way

Quote/Unquote

“When we have the opportunity to sit quietly and watch ourselves, new insights about ourselves may arise. We are the prototype of impermanence. But when our mind veers toward the past and starts rehashing old movies, it’s time to turn it off. The past cannot be changed. The person who experienced the past, no longer exists, is only a fantasy now. When the mind strolls to the future, imagining how we would like it to be, we can let go by remembering the future has no reality either. When it happens, it can only be the present, and the person planning the future is not the same one, who will experience it. If we stay in this moment, here and now, during meditation, we can use that same skill in daily life.

“When we handle each moment with mindfulness and clear comprehension, everything functions well, nothing goes amiss, our mind is content and inner peace can arise. Keeping our attention focused on each step on the way will eventually bring us to the summit.”

~Ayya Khema

from “Steps On the Way”

 

 

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Meditation Circle moves from Monday to Tuesday nights starting Tuesday, March 21

Schedule

Starting on Tuesday, March 21, 2017, The Meditation Circle of Charleston will move its regular weekly gathering from its current Monday night to Tuesday nights at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Building, 520 Kanawha Blvd W., in Charleston, WV.

The time remains the same, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Beginning meditators and folks restarting a meditation practice are encouraged to arrive at 5:30 p.m., for basic instruction and some guided meditation. We sit in two 20 to 25-minute rounds of sitting, standing or walking meditation, followed by a short period of discussion.

For anyone coming to the gathering, it’s OK to arrive at 6 p.m. or later, if 5:30 p.m. is too early for your schedule. All are invited who are interested in meditation and establishing a meditation practice with a supportive group. We practice breath-centered meditation in the Buddhist tradition, but you need not be Buddhist to enjoy the benefits of meditation practice.

Come and join the circle!

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A gesture of bravery

QUOTE/UNQUOTE

“Just taking the posture of meditation, sitting up, arouses energy and confidence. It’s a gesture of bravery, a silent proclamation of fearlessness: we commit ourselves to working with any state of mind that arises – sadness and excitement, boredom and joy, fear and desire. They’re all welcome, fundamentally welcome.”

~Gaylon Ferguson
from “Natural Wakefulness”

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Free the Mind

READINGS

“We must always remember that our highest goal is to free our mind from all greed, all hatred, all confusion. The greatest impact we can have on the world is to face every circumstance with a mind of clarity, compassion and love .

“From a place of calm and equanimity, we act or decline to act, doing whatever most skillfully cultivates and expresses our loving-friendliness and compassion.”

~Bhante Gunaratana

“Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness” (Wisdom Publications)

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When mindfulness is present

READINGS

… Hindrances cannot arise when mindfulness is present. Mindfulness is attention to present-moment reality, and therefore, directly antithetical to the dazed state of mind that characterizes impediments. As meditators, it is only when we let our mindfulness slip that the deep mechanisms of our mind take over–grasping, clinging, and rejecting. The resistance emerges and obscures our awareness. We do not notice that the change is taking place–we are too busy with a thought of revenge, or greed, or whatever it may be. While an untrained person will continue in this state indefinitely, a trained meditator will soon realize what is happening. It is mindfulness that notices the change. It is mindfulness that remembers the training received and that focuses our attention so that the confusion fades away. And it is mindfulness that then attempts to maintain itself indefinitely so that the resistance cannot rise again. Thus, mindfulness is the specific antidote for hindrances. It is both the cure and the preventive measure.

~ Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
“Mindfulness in Plain English” (Updated and Expanded Edition), p.146. (Wisdom Publications, 2002)

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Train yourself

Bhavana Society forest Buddha

Words of the Buddha

Train yourself in doing good
that lasts and brings happiness.
Cultivate generosity, the life of peace,
and a mind of boundless love.

Puññameva so sikkheyya
āyataggaṃ sukhudrayaṃ.
Dānañca samacariyañca,
mettacittañca bhāvaye.

Itivuttaka 1.22

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NOTE: The Buddhist Pali canon, the collection of the Buddha’s teachings, is written in the Pali language (as seen above), which was recorded in Sinhala script some 500 years after the Buddha died. There remains uncertainty of the exact language in which the Buddha taught and whether it was a variant of what came to be Pali. See this thread about the subject for more and this one.

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Change your life

“Putting the Buddha’s discovery into practice is no quick fix. It can take years. The most important qualification at the beginning is a strong desire to change your life by adopting new habits and learning to see the world anew.”

~ Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness,” pg. 3 (Wisdom Publications, 2015)

Quote and image courtesy of the Bhavana Society Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BhavanaSocietyWV

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READINGS: It’s like this

READINGS

ajahn_sumedho
Excerpts from a Dhamma talk by Ajahn Sumedho, one of the most esteemed Western monks in the Thai Forest tradition.

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Bring your attention to this moment, here and now. Whatever you’re feeling physically or emotionally, whatever its quality, this is the way it is. And this knowing of the way it is is consciousness; it’s how we experience the now. Be aware of this. When we’re fully conscious, aware of here and now with no attachment, then we’re not trying to solve our problems, remembering the past, or planning for the future. And if we are doing these things, then we stop and recognize what we’re doing. Non attachment means that we’re not creating anything more in our minds; we’re just aware. This is reflecting on the way it is. When we’re thinking, planning, dreading, anticipating, hoping, expecting something in the future, this is all taking place in the here and now, isn’t it? These are mental states we’re creating in the present. What is the future? What is the past? There’s only now, this present …
Continue reading

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Video for the Day: ‘Buddha Moments No. 1’

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Our safety net

image

“All of us from time to time encounter people who ‘push our buttons.’ Without Mindfulness, we respond automatically with anger or resentment. With Mindfulness, we can watch how our mind responds to certain words and actions. Just as you do on the cushion, you can watch the arising of attachment and aversion. Mindfulness is like a safety net that cushions you against unwholesome action. Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feelings. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.”

 

Gunaratana, Henepola.   Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English: An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2009. Pg. 35

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Instructions on Walking Meditation

walkingmeditation

WALKING MEDITATION: Walking a Path
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Walking meditation is a good transition between maintaining a still mind when the body is still, and maintaining a still mind in the midst of all your activities. As you walk in a meditative way, you gain practice in protecting the stillness of the mind in the midst of the motion of the body, while at the same time dealing with the fewest possible outside distractions.
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An ideal time to practice walking meditation is right after you’ve been doing sitting meditation, so that you can bring a mind already stilled, to at least some extent, to the practice.
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Some people, though, find that the mind settles down more quickly while sitting if they’ve done a session of walking meditation first. This is a matter of personal temperament.
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If you’re meditating right after a meal, it’s wise to do walking meditation rather than sitting meditation, for the motion of the body helps both to digest your food and to ward off drowsiness.
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There are two ways of practicing walking meditation: walking back and forth on a set path, and going for a stroll. The first way is more conducive for helping the mind to settle down; the second is more convenient when you don’t have access to an undisturbed path where you can walk back and forth without rousing curiosity or concerns from other people. Continue reading

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Looking Inward

Below is an excerpt from a rich and rewarding page on mindfulness and meditation practice  titled “Looking Inward”, by Upasika Kee Nanayon, translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/kee/inward.html .

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buddhahead

Normally the mind isn’t willing to stop and look, to stop and know itself, which is why we have to keep training it continually so that it will settle down from its restlessness and grow still. Let your desires and thought-processes settle down. Let the mind take its stance in a state of normalcy, not liking or disliking anything. To reach a basic level of emptiness and freedom, you first have to take a stance. If you don’t have a stance against which to measure things, progress will be very difficult. If your practice is hit-or-miss — a bit of that, a little of this — you won’t get any results. So the mind first has to take a stance.

When you take a stance that the mind can maintain in a state of normalcy, don’t go slipping off into the future. Have the mind know itself in the stance of the present: “Right now it’s in a state of normalcy. No likes or dislikes have arisen yet. It hasn’t created any issues. It’s not being disturbed by a desire for this or that.”

Then look on in to the basic level of the mind to see if it’s as normal and empty as it should be. If you’re really looking inside, really aware inside, then that which is looking and knowing is mindfulness and discernment in and of itself. You don’t need to search for anything anywhere else to come and do your looking for you. As soon as you stop to look, stop to know whether or not the mind is in a state of normalcy, then if it’s normal you’ll know immediately that it’s normal. If it’s not, you’ll know immediately that it’s not.

Take care to keep this awareness going. If you can keep knowing like this continuously, the mind will be able to keep its stance continuously as well. As soon as the thought occurs to you to check things out, you’ll immediately stop to look, stop to know, without any need to go searching for knowledge from anywhere else. You look, you know, right there at the mind and can tell whether or not it’s empty and still. Once you see that it is, then you investigate to see how it’s empty, how it’s still. It’s not the case that once it’s empty, that’s the end of the matter; once it’s still, that’s the end of the matter. That’s not the case at all. You have to keep watch of things, you have to investigate at all times. Only then will you see the changing — the arising and disbanding — occurring in that emptiness, that stillness, that state of normalcy. | READ ON

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