Good afternoon!
In springtime we can see how the rain and the sun, our attention and our efforts can help grow the seeds we want to bear flower and fruit in the future. We can’t make the plants grow by reading about them or talking about them. Instead we cultivate the earth and simply do what needs to be done with an open heart.
It’s not always easy to move our attention from our minds thinking into our body doing and our selves being. In Sangha we have started to practice feeling the body with the body rather than with the mind. We are skilfully using our senses to come back again and again so that touching our embodied selves becomes a habit.
Over the next months we will explore what happens when we let mind consciousness dissolve again and again so we can rest in that store consciousness where all patterned behaviour has its seeds and its roots. We are identifying what stories we would like to let go and how we would like to nourish new stories as they arise. We know in our hearts and through our practice that true resolution of difficulties happens when something shifts at a deeper level than our mind.
And Thay will help us through his book “Buddha body Buddha mind.” Please order it if you are interested in following along, but it is not necessary. We will be practicing deep relaxation, touching the earth, mindful movements, connecting with a deep ecology to help us recognize the joy of letting go, of nourishing ourselves in new ways. We will also have talks and Dharma sharing.
The last two weeks we discussed how “we cannot use the mind to solve the problem of solving problems with the mind”! So right now it seems that this message has a lot do words in it…. Let’s simply practice together on Thursday evenings and during Days of Mindfulness.
Waves and Water Sangha