Quad City Meditation

Please join us for a Day of Mindfulness:
10AM-4PM Saturday, January 14, 2012.  Chapel Gathering Space at St. Ambrose University.  Register via meditationqc.org.  Dave Haskin, long time mindfulness retreat leader, is coming from Madison to facilitate.  $15   bring your lunch.
 
We continue to practice together on Thursday and Fridays at 7 pm. Fridays we have a new location.  See below.  Thursdays we still meet at the Davenport School of Yoga, 421 Brady Street in downtown Davenport.  This is our 7th year of sitting, walking and sharing together, establishing the practice of mindfulness. And we have a new 4 pm Friday meditation at Prairie Oaks, a 20 acre tree farm.
    
 FRIDAY 7 PM MEDITATION  MOVES TO BETTENDORF
 
 The Friday 7 pm meditation group will meet at the Yoga School’s Bettendorf location.  3420 Towne Point Drive, Bettendorf,  IA. 
 
Take Devil’s Glen north from Middle Road, past the HyVee.  Proceed on Devil’s Glen past the stoplight at Belmont.  Go north one more block and turn right.  The School is located just west and north of the Fareway Grocery.  Look for our Meditation banner!
Some cushions and chairs will be available.  
 
FRIDAY 4 PM MEDITATION AT PRAIRIE OAKS
 
Prairie Oaks is meditation and retreat center on a 20 acre tree farm.  Mindfulness meditation is offered at 4 pm on Fridays.  This is out in the country behind LeClaire, west of Territorial Road.  You will need directions.  Call Joyce at 289-3292.  
From Steve:

THE MIRROR THAT SHOWS NO REFLECTION 
 
Mindfulness is described as the quality of undistorted awareness.
 
Lofty language.  With the Zen-like qualities of precision and obscurity.  It points the conditions we cultivate and the circumstances we face – loads of distorted awareness out there.
 
 We could go down the list, but you know it by heart.  We are all aware that expectations, the hard lessons of past experience and misperceptions from reading other people’s minds color how we see things.  What we may fail to grasp is just how complete and common these distortions are.  The windows we look out are primarily mirrrors that reflect back our own stuff.  As Pogo said so succinctly: “We have looked at the enemy, and it is us.”
 
Recall a dark evening, sitting in a well lit room, beside a large pane glass window.  Peering outside through the glass, you do not see the lawn and woods you know to be there.  Rather, you see your reflection and that of the room surrounding you, imposed on the black beyond the window.  What we perceive as a window is really a mirror.
 
Our mindfulness practice, including our time together in sitting and walking meditation, is a gathering and cultivating of the light of awareness.  We are energizing a flood light to illuminate the darkness, so as we gaze out the window, we can see the lawn and woods, rather than our reflection in a mirror.
 
What is a mirror in the normal course of life becomes a window with a beautiful and refreshing view.

This is our 7th year of sitting, walking and sharing together, establishing the practice of mindfulness. And we have a new 4 pm Friday meditation at Prairie Oaks, the tree farm and home of Joyce and Tony

FRIDAY 7 PM MEDITATION  MOVES TO BETTENDORF

The Friday 7 pm meditation group will meet at the Yoga School’s Bettendorf location.  3420 Towne Point Drive, Bettendorf,  IA.

Take Devil’s Glen north from Middle Road, past the HyVee.  Proceed on Devil’s Glen past the stoplight at Belmont.  Go north one more block and turn right.  The School is located just west and north of the Fareway Grocery.  Look for our Meditation banner!

Some cushions and chairs will be available.

FRIDAY 4 PM MEDITATION AT PRAIRIE OAKS

Tony and Joyce are establishing a meditation and retreat center on their 20 acre tree farm.  Mindfulness meditation is offered at 4 pm on Fridays.  This is out in the country behind LeClaire, west of Territorial Road.  You will need directions.  Call Joyce at 289-3292.

THE HAPPIEST MOMENT

The Christmas song keeps repeating in my ear:  ”its the hap, happiest time of the year”.  And it reminds me that this moment can be the most gentle, colorful and happiest ever.  We practice the skill on our cushion or chair and in our weekly groups of letting go, of becoming the breath.  We gather the sharp tools and the skills to make this moment workable and a work of art.  We often forget to focus on this moment.  But when we do, we are craft men and women, making the moment dance, not in the shadows, but in undraped daylight.

Each moment has the potential to be fettered in planning, expectations, regrets, anxieties, recycled drama, any of a hundred old friend habit energies.   With our attention, with our anchor in the breath in the body, and with our shared skills of letting go and opening the heart, this moment can be the revelation of Christmas.

