Category: Determination – aditthana

4 joy, anxiety, Determination - aditthana, fear, gratitude, joy - mudita, Kindness - metta, motivation, Patience - khanti, Uncategorized

A few resources for resilience

Jill Shepherd

Feeling stretched? As the bad news continues and intensifies in various parts of the world, I’ve started collecting news articles, books and courses to turn to when I need some inspiration. Below are just a few suggestions – let me know if you have any favourites of your own!

Chipmunk between fenceposts, Barre, Massachusetts

Finding good news in the midst of the pandemic

The intent behind KarunaVirus.org is to amplify the voice of our collective compassion — by featuring news of everyday people choosing love over fear. We feel that the acts of courageous kindness we’re seeing all over the world will far outlive the virus, and if enough of us keep it front and center of our consciousness, it could well bring new possibilities for our future.
https://www.karunavirus.org/

You Belong: A Call for Connection

A new book by meditation teacher Sebene Selassie
To belong is to experience joy in any moment: to feel pleasure, dance in public, accept death, forgive what seems unforgivable, and extend kindness to yourself and others. To belong is also to acknowledge injustice, reckon with history, and face our own shadows. Full of practical advice and profound revelations, You Belong makes a winning case for resisting the forces that demand separation and reclaiming the connection—and belonging—that have been ours all along.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/sebene-selassie-belong/

Awakening Joy online course

An internationally recognized 5-month course taught by James Baraz on opening to life with appreciation, resilience and an open heart. Learn fun and rewarding practices that lead to deep insight and authentic joy.

Registration for 2021 will open in November 2020. The first materials for the 2021 Awakening Joy course will be posted online the first week of February. The first live Zoom call on the theme of Intention will take place at the end of January.

More info here

A two day experiential workshop with Dr Rick Hanson

21 & 22 November | Online | 9.00 am – 1.00 (AEST) pm each day

Join New York Times bestselling author Rick Hanson, PhD, to learn how to strengthen the neural circuitry of deep contentment and profound inner peace. Based on teachings from his new book Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness, this experiential workshop will provide you with methods for cultivating and embodying unshakable presence of mind, a courageous heart, and serenity in a changing world. 

More info here

Exploring Sacred Paths: Pilgrimage in Buddhist Traditions

An online pilgrimage with Justin Kelly

Just prior to entering into parinirvana, it is said that the Buddha encouraged his disciples to go on pilgrimage after his death to the sacred sites associated with his life. For over 2500 years practitioners from every corner of the Buddhist world have gone on pilgrimage. As a result, pilgrimage has both a rich literary history and a diverse array of practices associated with it. 

This course is an inquiry into what pilgrimage means, both in its ideal form as described in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist writings, as well as how the principles of pilgrimage can infuse our lives with greater meaning and purpose. While investigating this topic, we will: 

  • “visit” sacred pilgrimage sites of Buddhist traditions—such as Bodhgāya and Sarnatha in India, and Samye Chimpu and Tsogyal Lhatso in Tibet—through multimedia presentations.
  • explore traditional Buddhist materials. 
  • engage in contemplative and relational practices. 
  • elucidate the meaning of pilgrimage through our collective wisdom. 
  • begin to reimagine our everyday activities in and through the lens of pilgrimage.

Our investigation will include materials related to the historical Buddha, as well as other historical Buddhist figures, such as the Tibetan female master Yeshe Tosgyal and the Chinese pilgrim-explorer Xuanzang.

Grounded in Justin’s six principles of pilgrimage—awareness, movement, education, kindness, inclusivity, and nature—this course is both experiential and interactive. Participants will be invited to engage in weekly exercises that will inform the unfolding of our sessions together and, while gathered, we will engage in dialogue in service of more fully understanding the experience of pilgrimage. 

This course is appropriate for people of all walks of life and stages of practice. The only requirement is an open heart.

More info here

Cultivating resilience in challenging times: Learning from the “heavenly messengers”

An online eight-week dharma study and practice course with Jill this October-November, offering an opportunity to develop and strengthen our inner resources of kindness, compassion, calm and clarity, through an exploration of what are traditionally known as “the four heavenly messengers.” 

More info here

daily life, Determination - aditthana, insight, Insight meditation - vipassana, motivation, retreat, Uncategorized

February 2016 full moon – Motivation, Respect, Resolve

Jill Shepherd

sea wall woman 2
Woman reading on sea wall – Newcastle NSW

The rewards and challenges of technology

Earlier this evening, I gave my first dharma talk via video-link, from the YHA in Sydney to Auckland Insight in New Zealand.  Nothing too remarkable about that these days; but still, it was a delight to be able to connect with the group in this way, and I felt a new sense of appreciation for the benefits of computer technology.  We now have access to a wide range of dharma teachings from many different traditions, in many different forms.  And with almost no effort, we can instantly download or stream talks and videos, or sign up for online study courses.

In my own experience though – as both a teacher and a student – there can also be a downside to this instant abundance.  Without awareness, it can unconsciously reinforce a passive, materialistic, and at times even disrespectful relationship to the teachings.

