Watch any tendency to lean into a problem or situation. Is the leaning motivated by a resistance to the situation or by a desire to push your own agenda? Are you willing to drop what you want and ask, Where is the vertical stance in this moment? Start by finding easier ways to practice this vertical posture (standing in a slow-moving line at a grocery store or frozen in traffic), and then progress to the more difficult situations (with family or at work). What is the value to yourself and others of standing vertically rather than pushing forward or leaning backward?

Boundaries create a self-definition between what I am and what I fear becoming. Understanding how the fear and the self-definition arise together allows their dissolution.

Taking refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha.

Integrity is wholeness of heart. The practice is feeding our resistance and argument into our integrity.

We believe the ordinary is boring, mundane, uninteresting, but until we embrace it in ourselves we will forever seek to escape the very freedom that ordinariness contains.

Is your meditation directed toward learning about who you are? What areas do you shy away from paying attention to yourself? Where are you self-protected? Do you feel the pain associated with those areas? Become increasingly aware of one of those areas and see what difference bare attention (caring attention) makes to that pain. Offer that area metta to ease the pain of looking. The pain will ease in direct proportion to your understanding of it, and understanding is achieved through direct observation.

Notice how frequently you second-guess your generosity. You may have the desire to be generous but you let it pass without acting. This week act upon any impulse to be generous: if you have the thought to give something to someone, do not delay or second-guess the impulse. Give. Each time you open the Internet this week begin by going to thehungersite.com and offer a free donation to all the similar sites listed on that web page. Say metta phrases to each disadvantaged group as you make the offering. May all being have sufficient food; may all beings be free of breast cancer.... Feel the pain associated with each category of people and wish them well. Explore the relationship between feeling pain for another and generosity. Does the pain motivate you to move towards or away from giving? Notice your meditative posture and see if the chest and shoulders are fully open when you sit. How does your posture affect your mind? As you move through the day notice your posture when you feel selfish or irritable. Notice it when you feel generous and confident. When you feel selfish and closed down to generosity adjust your posture to a more open stance and see if that has any effect on your state of mind.