Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation, we will be sitting from 7:30 to 10:00 PM EST. It is not necessary to sit for the entire time, sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you.
Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers of all stripes who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
One of the best things that ever happened to me was discovering Tibetan Buddhist Lojong, or Mind Training, through the books of Pema Chödrön. Until I was exposed to Lojong I could not understand why my negative emotions would continue to arise, no matter how many healing processes and workshops I undertook.
It was through observing my own ego driven mind I became acquainted with the way ego operated in my mind. Then I began to see how the ego driven mind worked the same way in people around me. It occurred to me that the ego really only has a limited number of strategies to maintain control and it works the same way in all of us, although some of us favor some ego driven strategies over others. It’s just that we get so caught up in the different stories we don’t recognize the repetitious nature of the dramas we create with our untrained, ego driven minds.
It was through Lojong practice that I began to approach emotional adulthood, and finally began to see myself in others.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
― Pema Chödrön