Liberation Park meditation for October

La Crosse area Friends: Wednesday meditation & Dhamma inquiry

October sessions:  4th & 18th at Wesley UMC  

October 4th -- Wesley UMC at King & 8th (see important details below) This month we will have two sessions of our usual silent meditation and conversation on aligning our lives with the Dhamma of Awakening and the practice of the Middle Way. In October we will focus on being mindful of change, transience, and the ephemeral nature of our lives. "This" does not last.   This basic fact permeates meditation practice and can be experienced in many ways, starting with breathing. We are seeing it now in the changes of weather and the season known as Autumn. We will reflect on some of the many ways to be more attentive to change around us and within us, changes we may like and changes we don't like. The more wisely we live with the reality of change, the less we suffer from not having things how we want them to be. Please join us and share your own insights concerning impermanence.     For New Meditators!  Let us know in advance and we can arrange to meet at 6:00 pm to give basic meditation instructions. Follow up instruction can also be arranged. Just reply to this email. These teachings fall within the framework of the noble eightfold path and middle way. We often ask how the path can ground and guide us midst the challenges, storms, and provocations swirling around us and inside us. What are the realities of being mindful, kind, responsive, undistracted, and imperturbable midst the sorrows and the joys? In the original presentation, the path is a harmonious weaving of 8 strands of Rightness, Intelligence, and Skill that culminates in True-Right Knowing and Liberation. Location information -- Important!  The church doors are usually locked. The evening's hosts will arrive early to set up and meet you at the door. Please use the 721 King Street entrance, where one of us will be waiting to greet you. Knock if you don't see anyone. There will be plenty of parking on the street. The church also has parking space off of 8th St.  Meditation starts at 6:30 pm. Please arrive 5-10 minutes before then. The "Lounge" where we will be meeting has many chairs. If you prefer to sit on the floor, please bring your own mat and cushion. Dāna (donations, gifts, free-will offerings) to sustain Liberation Park and support our work are most welcome. Santikaro and Liberation Park depend on donations as sole means of support. A donation is also made to Wesley UMC for kindly hosting us. A sampler of Santikaro's talks from La Crosse and elsewhere are posted at http://liberationpark.org/audio/index.htm Next sessions:  October 18th & November 1st

White Awake: Online workshop

“Roots Deeper than Whiteness” - Countering White Fragility with Deep Resilience

An Online Workshop Series, presented by White Awake

“One of the problems that most afflicts this country is that white people don’t know who they are or where they come from.”
- James Baldwin

"Roots Deeper than Whiteness" is an online workshop series for white-identified people seeking greater emotional strength to confront racism in society and in ourselves. This means processing the fear, shame, and confusion that can arise when we address racism, so that we can remain rooted in our highest values when grappling with these realities. It also means remembering who we really are, learning our ancestors’ histories before they were classified as "white", and reflecting on the forces that created “whiteness” in the first place.
In this interactive workshop series you will…

• Build supportive relationships, share your story, and open to your own vulnerability with partners and within small groups
  

• Gain tools to remain grounded in the midst of white fragility, and to subdue white, anti-racist tendencies towards self-hatred, shame, and guilt
  

• Root yourself in a heritage of European resistance to oppression that was quelled with the creation of white supremacy
  

• Receive guidance for next steps on your journey toward inner transformation, racial accountability, and effective action for social change
  

Meet the facilitators ...

David Dean David Dean is passionate about healing the psychological impact of systemic oppression on youth most vulnerable to its violence, and within people made dominant by it. In doing so, he believes we can find the strength and understanding we need to contribute to the creation of a just society. He has sought to do this as coordinator of a summer youth activism program called The Unity Hoops Project, as an advocate for restorative discipline in schools, as a facilitator supporting men to overcome hyper-masculine social expectations, and as a writer and curriculum designer for White Awake. David’s ancestors come from the British Isles but he was raised in Maryland on land taken from the Piscataway people. He was shaped most by his parents’ love and his upbringing in Quaker communities. He loves to write, sing, and facilitate others’ discovery of their own inherent goodness and power to create social change. Eleanor Hancock Eleanor Hancock is the director of White Awake: a project that brings mindfulness and contemplative spiritual practice to white affinity work focused on racism, white supremacy, and collective liberation. If you read the White Awake newsletter, you are already familiar with Eleanor's vision and "voice!" Eleanor’s belief is that knowledge and spiritual clarity offer white people the tools we need to act not only as allies of people of color and indigenous peoples, but to make this struggle our own. Eleanor’s leadership within White Awake grows out of years of experience as an activist, academic, artist, educator, and mother of a biracial child. She has trained directly with Joanna Macy in the Work that Reconnects, and integrates this Buddhist-based, deep ecology practice into her facilitation of integrative, race-based group work.

