Tuesday, May 8th

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We’ll be continuing our exploration of self-compassion this Tuesday. There are several exercises on the Wikipedia page for Self-compassion, here are a couple:

How would you treat a friend?

This exercise asks you to imagine that you are comforting a close friend who is going through a tough situation. You are then asked to compare and contrast how you react internally to your own struggles, and to endeavour applying the same loving kindness to yourself that you would apply to a friend.

Identifying what we really want

In this exercise, you are asked to think about the ways that you use self-criticism as a way to motivate yourself. Then, you are asked to try to come up with a kinder, gentler and more caring way of motivating yourself to make the desired change, and to try to be aware of how you use self-criticism as a motivational tool in the future.

There are many more resources on the web, have fun exploring…

You can think of death bitterly or with resignation, as a tragic interruption of your life, and take every possible measure to postpone it. Or, more realistically, you can think of life as in interruption of an eternity of nonexistence, and seize it as a brief opportunity to observe and interact with the living, ever-surprising world around us.
Barbara Ehrenreich (Natural Causes)

The schedule is:

6:00 – 6:30 sitting
6:30 – 7:00 walking
7:00 – 7:30 sitting

We meet at BIBS – location in the sidebar.

 

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Tuesday, May 1st

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As we move into our exploration of the hindrances (hindrance of the month for May is Sensual Desire) we are going to take a moment to remind ourselves of the benefits of self-compassion. Next week we will be discussing The RAIN of Self-Compassion, a talk by Tara Brach. There is also a video of Tara giving this talk, and a 10 minute guided meditation.

There are many other resources for the study of self-compassion on the web…

The schedule is:

6:00 – 6:30 sitting
6:30 – 7:00 walking
7:00 – 7:30 sitting

We meet at BIBS – location in the sidebar.

…

Our weekend non-residential retreat is near, from the evening of Friday May 4th to the afternoon of Sunday May 6th. We plan on breaking up on Saturday evening early enough that we can go home to eat.

 

Tuesday, March 27th

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Next week we will wrap up our exploration of Frank Ostaseski’s The Five Invitations with a discussion of the Epilogue of the book as well as whatever is still percolating from our previous discussions. We also talked about bringing our own Death Poems to sangha and that is still an open invitation.

Please feel free to come and share in the discussion even if you haven’t read the book!

The schedule is:

6:00 – 6:30 sitting
6:30 – 7:15 discussion
7:15 – 7:30 sitting

We meet at BIBS – location in the sidebar.

Tuesday, February 27th

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Next week we will continue our exploration of Frank Ostaseski’s The Five Invitations with a discussion of the Fifth Invitation, Cultivate Don’t Know Mind.

We might also talk about our next book selection. There was a request to study the Five Hindrances using Gil’s book Unhindered and IMC support materials as our monthly book discussion rather than as a separate study class. We can revisit that and see if another book is calling.

Please feel free to come and share in the discussion even if you haven’t read the book!

The schedule is:

6:00 – 6:30 sitting
6:30 – 7:15 discussion
7:15 – 7:30 sitting

The sitting takes place at BIBS.