SSG 2/11/24, Thomas Davis

so good morning everybody good morning happy uh happy Sunday it's February 11th Trudy is um in rest she uh had a pretty long flight back from a different destination and also had just like a slight setback with uh the uh uh Health situation she reported on last week but she's pretty much fully recovered and which is why she asked me just a couple of days ago uh to stand in for her so I hope you will be gracious and patient uh with me uh this morning uh because shity is uh is one of a kind individual and I know that she just hits the spot just right with many of you and uh you hit the spot just right you know for me so um I'm I'm glad to be here and I wanted to um also just say that um I I think that there is uh you know there's a lot going on in our world right now and it's really hard to keep track of and you know I I I think if I was in an inperson situation you know I'd make a much longer preface to our practice period just to really kind of find out you know where are you you know can you you know are you lost can you you know are are you are do do you have a a a sense of wherewithal you know does your practice make sense uh have you forgotten what your practice is supposed to do you know these are these are things that I think about quite often um I'm not saying that I experience that every single day but it is fresh on my mind quite often when I'm when I'm thinking of uh the role that I play as a facilitator teacher and guide and you know it's just it's just one of those things that one of those stones that I like to turn from time to time and hopefully if uh if time together goes um as I have been receiving some sort of vision for we may address some of those things um today during this practice and what I also have been able to kind of interpret is that there is a theme of compassion that I want to that I may speak to today in regards to this backdrop of the wherewithal or the lack of wherewithal the uh the struggle of keeping a clear Focus being able to see clearly what this practice is for and what you know what are we actually doing after all of this time being a practitioner in the context of the times that we live in now yeah that's what I've been that's what's been on my mind just in general so I may sure try to share some of that with you in the in the uh moments ahead so if you are uh already in what is considered a comfortable posture seating position whether it's standing sitting or lying down those are the three postures that the that were prescribed by the Buddha and the Dharma um and I don't know if there's too many other postures that a human that the human form can take uh but the idea that we want to convey is that you want to assume a posture that will allow you to move into something called Stillness and that is happening already and so just make your adjustments just and just notice how you are at this time mitigating any sort of voices that you're familiar with that are suggesting that you should bring a lot of perfection or strive for perfection in this time we're not bringing that into our practice period the benchmarks the trying to do the efforting just see if you can allow Stillness to pervade your physical and non-physical senses and see what happens naturally from there what naturally unfolds for some of you you may begin to see the natural Rhythm of the breath coming to the forr it's natural undulation the movement of the body in its very gentle and subtle ways expanding and slightly Contracting as it brings oxygen in and out of the body noticing the pathway that the oxygen comes in through which for most of us is the nostrils the coolness of air as it comes in through the nostrils slight expansion of the body and then the subtle contraction as it leaves the nostrils at a different temperature than it came in as we settle into this posture and experience of Stillness you may encounter slight turbulence your mind suggesting that maybe you should be doing more I just want you to allow your Stillness and the flow of respiration that you experienced to be your anchor to hold you through this turbulence the ideological turbulence you should be doing something else allow your shoulders to drop a little more if you're aware that you're trying to hold them up allow your hands to be soft and even soften the jaw if you notice that you are clenching bracing for something in these times these elements of bracing and clenching are natural postures for us at different times because of all that's going on in the world the unpredictable nature of Life the many times we don't even know it the breath comes in and the breath flows out I invite you to just notice the current state of your physical body going to see if your mindful awareness practice is revealing some sense of change just in these past few minutes as the sense of Stillness sets in we may become more attuned and aware of the energy that courses through the body it may feel like impulses or a stream of slightly static vibration traveling through the limbs and down into the feet and Toes or in other places where that may reveal itself but it's natural because they are simply Signs of Life now you may be able to begin to see a certain type of orchestration happening between the body the tangible energy within the body the feeling [Music] tones of various types the circulation of the breath the undulation and slight contraction or expansion and slight contraction that the body makes as it makes room for new air and releases old Air it's a subtle orchestration of what we call a living being all these things happen at once there signs that reveal a thriving life a vital life and even the Mind itself regardless of what it's current state is what you may find