the Meditation Circle

When we hear phrases commonly used to describe mindfulness like “just be with what is”, “accept the present moment”, “don’t get lost in judgement”,  it (mindfulness) can sound pretty inert. But the actual experience of mindfulness produces a vibrant, alive, open space where creative responses to situations have room to arise, precisely because we’re not stuck in the well-worn, narrow grooves of our habitual reactions. In mindfulness, we don’t lose discernment and intelligence. These qualities actually become more acute as stale preconceptions and automatic, rigid responses no longer continue to rule the day.

Salzberg, Sharon. Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace. N.p.: Workman, 2013.

 Pindapata

The lay people offer food directly into the bowls of the monks and nuns.

“Meditation is training for the mind, to help it develop the strengths and skills it needs to solve its problems. The mediation technique taught in this book …(mindfulness of breathing, leading to insight)….is a skill aimed at solving the mind’s most basic problem: the stress and suffering it brings on itself through its own thoughts and actions.”

from the Introduction to With Each and Every Breath  by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff), the abbott of Metta Forest Monastery, Valley Center CA.

Time and Now

(interesting article on consciousness, please  open the link.)

All Actions are led by the Mind

Mind is their master,

Mind is their maker,

Act or speak with an impure state of mind and suffering follows as the cartwheel follows the hoof of the ox.

All actions are led by the Mind

Mind is their master,

Mind is their maker,

Act or speak with a pure state of mind and happiness follows as your shadow, never departing.

( The Dhammapada: twin verses, 1 and 2)

For the Buddha, perception is pure and simple. When the eyes see a visual object they do so without embellishment. As the Buddha explained to his monks on the Connected Discourses:

And why Bhikkhus, do you call it perception? It perceives, bhikkhus, therefore,  it is called perception. And what does it perceive? It perceives blue, it perceives yellow, it perceives red, it perceives white. It perceives, bhikkhus; therefore it is called perception.

(tr.Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Gunaratana, Henepola, ( forward by Bhikkhu Bodhi.)  Meditation on Perception: Ten Healing Practices to Cultivate Mindfulness. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2014. Print.

Distorted perceptions are like a mirage. Deceived by a mirage, a deer runs quickly toward what it perceives as water. As he runs, he sees that the water-like mirage is still far ahead of him. So he keeps running toward it to drink. When he is even more tired and thirsty, he stops and looks back. Then he sees that he has gone past the water. When he runs back, he perceives that the water is ahead of him. So he runs back and forth until he is exhausted and falls to the ground.

Distorted perception is like that for us. Pulled by our own attachments, we are always chasing phantoms. Terrified, we run away from monsters created from our own aversions. So long as perception is distorted, we are unable to see the true nature of what is in front of us—nothing but an ever-changing collection of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts or concepts. Moreover, nothing that we perceive has a self or soul; and nothing can bring us permanent happiness or unhappiness.

In essence, when perception is distorted, we perceive impermanence as permanence, suffering as happiness, something neither beautiful nor ugly as beautiful or ugly, or something not self as self.

From Meditation on Perception: Ten Healing Practices to Cultivate, by Bhante Gunaratana © 2014 Wisdom Publications. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

The experience of the sublime exceeds our capacity for representation. The world is excessive: every blade of grass, every ray of sun, every falling leaf is excessive. None of these things can be adequately captured in concepts, images, or words. They overreach us, spilling beyond the boundaries of thought. Their sublimity brings the thinking, calculating mind to a stop, leaving one speechless, overwhelmed with either wonder or terror. Yet for the human animal who delights and revels in her place, who craves security, certainty, and consolation, the sublime is banished and forgotten. As a result, life is rendered opaque and flat. Each day is reduced to the repetition of familiar actions and events, which are blandly comforting, but devoid of an intensity we both yearn for and fear. We crave stimulation, we long for a temporary derangement of the senses, we seek opportunities to lose ourselves in rapture or intoxication. Yet once we have tasted such ecstasies, we often sink back with a sigh of relief into the dullness of routine.

To experience the everyday sublime one needs to dismantle piece by piece the perceptual conditioning that insists on seeing oneself and the world as essentially comfortable, permanent, solid, and mine. It means to embrace suffering and conflict, rather than to shy away from them, to cultivate the radical attention (yonisomanasikara) that contemplates the tragic, changing, empty, and impersonal dimensions of life, rather than succumbing to fantasies of self-glorification or self-loathing. This takes time. It is a lifelong practice.

From “The Everyday Sublime,” by Stephen Batchelor, published in After Mindfulness: New Perspectives on Psychology and Meditation, edited by Manu Bazzano © 2014 Palgrave Macmillan. Reprinted with permission.

Here is a link to a talk on Dharmaseed.org of  The Everyday Sublime by Stephen Batchelor:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/169/talk/17170/

A new book,   Meditation On Perception by Bhante Gunaratana, the abbot of the Bhavana Society in Highview, WV has recently been published by Wisdom Publications. The method of mindfulness or insight meditation as taught by Bhante G in his book Mindfulness in Plain English is the meditation method practiced at the Meditation Circle. This new book is a wonderful addition to the resources available to those who would like to deepen their meditation practice.

From the Wisdom Publications website review:

Use the unique Buddhist practice of meditation on perception, as taught by the best-selling author of Mindfulness in Plain English, to learn how shifting your perspective can transform mental and physical health.

Perception—one of the basic constituents of the body and mind—can be both a source of suffering and pain, as well as a source of happiness and health. The Buddhist tradition teaches that perception can be trained and ultimately purified through the practice of meditation. When we understand how perception impacts our lives, we can use it, just as we do any other object of meditation, to overcome harmful ways of thinking and acting and to develop healthy states of mind instead. In Meditation on Perception Bhante G brings us, for the first time in English, an illuminating introduction to the unique Buddhist practice of meditation on perception as taught in the popular Girimananda Sutta.

The ten healing practices that comprise meditation on perception make up a comprehensive system of meditation, combining aspects of both tranquility and insight meditation. Tranquility meditation is used to calm and center the mind, and insight meditation is used to understand more clearly how we ordinarily perceive ourselves and the world around us. Alternating between these two practices, meditators cultivate purified perception as explained by the Buddha. As a result of these efforts, we progress on the path that leads to freedom, once and for all, from illness, confusion, and other forms of physical and mental suffering.

Meditation on Perception gives us the keys to move beyond ordinary, superficial perception into an enlightened perspective, freed from confusion and unhappiness.

Here is also a link to related Blog posts that contain excerpts from Meditation On Perception. These links can also be found on the Wisdom Publication site,

http://www.wisdompubs.org/blog/201406/healing-meditation-1

http://www.wisdompubs.org/blog/201406/healing-meditation-2