There is a rock wall that decorates the front yard at Insight Meditation Center. One morning, I decided to go sit there under the sun and sip on my tea. It's a great spot to warm up, as mornings in Barre, MA can be quite chilly even in the midst of summer. After sitting there for a few minutes, I started noticing these bees flying around me.
The end of my ten-year relationship brought with it a sea of feelings and experiences. At times, it felt as if I was being pulled in with such voracity that I had no ability to anchor myself to any shoreline. I found refuge in meditation and later in the Dharma. It certainly hasn’t been a consistent practice but one that has given me a home to return to when I am struggling. Lately, my thoughts keep coming back to navigating urban living as a single woman.
During the 1960s and ‘70s, Western seekers of all backgrounds journeyed to the birthplace of Buddhism in search of awakening. Among these were Jan Willis, acclaimed Baptist-Buddhist author and teacher whose work resounds with me, as well as many others who in large part are responsible for the development of Buddhism in the West. For many years, I wanted to take this journey too until I realized that the hybridity is already alive in my present experience. Wherever I go (especially in New York), it seems there is no avoiding the grand convergence of ideas and traditions. Stepping into this confluence of signals, I make no resistance to the intertextual tide.
Last week, we reflected on offering the gift of fearlessness to every being by “acting in accordance with the deep aspiration toward radiant and inclusive unselfishness and integrity...”
Our world is at risk; we are the world. The renowned humanist Vaclav Havel (Czech playwright, essayist, poet and dissident, ]the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic) once said that morality means taking responsibility, not only for our own life, but for all life. Martin Luther King expressed it as our being “tied together in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
Sometimes on meditation retreats I have no choice but to amuse my mind with my own hilarious inventions. Of course, most of my ideas lend themselves much less to the label “hilarious” when I get home, so I encourage you to read this tongue-in-cheek Vipassana glossary just as you come back from a retreat and it is fresh in your mind! And, for a fun mindfulness break, add your own terms to this list (retreat related or not).
The teaching of ethical conduct or integrity is the second of the three limbs of the Eightfold Path. Sila (ethics) includes wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood that do no harm. The practice is twofold: to resolve to do no harm and to do only that which is wholesome and skillful. The Buddha said that skillful actions have freedom from remorse as their purpose. They are a conscious choice to refrain from behavior that causes fear, confusion and suffering. There are increasing levels of subtlety in them.