happening or not happening there are also Signs of Life I just offer this as a way of reframing what you may interpret as intrusive elements allow yourself to coexist with yourself every part of you belongs here oh exist be with yourself continuing the theme of coexistence allow yourself to coexist with the ambient sounds in your environment and if you really want to sharpen your lens about the Sounds in your environment see if you can remember that whatever you are hearing is a vibration in nature this associating from how you typically interpret these familiarities see if you can notice them as vibrations and as such they are no longer personal or as personal and even your feeling tones be they Pleasant unpleasant or neutral or another form of vibration and the sense of energy that you may feel within your inner being of the body the energy that courses to and fro up and down back and forth are also vibrations and vibrations are science of life and I want to invite you while we're in this place of Stillness to begin to exerise your freedom of internal but silent speech what's also known as your inside voice and just begin to lift the phrase of may I be safe may I be protected may I be healthy and notice if there's a reverberation in the body just from the intention alone may I be safe may I be protected may I be healthy may I see clearly and just observe if that stirs the water of your inner being may I find deeper acceptance of who I am and may I learn to be with myself through all of my life experiences unashamedly without any confusion may I be with myself so that I may love myself and if I can love myself and be with myself I may be able to extend that to other beings and eventually to all beings feel what that vibration of that intention feels like is there a vibration does your body resonate with that intention even your inside voice travels and see if you can experience that for yourself the dynamic range of your inside voice coming back to the breath and allowing yourself to take in a deeper portion of air expanding the upper portion of your body feeling an expansion and releasing and on the count of three we'll move towards the end of our practice period And when we get to three I just want you to hold your place and just begin to slowly move your fingers or your toes and just to transition from Stillness to movement again one 2 three and in your own way and in your own time just allow yourself to transition I want to say thank you for your practice your time and your attention and I would also like to give you a about four minutes to take a break of your choice and I will return here with you perhaps with a visual of something that we can start our the next phase of our practice with so I look forward to seeing you thank you so much the first lady of song is that her nickname maybe so maybe so summer and easy fish are [Music] jumping and the coton is high [Music] your is Rich and your is good [Music] look so oh hush little [Music] baby baby [Music] don't [Music] you one of these [Music] morning you're going to rise [Music] up [Music] then you spread your [Music] words and you take to the [Music] sky [Music] but [Music] morning nothing can [Music] you with daddy and mommy St [Music] by [Music] don't you [Music] come I wanted to share that um with you because even in this moment as I revisit uh that video performance of elit Gerald which I've seen many times but even as I watched it here with you just now she was speaking to the quality of compassion I would say even say meta was being offered through the phrases that she was speaking to but the real reason why I offered that is because it showed Ella at a different stage of her career and her progression as a as an artist and we didn't see the happy bouncy Ella what was depicted here was more of the seasoned and weathered Ella the one who maybe even herself had come to realize the potency of the lyric and the way she wanted to make the Declaration that everything is going to be okay through the words of George and Ira Gersh furthermore you and I just like Ella are a little more seasoned now and weathered than where we were when we thought how life was supposed to go and there may be some sense of something that we have to say that is a little more precise a little more direct and that's undergirded with more intention Clarity and courage I think it's important that we not only realize that that is one of the gifts of life and maturing but for some of us it may there may be no other way way to fulfill the duration of the time we have left how are we going to live are we going to allow our seasoned empowered version of ourselves to come to the Forefront showing that we have earned our place and so I'm I'm kind of in a in a um in a switching mode and I want to just share with you some thoughts that I've been looking at uh from my own personal Endeavors and Reflections personally and these are some historical points that I wanted to share um from a from a real story a real life story and somehow my process is really looking at life as it is in life experience as it reveals itself and just to see how that merges with this philosophy that I was introduced to over a decade ago called Buddhism or mindful awareness practice and to see how the principles that are within that philosophy actually align with the direct life experience and direct life aspiration and so one of the one of the principles of the Buddhist philosophy and it's not only relegated to the Buddhist philosophy but there's a virtue called compassion which in the poly language is translated as the word karuna k a r u a and one of the simplest definitions that I was just reminded of this morning was that karuna means or compassion means to