Daily Reflection Sit

What motivates us to practice? Samvega - spiritual urgency - is a positive quality that can deepen our commitment to practice as we see our world on fire and seek another way. Pasada - confidence in the path of meditation - is a balancing quality to samvega that brings calm and protects against pessimism.

Narrated by Jaye Moyer Animation & audio by Elizabeth Mehling

Benefactors or a beneficial presence can be a supportive part of our holding environment. The support of benefactors provides warmth and compassion to our practice.

Steady yourself frequently by coming back into the holding environment. Notice when the holding environment needs some sprucing up. Refresh, rebuild, reconstitute that atmosphere of wise caring attention and then decide what to do next.

We want to deepen and widen our capacity to feel more at home within ourselves and each other. We set up the conditions to support this in daily practice.

Nature can teach us how to hold ourselves and help us to create our own holding environment. We can carry the lessons of nature throughout our lives - not just outside.

Daily practice loosens and releases some of the rougher energy and the grosser tensions.

Emphasizing the centrality of retreats in deepening understanding and compassion.

But the Daily Sit will continue in our absence, led by our senior students!

We say we want the truth, but we want to feel more deeply at home.

Quiet the wish for more, and rest in gratitude.

Instead of hiding our thoughts and feelings of not being enough behind a more public face, invite them to tea. Hold yourself with some compassion.

Generosity is an important practice . It expands the language of you and me to the language of we.

Withdraw attention from this line of thinking: Been there, done that, know where it goes. Then, TAKE A BREATH. Bring ATTENTION out of the mind and back to the present moment & into the body. KINDLY WATCH OVER the tangle of sensations related to that line of thinking, untangle.

Exploring the suffering of grasping and clinging to the need to be “somebody” and the alternative of releasing and cultivating humility and gratitude in the context of not-self. A middle path to facing shame.