Dear Friends,
Increasingly, I have conversations like this:
“I just do not have any time,” a friend tells me.
“I know meditation is useful, I know time in nature is useful, but I just do not have the time. I am so busy, I do not even have 5 minutes in a day.”
Then the person goes to tell me about a Netflix series he just binged watched, a funny Youtube video he saw recently.… interestingly, somehow there is all this time!
The challenge is this:
The online world, and especially social media, often asks nothing of us.
It is generally here to entertain us, not help us increase awareness. As a result, when we encounter something difficult, a single click or swipe lets us quickly move on to the next image, story, or video.
We then only see what makes us comfortable. There is a place for this, but now we can live our entire chasing entertainment! Instead of a part of life, it becomes our life.
Meditation, on the other hand, is more confronting. We do not control what arises.
Meditation shows us what we do not want to see, as well as the deeper aspects of our humanity.
Thich Hanh writes:
"Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud."
We get to see how we suffer AND we get to see what does not suffer.
We choose learning over entertainment.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche called meditation “one insult after another.” It can be hard, yet that is where the learning is.
To support us in the inner journey, the month of December we will be meeting 8 times to practice together in community.
NEW SERIES
We are calling it Stillness Within: Cultivating Presence in Uncertain Times, with an amazing group of guest teachers including Roshi Joan Halifax, Trudy Goodman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Sharon Salzberg.
BY DONATION. RESERVE YOUR SPOT >>>
My partner Cecily Mak and I are also co-leading a retreat December 9-14 titled, A New Year Reset: Shedding Unwanted Habits with Self-Grace and Presence.
Some scholarships are available, so ping us if you want more information.
Hello. Thank you for all the wonderful Wisdom 2.0 events! I have paid my donation of 25 dollars for this event and I have not yet received an email from Eventbrite. Usually it arrives straight away. Kind regards, Shirley, England
I feel like I already signed up for this and I don't have an email link to the sessions. Can you check and see if i am already registered? Thank you