be with compassion is not sub traction it's addition it is inclusive it doesn't take anything away but it offers this being with accompanying us in our experiences so just remember if you don't remember anything else I I I say today that compassion is not subtraction it's addition so in addition to circumstances that you may be facing compassion adds itself to those circumstances with the purpose of being with you being with us so let me let me tell you this story um it's not very elaborate but it takes place in the late 19th century around 187 76 in Europe and it's going to detail a person's lived experience the early phases of their lived experience and just trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing with their life which may be a recur recuring question for many of us a persistent recurring question so Europe 1876 a young and very capable man of the age of 27 who happened to be the son of a Preacher a minister and his father was the son of a minister so here you have the third generation 27y old who hadn't yet accepted the call to be a minister but he had this stirring curiosity and somehow through his DNA that was passed down he he felt like he was supposed to do that too and this man he did he wasn't so much inclined he had this natural aversion to just about any and all institutions several schools he tried to go to even a a a a ministerial Seminary he tried to apply to and he wasn't accepted in in different you know he just had a little history of just trying to get in certain institutions to be become qualified to do things and for one reason or another it just didn't work out that way however upon a recent rejection that he had experienced that a uh at a certain organization to become trained to be a minister and having been rejected there was a second opportunity that was presented to him to be a missionary and this was going to be a fairly local opportunity for him and his uh his mentor or spiritual advisor was named Reverend Peterson and Reverend Peterson told him hey there's an opportunity it's going to be short term it's going to be about six months and it's going to be in this region in between France and Belgium called the borinage borinage is translated as Black Earth country and it was a miners town and in M the miners town you had people that worked in the minds from the adult down to kids as young as eight n years old and he was offered the opportunity to go there and to and to support them with prayer and Bible lessons and just to be kind of like a mentor and guide over their well-being supporting their the the the moral Harmony of the community and so he arrives there and they said it was you know that it was a really nice Vibrant Community but when he arrived there to the borinage he found that it was quite monomatic everything just had this tinge of Darkness to it partly because it was a mining Community everything just had this ttin of s or Blackness on it or around it it it was on the people's clothes it was kind of like within the skin you know there was just this kind of veil of darkness and he proceeded anyway to gather them to serve them to meet their needs and as he continued in that he discovered that he wanted to do more than just offer them Bible studies and prayers and you know the the surface level things that of ways that he was empowered to to serve that Community he wanted to be able to offer more and these people were poor you remember making a very meager living and not much resources and so this young missionary in the Endeavor to identify with them he began to give them his food and he began to give them his clothing in The Boarding House the lady that ran The Boarding House that he was staying at for this short St she began to get concerned about him as he was losing weight and his clothes were becoming you know his clothing the appearance of a missionary you know that shiny image of you know God's representative begin to Tarn and yet all the while he still continued to serve the people and he begin to give them more and more of what should have been his he began to share it with them and after a little more time he wanted to identify with them even more so he didn't bathe as much so he was giving them his clothing his food and he went even as far is to want to fully identify or be with them by not even bathing and after a while he became somewhat indistinguishable between the native people of the borage and how he had originally showed up as a missionary so as compassion is defined as we understand it it is addition not subtraction and this person wanted to fully be with the people he was serving he continued on in this way for a while and after a period of time the missionary organization sent down an emissary to come and check on him and to inspect him and to see see how he was maturing in his training process and upon the arrival when this person saw how much he had assimilated and maybe even from a more conventional or uh conditioned way degraded himself from the status of a missionary and what it's supposed to look like and now he looks like one of the people of the borinage and every way he became very upset and he fired you have completely lost the purpose you've you've you've completely tarnish the image of our organization you're giving the people too much you are too much you have identified with them you are with them in ways that exceed our standards you are you've gone below our standards this is what the religious organization this was the message that they delivered to him and he was heartbroken and dashed and it just reaffirmed that I don't have any place within any kind of institution but at the same time he had given everything that he could for the benefit of these beings a full