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*No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Questions, more information, request scholarship: info@whiteawake.org

Rochester Meditation Center special program September 7

Hi Everybody, I'm delighted to announce that this Thursday evening, Ajahn Punnadhammo will offer a dharma talk at the RMC on "The Nature of Mind."  "The mind is the most immediate and intimate part of our experience," Ajahn writes. "In a sense the mind the totality of our experience, because all that we experience is in our mind. And yet the mind is mysterious to us. What is the mind?" In his talk, Ajahn will describe the Buddha's basic psychology of mind which is based neither on an embodied soul, nor on consciousness arising from matter. Instead, the Buddha offers a revolutionary third possibility which shares striking similarities to an understanding of consciousness and reality via modern quantum physics. But most important, the Buddha's understanding of mind opens a place for each person to truly know their mind, and on that basis to act in a way that creates happiness over time. I hope you can join us for this special evening. With love, ;-Doug P.S. The Rochester Meditation Center is at 303 6th Avenue SW. The meditation hall opens at 6:30 PM for optional sitting. Ajahn's talk begins at 7 PM. He'll offer a guided meditation until 7:30 PM, and the talk and Q&A until 8:30 PM.    Ajanh Punnadhammo and The Rochester Meditation Center are both solely supported by your generosity.                                               May All Beings Be Free

AJAHN PUNNADHAMMO, a Canadian-born monk ordained in Thailand, is a well-known meditation teacher and writer and the Abbot of the Arrow River Forest Hermitage in Thunder Bay, Ontario. A selection of his topical and sometimes wryly humorous writings on meditation, Buddhist thinking and current events can be found here and here. His criticism of modern secular Buddhism, especially as espoused by the Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor, can be found here. Ajahn Punnadhammo is a frequent guest speaker and retreat leader at the Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis and at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass. Several dozen of his talks at the Insight Meditation Society are archived here.

Liberation Park La Crosse sessions in September

September 6th -- Wesley UMC at King & 8th (see important details below)

This month we will have two sessions of our usual silent meditation and conversation on aligning our lives with the Dhamma of Awakening and the practice of the Middle Way.

Buddha's advises his son Rahula to make his mind like earth, water, fire, wind, or space. Contemplation of these dhatus (properties, elements) as they operate within and around us is suggested as preparation for mindfulness with breathing. This teaching also fits with The Instruction to Malunkyaputta (SN 35.95), which illuminates the heart of mindfulness. Santikaro will share a practice of meditation with these fundamental material properties as a skillful means to settle and ground ourselves, as well as let go of egoistic clinging.

 

These teachings fall within the framework of the noble eightfold path and middle way. We often ask how the path can ground and guide us midst the challenges, storms, and provocations swirling around us and inside us. What are the realities of being mindful, kind, responsive, undistracted, and imperturbable midst the sorrows and the joys?

In the original presentation, the path is a harmonious weaving of 8 strands of Rightness, Intelligence, and Skill that culminates in True-Right Knowing and Liberation.

Location information -- Important!  The church doors will be locked. The evening's hosts will arrive early to set up and meet you at the door. Please use the 721 King Street entrance, where one of us will be waiting to greet you. Knock if you don't see anyone. There will be plenty of parking on the street. The church also has parking space off of 8th St. 

Meditation starts at 6:30 pm. Please arrive 5-10 minutes before then. The "Lounge" where we will be meeting has many chairs. If you prefer to sit on the floor, please bring your own mat and cushion.

Dāna (donations, gifts, free-will offerings) to sustain Liberation Park and support our work are most welcome. A donation is also made to the church for kindly hosting us.

A sampler of Santikaro's talks from La Crosse and elsewhere are posted at http://liberationpark.org/audio/index.htm

Next sessions:  September 20th.