We continue to practice together on Thursday and Fridays at 7 pm. Fridays we have a new location.  See below.  Thursdays we still meet at the Davenport School of Yoga, 421 Brady Street in downtown Davenport.  This is our 7th year of sitting, walking and sharing together, establishing the practice of mindfulness.  

This week Barry will guide a healing sitting on Thursday and Steve will lead on Friday.  The Friday topic is the breath as our anchor in the present moment. 

 FRIDAY 7 PM MEDITATION  MOVES TO BETTENDORF

Beginning this Friday (Nov. 18th) the Friday 7 pm meditation group will meet at the Yoga School’s Bettendorf location.  3420 Towne Point Drive, Bettendorf,  IA. 

Take Devil’s Glen north from Middle Road, past the HyVee.  Proceed on Devil’s Glen past the stoplight at Belmont.  Go north one more block and turn right.  The School is located just west of the Fareway Grocery.  Look for our Meditation banner!

Some cushions and chairs will be available.  If you have your own, please bring them along. 

This week Steve will lead on Thursday and Wasu will lead on Friday.  Our topic of the week is experiencing sleepiness or boredom during our sitting meditation practice.  Sometimes, practitioners call this experience “sinking mind”.  The mind seems unfocused and disinterested.  If we bring careful awareness, we may find what is blocking or surpressing our liveliness.  Often, the mind’s activity is more subtle than normal.  So we listen.

From Steve: When I encounter that sinking feeling – perhaps a bout of discouragement or being worn out, sometimes physically, other times mentally – the predominant emotion is a quiet flatness.  Last night, for example, I was exhausted from operating a concrete saw all afternoon, the exertion, muddy dust and slivers of broken cement.  So I sat and mindlessly watched an old Clint Eastwood flick, High Plains Drifter.  There is a cinema noir downer.

When I sit with sinking mind, I try to pay attention to the whispers of the out breath.  First I worked through the movie images, which cluttered the mind.  Then the attention focused on the quality of the in breath.  I was still for the out breath, so the whispers could be heard.  As often happens, the thoughts and feelings buried inside were soft and tangled together.  The mind perked up as it paid careful attention, trying to catch glimpes of understanding.

The other night, PBS showed a documentary on enhancing the Hubble telescope during Shuttle flights.  The Hubble images are breathtaking, with formations and colors beyond normal experience.  The mind patiently greeted reliving those images of space and time – the living universe.

Gradually, the mindfulness training on the preciousness of life entered the awareness.  Life is a rare and miraculous gift. That is why we are careful to protect insects, spiders and even ticks.  The entire universe is delicately and almost impossibly configured to allow each of us life in this moment.  The mind was no longer sinking.

For the next four weeks, we will focus on the practices of love:  compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity.  This week we explore compassion, recalling that love is a verb and a practice.

Barry is leading the group meditation this week.  He writes:

With the topic of compassion and alleviating other’s suffering as the backdrop, this week I am going to offer a healing meditation.   :
“Compassion is the wish and intention to alleviate the suffering of others. It counters sorrow and anxiety. It is the unconditional care and concern for all living beings, the ability to realize that all beings suffer, not just ourselves or those we care for. All too often we find ourselves trying to ease the suffering of those we love and care for, but for other people whom we do not care for or even dislike, it is an entirely different matter. Ideally, our compassion should be held equally to all.”  -author unknown, excerpted from  http://www.abrc.org.au/page36.html

Our focus for the group this week is that there is a way out of  the unsatisfactory sense that life is a bit off, not quite right.  The sense of well being is available to us 24 hours a day.  
 
From Steve:
 
The thorns and the rose are parts of one whole.  The teachings of the mindfulness tradition say that if we honestly face our own unease and suffering, we will begin to find the hints of a stable, reliable well being.  Thay writes: “Embrace your suffering, smile to it, and discover the source of happiness that is right there within it…Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and your joy will become deeper.”
 
I find these teachings both profound and difficult to understand.  Emotional and physical pain do not seem to conceal joy.  Then, I return to the image of the thorns and the rose. 
 
Another approach that may help is the practice of remembering to be grateful.  No matter how bad conditions are,  there are always available to us a multitude of reasons to be thankful.

Our focus for the group this week is the causes of dukka (unease).  Things like grasping for something solid, wanting things not to change, aversion to parts of ourselves or of the world.

 From Steve:

Traffic, telephones and the calm center

With mindfulness practice, there are many gathas and simple methods of bringing the awareness into the moment. As we move through the day, we can practice remembering to come into the present moment.  The Sanskrit root of mindfulness can be translated as “remembering”.  Here we find freshness and lightness, letting go of rushing around and playing reruns of thoughts and feelings.

