Tara gives brief instructions on the forgiveness practice, then guides us through a process of forgiveness of ourselves and others.
“Forgiving is a movement of your heart not to carry aversive hatred or blame. That you can care about someone and still create boundaries… Each of you has this wisdom, heart, being place that intuits that there really isn’t freedom in the moments that you’re carrying blame and judgment.”
Question and Response from Retreat ~ After morning meditation, Tara responds to questions on deepening our meditation practice, working with unpleasant and pleasant thoughts, and forgiveness from the IMCW 2016 Spring Residential Retreat.
From the “Wasteland” of samsara, (which is generated by ignorance and craving), a natural arising of spiritual strength can occur – if we ‘touch the ground’ of truth and empathy.
Standing can put us in touch with somatic intelligence as: balance, as cohesion. Gradually the felt sense of body re-forms as a mid-line central stillness and as peripheral sensitivities and openness.
Devotional practice works through including us in bodily, verbal, and heartful actions. Words and concepts are secondary to images and romances. Images of Buddha hands carry deep meaning.
Awareness is often beset with thoughts, emotions, and narratives that cause a ‘jump’ into conceptual proliferation. With unconditional acceptance we hold awareness as a non-reactive ‘pool’ that receives and resonates with mind-stuff but doesn’t react.
Shifting our relationship with fear is central to the evolution of consciousness. Our suffering arises when our thoughts, feelings and sense of identity are shaped by fear. As we learn to attend to fear with mindfulness and care, we discover the vast tender presence that has room for the waves, and can fully cherish this life.
Life’s waters flow from darkness. Search the darkness, don’t run from it.
Night travelers are full of light, and you are too: don’t leave this companionship…
The moon appears for night travelers, be watchful when the moon is full.
- rumi
Citta is occluded by not knowing its freedom. Citta enters the sensory condition, is ‘born’, develops a person to meet ‘the other’. Here is dukkha and personal responses to that don’t work, but dukkha can be released through citta in the body.
