We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
Tag: Meditation
Supporting your practice: Events coming up in May
Just some information about some events coming up in May which you may be interested in and which may support your practice.
The last MBSR group I led will have its All Day Session on May 21st. All are welcome to join with them. It will be, as always, in silence, and will include two longer sessions of yoga in the Kripalu tradition.
Patrick, whom many of you know from the Tai Chi Sessions he has done with us, is running a 4 week introduction to Tai Chi starting Thursday May 12 which will build in skills and practice from week to week. He would run it in his Centre on rue Montbrilliant behind Cornavin each Thursday from 12.15 to 1.30. If any of you are interested please contact Patrick directly at yakushido@gmail.com.
Finally, there is a weekend in French led by the Monks of Plum Village (in the lineage of Thich Nhat Hahn) on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th of May at the Maison de Vessy. You can look at the details here: Week-end PC 28-29 mai 2011
Studying meditation and its effect on aging
A link to a report in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper about the effect meditation may have on genes and aging. It describes one of the largest pieces of research currently undergoing on the benefits of meditation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/24/meditation-ageing-shamatha-project
Letting life flow
How can you follow the course
of your life
if you do not let it flow?
Lao Tzu
Being happy today 1: Joyfulness is in our own hands
Joy isn’t dependent on getting things, or on the world going the way you want, or on people behaving the way they should, or on their giving you all the things you like and want. Joyfulness isn’t dependent upon anything but your own willingness to be generous, kind, and loving. It’s that mature experience of giving, sharing, and developing the science of goodness. Virtuousness is the joy we can experience in this human realm. So, although what society is doing or what everyone else is doing is beyond my control -I can’t go around making everything how I want it – still, I can be kind, generous, and patient,and do good, and develop virtue. That I can do, and that’s worth doing, and not something anyone can stop me from doing. However rotten or corrupted society is doesn’t make any difference to our ability to be virtuous and to do good.
Ajahn Sumedho
Opening to the soul in ordinary life
The three days of the Easter Festival contain a number of beautiful rituals which have been celebrated by human beings for thousands of years. These rituals touch of the big themes of human life – loss and death, betrayal and loyalty, meaning and love – and do so in a way that allow us ways to share significant emotions with others. The city of Geneva was quiet this morning, as it has been the last few days. It is good to have seasons and rhythms in our lives, periods of less activity with time to celebrate with family and friends. These celebrations can become familiar rituals in our lives – they bring us together and allow us to connect, and through connection find support and meaning. They open us up to something which is beyond the rush of each day and the limitations of work:
Ritual maintains the world’s holiness. Knowing that everything we do, no matter how simple, has a halo of imagination around it and can serve the soul enriches life and makes the things around us more precious, more worthy of our protection and care. As in a dream a small object may assume a significant meaning, so in a life that is animated with ritual there are no insignificant things. When traditional cultures carve elaborate faces and bodies on their chairs and tools, they are acknowledging the soul in ordinary things, as well as the fact that simple work is also ritual. When we stamp out our mass-made products with functionality blazoned on them but no sign of imagination, we are denying ritual a role in ordinary affairs. We are chasing away the soul that could animate our lives.
Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
