Hi everyone,
I hope all is well.
We did try having a yoga class on Thursday evenings. But it turned out there was very little demand, so we have cancelled that.
However the face to face Tuesday night class is thriving. We have been getting about 20 attendees the last few nights which is a good number. As well as guided meditation, and a talk, I normally try and make sure that people get together in small groups to discuss things, and that we have a long tea break, so that there is a good balance of different activities during the evening.
Please feel free to drop in whenever you like. This includes newcomers (we had 4 newcomers last week), and old timers who have not been for a while. You do not have to “be a Buddhist”.
Coming up we have:
04 October 2022 Amber and team Happiness and beyond – The Spiral Path
11 October 2022 Maisie and Keith The Enlightened Mind
18 October 2022 Padmajata – to be announced
etc
See you soon hopefully
Keith
p.s. Excerpt from one of my favourite books: “Buddhism: Tools for Living Your Life” by Vajragupta © Windhorse Publications
exercise – calm and activity
Sitting quietly for a few moments, begin to consider the balance of calm and activity in your life. Thinking about the following questions may help. Are there times when the balance is tipped too far in favour of calm, or activity? What are the symptoms of this in how you feel internally and in how you engage with what you are doing?
Are there times when you feel you get the balance about right? What does that feel like?
If and when you lose balance, do you believe it is possible to restore it, taking into account your responsibilities? What is your underlying attitude or predisposition to this question?
Look at the question of balance once again. Perhaps there are small, practical changes that would make more difference than you expect to your inner sense of balance. Make a note of just one or two practical ideas that you could try to implement.(These might be things like going for a quiet walk in your lunch break, or not listening to the radio while you drink your morning cup of tea, but using that time to reflect.)
So perhaps the twofold model discussed above was rather too simplistic. It is not that we are either practising in the world or apart from the world. Although one mode might predominate, we have times when we are in the other. There is a relationship between these two modes in our lives. Even a twenty-minute meditation in the morning is like a little retreat: we leave the world behind for a short while, but we come back to it refreshed. We have a few moments of calm in order to prepare for the activity of the day.
It was the same with the Buddha. Although, as we have seen, he returned to the world after his Enlightenment, he still went back to the forests to meditate. The order he founded was an attempt to create anew lifestyle that was both within, and apart from, the world. The monks and nuns had plenty of time and support for practice, but they also played a role in society – teaching others about the path to Enlightenment. As well as ensuring we have adequate calm, such as our daily meditation that prepares us for the activity of the day, we also need to learn how to make our active lives part of our practice. We are trying to develop awareness and loving-kindness as much of the time as possible, not only in meditation.