 When the telephone rings, allow it to ring twice before picking up.  Let the two rings of the bell be a reminder to let go of preoccupations, remembering to be aware of how you are just now, physically and mentally.  Taking this moment to center and ground, you can be really present to the person calling on the phone.

Hurrying to an appointment, I am often caught by a red traffic light or three.  I can obsess about how many minutes I am from arrival and the lethargic change in the signal.  Or I can choose to remember to enjoy this moment of stopping.  Locating the breath and taking it deep into the abdomen, I observe the conditions in the body the breath touches.  I invite calmness with the in-breath and allow release of stress with the out-breath.  Then a little miracle occurs.  The traffic moves in unison and clears a path to my destination.  I arrive refreshed and available for listening.

Sometimes, when I notice stress pulling me around or I hear myself grumbling with anxiety, I remember a simple song.  The words are:  “In, out.  Deep, slow.  Calm, ease.  Smile, release.  Present moment, wonderful moment.”   The song is my cue to rediscover the ease of mindfulness practice, bringing the awareness into the center of the body at the solar plexus.  There, I establish the breath in the body.  The area of centered awareness expands beyond the physical body. Now there is space for the stress or anxiety to rest and let go of its grip. 

Going to and coming back from lunch, we can enjoy walking meditation.  Centering the breath, I notice how things are in the body right now, observing the physical sensations associated with my thoughts and feelings.  Am I captured by a story or riding away into a drama?  Are there echoes in my gut?  Focusing there, I note, observe and cradle the physical and emotional sensations.  Gradually, I turn my awareness to the movement of my feet, lifting from and touching the earth.  Often, it is enjoyable to slow down and just walk, feeling the support of the earth, solid and firm beneath my feet.  Usually, there are flowers and green leaves along the path to delight the eyes.  Letting go from the center of the body and being here, there is a lightness to my step.

 Bringing the freshness and liberation of mindfulness into our daily lives is a kind and generous reward for the time we may spend meditating on the cushion.  Having a regular meditation practice, preferably including a weekly group sitting, develops the skills for remembering to be mindful.  What we have discussed above are samples of the practice tools available.  To use these tools skillfully, we need the continuity of sincere practice.

Our focus for the group this week is dukka – the sense that something is not quite right.  Often, it is hardly noticeable. Occasionally, it speaks with a clear voice.  Traditionally, in the mindfulness tradition, dukka is known as the First Noble Truth: life is not entirely satisfactory.  While meditating, especially during walking meditation, a worried whisper can arise in the solar plexus.  This is a good thing, indicating that I am bringing the awareness to the embodiment of this anxiety.  The first step in the practice of mindfulness is establishing awareness of how things are, from the perspective of the body.  As we stop, calm and breathe, more than observing, the mind becomes the body.  The breath and the conscious awareness enter into the knot in my stomach.  Body, breath and mind are united, cushioning and caring for this ball of quiet restlessness.

If you are lucky enough that you cannot recognize a similar feeling, then you do not need to practice mindfulness.  Often we practice the art of distractions, so we do not feel this subtle disquiet.  When we sit and walk, simply being the breath in the body, we let go of distraction construction.  I have a difficult time letting go of the wonderful, complex structures built and relived over a lifetime.  Over time this lush landscape has eroded into a desert and I wander with an unsatisfied thirst.  It seems unfair to have expended much of the creative energy of my life on stories that once felt as concrete as this keyboard.

Perhaps, the lucky ones are those who find a nagging lack of ease.  Mindfulness needs this uncomfortable stuff as wet clay for its wheel.  Leslie’s tee shirt reads: “No mud, no lotus”.

This week our topic is exploring how we earn a living and how our work influences and is influenced by our practice of trying to live more skillfully. Steve will lead on Thursday and Vasu on Friday.

From Steve:

Skillful in the workplace

I interact with loads of people at work, both clients and fellow staff.  Having done this work for 31 years, hopefully I have mastered most of the mystery

Things change constantly, though.  And some newbie will more easily absorb the new technologies and software.  So, in the end, I am paid and useful for the many scars on my back.  Knowing the history of how things got to be here is useful in troubleshooting problems.  And often a new problem is just an old familiar one in disguise.

What has changed, with practicing mindfulness on the cushion and in the precious circle, is a clearer understanding that imparting knowledge is often secondary.  Work presents many opportunities to affirm and lend support.  If I pay attention and am present during a conversation, rather than being off in numbers and Regulations, I can see more clearly the opportunity to smile or laugh.  And when it is important to sympathetically listen.

Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us that how we consume can profoundly affect the work of others.  As we buy electronics for the home or car, we are encouraging the strip mining of rare earth elements.  If we buy local and/or organic foods, we support alternatives to corporate agriculture.  The insight of interbeing tells us that for the things we hold dear to arise, we need to help create the conditions for their manifestation.