From over fifteen years of sharing her understanding of Buddhist concepts
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Being Kind to Ourselves Is Not Selfish
“The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves.” – Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s MindMeditation is the practice of creating time and space to quietly listen in. Sensing in to our breath and other sensations that arise and fall away, as do all phenomena, we open to…
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Insights into Inner Rudeness
Our recent review of four obstacles to sending metta came from a series of insights. An insight is a naturally occurring result of open curiosity, inquiry and noticing patterns and conditions both in our minds and in the world around us. The kind of meditation we do here is called Insight Meditation. An insight is…
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Loving Kindness Shifts Relationships
In exploring metta, the practice of sending loving kindness, we come to the challenge of sending it to a ‘difficult’ person, someone with whom we struggle or who pushes our buttons. This can be a family member, co-worker, client, or a public figure whose policies, beliefs or behavior seem wrong, maybe even evil to our…
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Four Obstacles to Metta Practice
Obstacle #1. Belief That Metta is FiniteWhen we practice sending metta (the Pali word for loving kindness) we are activating our natural sense of generosity. This generosity comes in part from understanding the nature of impermanence. We see that all we ‘own’ is temporal, not ours to begin with, and not the source of our…
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Energy Awareness
‘When you find yourself in the thick of it, help yourself to a bit of what is all around you…’ — from Martha My Dear by The Beatles In class we noticed how the energy within our bodies and within the room had changed after meditating. So when we talk about energy, we are not talking…
STEPHANIE NOBLE 