Live Session Summary, Sunday, December 31, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session today. Happy New Year to All! And thank you, Marjon and Ginette, for being willing to be admins for the Group. This is super helpful and supportive! 🙏🏻
The theme of the session was exploring our intentions in this ‘one wild and precious life.’ (Mary Oliver, ‘The Summer Day’). Here are some of the key themes, along with quotes and names and authors of poems I shared.
I began by talking about the fact that many people make resolutions to change their habits at this time of year, but that the rate of success is low—according to some studies, 80% fail to keep up with their resolution by February and only around 8-10% maintain their resolution to the end of the year.
I shared my personal view that it’s more helpful to think in terms of cultivating intentions rather than making resolutions—where there is often insufficient awareness of the conditions that are supportive of making changes in long-established behaviors. I spoke about intentions as being key to everything we do and shared the description by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who wrote about ‘flow’ states in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) of intentions as operating like “magnetic fields moving attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.” (He also spoke about attention as being a form of ‘psychic energy.’)
I invited us to think about our intentions in relation to our spiritual practice or spiritual journey as we move into the new year. I stressed the importance of bringing awareness to our practice in a spirit of compassion and non-judgment, otherwise it’s easy to get caught in suffering through judging ourselves for ‘falling short.’
I discussed the way for many us, myself included, it’s easy to become complacent in our spiritual practice—doing enough to ‘stay out of trouble’, but not necessarily moving towards the depths of freedom that the Buddha and other teachers of awakening point to as the potential and the end of our practice. I spoke about the importance of regular practice and not underestimating its significance, but also asking ourselves Mary Oliver’s question; ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ Are we giving sufficient attention to realizing the depths of freedom that are possible for each one of us in this human life?
The Greek philosopher Socrates spoke of the most important thing we can do in our life as to ‘Know Thyself’—and this understanding is really at the heart of all the Buddha’s teachings of mindfulness and abandoning suffering. In Zen Buddhism, they speak of bringing an urgency to our spiritual life and practicing “as though your hair was on fire.” I spoke of how it’s important to hold this metaphor in a skillful way and not turn it into another kind of clinging, but also reflect on how easy it is to believe that “we have time” and how fleeting this human existence is. I shared lines from The Diamond Sutra, a classic of Buddhist teachings—and the oldest printed book in the world, dating from 868 CE:
Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn; a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
I spoke about how the Buddha’s teachings of awakening are, for me, the bedrock of my practice and teaching—and there are also contemporary teachers of awakening, who bring an immediacy to waking up that can be a powerful support for waking up. These teachers include:
• Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now),
• Adyashanti (‘The Always and Already’—a talk on his website; True Meditation, Emptiness Dancing, and others)
• Gangaji (The Diamond in Your Pocket and talks on Insight Timer)
We finished with a short practice that invited us to reflect on two questions: 1) What is in the way of being completely free, completely at peace, right here and right now?; and 2) Do you have an intention for deepening or focusing your spiritual practice as we move into a new year—and what does that look like?
I shared ‘In Blackwater Woods,’ a poem by Mary Oliver and intended to share a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti, a renowned 20th century Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher:
“We come to this infinite web of life with a thimble, so we go away thirsty.”
I’m very grateful for our community and our time together. 🙏🏻 Wishing you a happy new year and an auspicious and peaceful year ahead. I’ll see you again in two weeks, on Sunday, January 14, 2024 at 9am eastern for our next Live session. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
