Dear Friends,
I returned from a four week solo retreat last Friday. During that time several folks stepped up to facilitate and keep the virtual practices going. Thank you all for keeping the sangha meetings going while I was gone and thank you Chuck, Mike and Randall for taking on the facilitation of the sits that I am responsible for. It is good to know that the sangha is its own being now and thrives independent of any one individual.
The three months at Cloud Mountain and the retreat allowed me time to practice and study with teachers and in silence in a way that I had not experienced before. These experiences guided me to a broader understanding of the practice of being human and a strong affirmation of the numerous teachings that have presented themselves in our practices in the sangha. In the next weeks, I would like to share with you some of the insights and teachings that I experienced in the past few months.
All of these meetings will be accessible to everyone regardless of experience in the sangha or otherwise. Although the sessions will have a focus of study or inquiry, they will not differ in format from our approach since the sangha formed 2 1/2 years ago. We will gather, check-in, there will be a short talk that may provide some direction for a 20 – 30 minute practice and then a space for sharing, for folks who would like to, before closing. Usually about one hour, though when the group is larger it may be longer.
At the end of this note there are brief summaries of the areas of practice and study that I would like to explore with the sangha. I hope this focus doesn’t deter anyone from joining, because just the experience of sitting in this community of good folk is a gift of tremendous goodness and will make a positive difference in your life and your community. Everyone’s presence, regardless of approach or experience contributes to the practice.
We meet:
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursdays: 6 AM Pacific Time
Sunday at 7 AM Pacific Time
and
Monday and Wednesday evenings at 4:30 PM Pacific Time
I look forward to practicing with you!
Gratefully yours, -William
There are areas of practice and study that we will be focusing on for the next several weeks.
a) Faith. Faith in this buddhist tradition is the persistent return to practice because of firsthand experiences of essential qualities of being human like ease, joy, and freedom. It is faith in the non conceptual knowledge of universal goodness that consistently presents itself when we gather in sangha.
b) Concentration and Insight. These are the foundational practices of buddhism and most of the Eastern wisdom traditions. The meetings and retreats of Sangha of the Pandemic have been based on these with an emphasis on insight. I am hoping to bring more concentration practice into the mix that will guide us to the experiences of more open space for clarity and deeper insight into what we already have been experiencing in our practices whether in the sangha or other spiritual lineages.
c) The Three Poisons. I was introduced to these at the beginning of my practice journey as passion, aggression, and ignorance. Other terms that may be more helpful in approaching these are greed, hatred and ambivalence or attachment, aversion and delusion. These seem to be the primary manifestations resulting from forgetting our true nature and the true nature of all beings as Goodness and contribute to the obscurations of our awareness of the true nature of reality.
d) Habit Energy or Karma. This is the persistent and seemingly unending stream of thinking and resulting reactivity that we are generally unaware of. As we shine the light of concentration and insight and the understanding of the three poisons on this habitual and unconscious way of being, there is more space for kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity for ourselves and all beings.
No matter what are focus in the sittings, our aspiration is always to bring about the end of suffering for ourselves and all beings, throughout all times and in all directions.