So as technology helps meditation becomes more and more mainstream, it’s becoming increasingly normal to approach it with a consumerist mind-set.  In some ways, this makes sense.  When everything else around us is presented in that way, why wouldn’t we think about the practice in terms of what we can get from it?  And why wouldn’t we assume that it should be available on my terms: in the way I want it, when I want it, for the price I want it?  We can even mistake this kind of freedom (to consume) for the deeper freedom that the Buddha’s teachings point to. Continue reading “February 2016 full moon – Motivation, Respect, Resolve” →

daily life, Determination - aditthana, mindfulness, Ten Parami, Wisdom - pañña

January 2015 full moon – resolution and determination

Jill Shepherd

Mangonui harbour boats
Calm during the storm

“The days and nights are relentlessly passing; how well am I spending my time?”

(A question that the Buddha advised practitioners to contemplate frequently)

2015.  Each year this changing-of-the-calendar-numbers seems to arrive a little more quickly.  Each year, it seems that somehow there is less TIME … and so at first reading, the above reflection can seem to reinforce a sense of time-poverty: having too much to do, and not enough time to do it in.

Almost everyone I know seems to be affected by this particular form of stress, a kind of epidemic or collective disease that’s increasingly resistant to ordinary forms of treatment!  Recently I received a newsletter from a wise friend, Sebene Selassie, exploring this same theme in terms of “the pathology of productivity.”  Her questions struck a chord:

How often do I access the deep wisdom of simply being? Or is there mostly a low buzz of resistance to this very moment? A grasping connected to worrying, changing, solving, fixing, planning, getting, achieving, attaining…?
The mind that races is a mind that demands certainty and security; if I plan it all out, everything will finally be okay. Besides being impossible, that demand makes it difficult to rest in the beauty and mystery of what simply is. This moment. Presence.
… Whenever I pause and allow myself to reconnect deeply to my heart-mind-body, I can also remember the truth of interconnection.  But this requires an intentional, sustained pause. Something we all seem less and less capable to allow.

See the whole article, plus a moving description of her experiences in relation to the recent grand jury verdicts in the US, here: http://eepurl.com/Y8XHL

Even though I mostly have the freedom to set my own schedule, I’m still not immune from the energies of worrying, changing, solving, fixing, planning, getting, achieving, attaining that Sebene writes of.  As I was working on my teaching and travel schedule for 2015-2016, I noticed the thought: “Hmm, I really need to plan more spontaneity somewhere in here!”  It took me a few moments to register the paradox of “planning spontaneity,” and yet I know from past experience that without some form of effort, the relentless flow of busyness will simply sweep me away again.

So I notice another paradoxical urge: to want to change, solve and fix this problem of busyness by making a New Year’s resolution to be less busy!  Of course, this is a time of year when many people make New Year’s resolutions to fix – or improve – or overcome – or get rid of – some aspect of their lives that they don’t like, but perhaps because the resolution is rooted in aversion, it’s usually not very effective.

I started to wonder what a healthy resolution might look and feel like, and if perhaps using some of the ten parami, the ten (so-called) “perfections,” might be a more balanced way to approach this challenge?  Since it IS the season of resolutions, the most obvious one to bring to mind is the eighth parami, usually translated as “resolution and determination,” but without the parami of wisdom to support it, resolution alone can easily be misapplied.

One way that wisdom develops is from learning to ask the right questions.  So coming back to the Buddha’s original question: “How well am I spending my time?” I’m planning now to contemplate this every evening in January, just to see … to see if I can experience less busyness, as an antidote to what Thomas Merton named “the violence of our times.”  The first time I read his words I felt a shock of recognition, and even now, when I re-read them, there’s a pulse of discomfort that tells me, reluctantly, that there’s probably something in it I still need to learn!

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.”

May we all experience freedom from ALL forms of violence in 2015 …

daily life, Determination - aditthana, joy - mudita, retreat, Wisdom - pañña

Welcoming the New Year

Jill Shepherd

20140102-114225.jpg

Greetings from snowy Massachusetts! I intended to write this post a few days ago, but I’ve been under the weather with a combination of jet lag, a head cold, AND a gastro bug. So I wasn’t exactly the life of the party on New Year’s Eve, but being forced to take time out has given me the chance to reflect on this transition from one year to the next.

Last Sunday I was able to visit the prison that I used to volunteer at when I lived in Massachusetts. It was a real delight to reconnect with that sangha, some of whom have been attending the group regularly for five years now. Because it was almost the New Year, I invited the men to reflect on their aspirations for the year ahead. I can’t share the details of what they said because of confidentiality issues, but I felt privileged to hear so many heart-felt expressions of the desire to change, and to live in alignment with a deeper truth.

Right now I’m at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies with a group of friends who are also experienced meditators, neuroscience researchers, and comparative religion scholars. This is the third time that we’ve gathered over the New Year for a week of peer-led meditation, interspersed with formal presentations on neuroscience research and explorations of different meditative traditions.

On New Year’s Eve we sat in a circle at midnight, and – similar to the prison visit – spoke out loud our aspirations for the coming year. And again, I was inspired to hear the depth and range and beauty of what people aspired to for themselves and others.

I look forward to continuing our dharma adventures together in 2014. May this new year bring you closer to your deepest aspirations.

With bows of gratitude,
Jill