expression of what I would call what I'm interpreting as compassion and so after he got the news that he wasn't able to continue his assignment he went back to Brussels and he walked I think it was over 25 miles or something like that but he walked and in just trying to reassess everything he ran into the original minister that sent him there in the first place and when he met with the minister he had a bag and in his bag were drawings and what this person did this this uh this missionary was doing while he spent his time with people was that he would sketch and draw what he saw and he would draw the people at different stages of their day carrying shovels or pulling a horse along or you know holed up in a little cave with a pick picking away at the coal and he showed them to the minister Reverend Peterson and Reverend Peterson said you know what you really need to continue on with this this is a very the these are very very good drawings you should continue on with this you won't continue on as a as a missionary but you should continue on with this and so the person took his word and you know he just let it land how it did and he went back to the borinage and he stayed there for another year until the idea had crystallized that he wanted to be an artist and if you could just pause for a moment and think about your experience of having a realization of that nature of that magnitude where you are able to aspirationally identify with something that you want to do or be this is a human experience but all of the work that he did in identifying with the people of the borinage the degradation the suffering the cold the the dirt the lack of food the lack of resources and clothing all of that was necessary in order for him to come to this realization and to see what he had been doing the whole time which was actually capturing moments of these people while he was in the community with them he didn't see the value of it at that time so as stated about a year later it had crystallized that he wanted to pursue art to be an artist and so he left the borinage he went back into Brussels where the scenery was different and he could possibly begin to draw his surroundings that had more that offered more than the borage did and this was the beginning of what we call an odyssey for this individual an odyssey is interpreted as a long and arduous journey and the person that we are speaking of is Vincent Van Go all of the work that he has accomplished and established throughout his tenure as an artist and as a human being a lot of it overlaid these humble beginnings of him trying to figure out where he supposed to be and what he's supposed to be doing but what was glaringly evident for me was that beneath all of the marks of identification that he later took on at his core there was something in him that not only allowed him to be compassionate but he would love really really strong and really hard to his own detriment and this is the element that I saw in the elepant Gerald video trying to express something that even the Beautiful Beautiful lyrics of George and I gersan couldn't quite get across because of the things that she had seen the things that she had experienced and I just I'm just translating that over to to this figure named Vincent vano vanov and at the core his core were some of the most beautiful virtues and compassion is addition it's not subtraction and he exemplified compassion from my perspective while in the village of the borinage and while he was there the people never degraded his status he was always their Minister and he probably even became their Minister even more so when they saw how he was not afraid to become what they were he was willing to be with them literally as best as he could his heart wouldn't allow anything less and so what I'm just kind of sketching out is the tension that exists between following your heart and and finding out your own capacity and the tension that exists between that and what the institution says is the right thing to do what the world says is the way to go and they may be completely different at times this is the tension of living authentically so I'm raising this these reflections just to extend an [Music] invitation for you to think about your own practice in relationship to compassion have you viewed it as subtraction and do you have the capacity to allow it to be addition what is your relationship to compassion in these times where more and more the world is taking on borage like qualities I'm going to pause there I uh um I don't have a sense of direction to take it any further than that within the time constraints that we have but I do want to say thank you for your patience and um and your attention and giving me the space to just try to recall and articulate these fresh ideas I won't say they're perfect ideas but they have kep me stimulated for several weeks now I haven't even written them down they just it's just things that I've been really interfacing with so uh if there are any questions or Reflections I'd be happy to uh hear you and if I'm able to respond to you that's fine

Channel: InsightLA Meditation

Views: 13

Keywords: meditation, buddhism, truth, inner guidance, mindfulness, trust, mindfulness meditation, sobriety, anxiety, stress reduction, wellness, depression, guided meditation, buddhist, health, buddha, religion, communication, insight meditation, vipassana, trudy goodman, trudy goodman Kornfield, self-compassion, trudy goodman meditation, jack kornfield, kornfield, joseph goldstein, sharon salzberg, sharon salzberg meditation, jon kabat zinn, jon kabat zinn mindfulness, los angeles, california

Id: pTCvpsNp61w

Length: 79min 51sec (4791 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024