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A Few Thoughts on Community 

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A Few Thoughts on Community  ~David Stein

 

Did anyone see the movie “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” earlier this year? I did and I loved it! Marcel said many profound things about community. As such, he has rocketed through the ranks to enjoy the status as one of my heroes. “It’s pretty much common knowledge that it takes at least 20 shells to make a community,” Marcel formerly enjoyed life with his extended family. But with their mysterious disappearance he has dedicated his life to finding meaningful community. Marcel understands community better than most people do.

Community is so easy to say. And the word gets a lot of attention these days. It seems like a fairly simple and natural concept and word but it’s meaning is actually fairly complex. I think a community is a collection of shared connections. But let’s take a closer look.

Communities are formed and maintained to meet the shared needs of the members. Chief among these needs are safety (if we don’t feel safe we can’t connect), belonging, trust…all within the context of the stated purpose/purposes of the group. Like living organisms, communities have life cycle stages: inception, expansion, establishment, and maturity (this is sometimes referred to as “forming, storming, norming, and performing.”) The stages don’t necessarily happen in succession and some stages may repeat.

The Sol Center is a community. More precisely, it is a community with various communities nested within it…much like a Russian doll. For example: within the Sol Center there is the yoga community which can further be divided into Sunday yoga, weekday yoga, etc. There is also a community of meditators and communities organized around special classes and programs within the greater Sol Center community. The Sol Center (and all of the communities nestled within it) has 100% of the characteristics and qualities listed above. I never really thought much about community until I stumbled into the Sol Center.

There is a Hebrew folksong that I learned as a little kid. It essentially praises community and it is called Hinei MaTov and it goes like this (in Hebrew)…

Hinei ma tov u’mana’im
Shevet achim gam yachad

…which loosely means (it’s been said that translation is the first step toward interpretation as often words don’t readily translate from one language to another and meanings change over time):

How good it is, how sweet it is to be together on this day.

 

 

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The Four Foundations of Mindfulness or The Satipatthana Sutta

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The Four Foundations of Mindfulness or The Satipatthana Sutta

 

As mindfulness has come to mean many things in our modern usage, with the potential to be watered down into being calm, relaxed, or nice it is useful to reflect upon its actual roots in Buddhism.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, or the Satipatthana Sutta, is the classical teaching attributed to the Buddha which outlines a simple, direct way anyone may lessen and end suffering. Below is a brief overview of the foundations as I understand them, express them, and explore them as an interfaith practitioner. Interfaith here implies a respect for the world’s spiritual and religious traditions without identifying as one in particular.

The first foundation is the body, the physical, our direct sensory connection to the world.  Use your senses, your body, and your breath to bring you home.  It is simple and significant. This place you are is the only place you truly exist.

The second foundation is the feelings.  Being aware of your emotional reaction to the present moment.  We are always emoting subconsciously.  Literally, we are having a reaction whether we are conscious of it or not.  Mindfulness asks us to make it conscious, to see it clearly and to not be so driven by emotional reactivity.

The third foundation is the thoughts.  Being aware of the thinking process.  We are often lost in thought, convinced of thought, trying to think our way out of stress & suffering.  In reality, life does not yield itself to simple problem solving.  Awareness of thoughts as things rather than certainties gives us much more perspective and response flexibility.

The fourth foundation is more complicated.  It is sometimes referred to as awareness of mental formations.  I once asked a very experienced Buddhist friend to explain it more to me, she said “it’s everything else.” The energy with which she said this, as a devoted meditator, struck me.  This the launching pad into the mysteries of consciousness and the possibility for clear comprehension within the vicissitudes of this wild and precious life.

What is particularly interesting in this ancient understanding via the Buddha is that it matches our concept of the evolution of the brain- from biological instinct, to raw emotion, to abstract thought.  And it champions the ability we have to integrate it all anew; to live with more intention, care, and wisdom.   To lessen, and potentially, end suffering.

Simple but not easy.  Profound and Practical.  May it be so!

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Inner Peace – Six things to make it easier

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Inner Peace – Six things to make it easier

not being afraid of change

kindness toward others

honesty with yourself

intentional actions

self-awareness

Yung Pueblo, Clarity and Connection

 

I offered this Inner Peace formula by writer and contemplative activist Yung Pueblo in the July news. One of our thoughtful students took “intentional actions” as a point of inquiry asking me and himself, what is intentional actions? You may simply want to consider the question without reading on.  One of Yung Pueblo’s gifts is his economy of words.  Here is my philosophical and hopefully practical response to the question:

In mindfulness training, and yoga as well- the idea of knowing how to work with the impulses of the mind/body moment to moment is the key to ending unnecessary suffering…

Intentional action implies working as skillfully as possible with the past/present momentum of doing, relating, managing, fixing, controlling, willing…

Intentional action asks us to consider deeply. What is really happening within me and around me? What is called for (if anything)?

Much of formal meditation practice teaches us to harness the mind/body energy and purify it (so to speak);  so our presence and action can be use-full, help-full, care-full, beneficial, healing rather than reactive, aggressive, selfish, impulsive, harmful…

The Dali Lama has said “ My greatest protection (against fear and negative emotions towards the Chinese for instance) is my sincere intention.” This has always been an important quote for me personally.  A reminder that if I can be clear and sincere, to the best of my current ability, I am protected.

This brings to mind another related quote, by Mother Teresa.   She details many ways the world and people may judge and criticize your actions and motivations, making you doubt what you should do.  Her advice is, “do it anyway.” The last line reminds the person of faith, “ You see in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.”

And from another perspective regarding intentional action, there is also Victor Frankl’s famous statement adopted by the mindfulness movement: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Then again, it always comes back to daily life practice really.  Consider what it means for yourself in the next few situations you are navigating; how do I be intentional here? It might be as simple as being present, being connected to what you are doing, nothing special yet fully experienced.

Or more challenging, what it means when you are upset in some discernable way, wanting “it” to be different than it is right now. How do I be intentional here? It might be as simple as not doing what you usually do.   As the zen saying goes, “where there is awareness, there is wisdom.”

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