Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 10 Jan 2022
The process of cultivation is a pleasant one of cleaning away the dross and delusions that cause us suffering and stress. Drop by drop the bucket fills up with skillful actions and overflows into something more deep, steady, reliable. Be a stable presence rather than search for it, ‘out there’ – gradually the chaos will begin to still. There’s a process there, and the result is purification.
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 9 Jan 2022
With careful attention we pick up those qualities within experience that are most supportive for liberation. It means we notice how things affect us and the results that follow. Mindfulness of body gives you something to rest in as you breathe through the rocky areas of heart and mind. Citta comes out of its restricted state and there’s a widening, stepping back, letting go.
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 8 Jan 2022
There is the nutriment for ignorance and the nutriment for true knowledge and liberation. Both are dependently arising on other factors. What arises, whether skillful or unskillful, is based on how one places attention, moderates attitudes, and relinquishes self-view. This is a transpersonal process – keep filtering experience in these transpersonal terms.
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 7 Jan 2022
With mindfulness of breathing, subtle beneficial signs are picked up and suffused into the body. We can relinquish the signs we’ve picked up from the concrete jungle, the fear, the dread, the lack of heartfulness; we can purify the internal environment. Refer to what’s beautiful, uplifting, noble and generous. With mindfulness of breathing you’re taking in these messages.
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 6 Jan 2022
We all participate in this generated ‘me’ experience, which is of being ‘in here’ afflicted by the world ‘out there’. But we can come to understand this scenario as conditions with causes and effects. We can cultivate the basis for contentment, for love, tolerance, acceptance, gladness. There is a Path.
Notice the web of conditions we all share, connections we take for granted – we are not separate from that, we are that weave. The decent human response is to cultivate virtue and goodwill, develop wisdom; such skillful causes and conditions purify the heart. This is the kamma that leads to the end of kamma. Connection to Dhamma via spiritual friendship leads out of suffering. It’s important to recognize such connectivity as a skillful quality, not a bondage.