The Value of Continued Study

I was invited to share about my quest for Buddhist Courses and why I invest my time and energy in taking them.  (Which cause me to miss Monday night Sangha gathering!)

My name is Niki and I sometimes - rarely - make Monday night Sangha but try to listen to the recordings when they are posted.  Monday night and other nights I am often involved with a course or studying for a course that I am taking. I find continued study to be a way to connect the Buddha’s teachings.  The Buddhas teachings seem so simple yet they are so illusive when living life in today’s chaotic and divided world.  I find that if I have an assignment that I have to discuss with others, that really requires me to think and review my life and how I applying those teachings helps me to stay on target. 

I have invested time and energy in Sravasti Abbey’s SAFE courses.  Sravasti Abbey describes them as: Sravasti Abbey Friends Education (SAFE) is a facilitated online study program to explore Buddha’s teachings. Courses are progressive, starting with a deep introduction to meditation practice and the Buddhist worldview, followed by courses on karma, refuge, renunciation, bodhicitta, and six perfections.  Sravasti Abbey is committed to providing all abbey offerings free of charge and on donation basis only - which is a total kindness to me being retired and on limited income.  As I study with others from around the world, I am invited to live the dharma while discussing how that is working and how successful or not successful I am being.  They even have a daily morning lay person gathering to practice meditation and other practices.  I need that too to stay on target in my endeavor.  It is a place I can discuss the difficulties of distractions that pull my heart and my life in so many directions.   

And there is also a Commit to Sit program offered by the Zen Center in NYC. They describe it as “A guided 90-day practice period designed to empower you on your meditation journey with a supportive community led by renowned teachers in the US and Japan.” Every morning a little 3-5 minute video is sent with a teaching that I can reflect on.  I just have to click and the dharma is on my screen.  I need that too! There is so much on my screen these days and most of it not so good. So clicking on this video I get daily dharma front and center.  Then when I sit in quiet meditation I can feel a fellowship with all the others opening their screens to this kindness and compassion.  Sometimes I think I am so dense that it takes so much to keep me on track.  But what I have learned is, while it may not be my default now… it can be and I am working to make it my default response in this lifetime.  I want to leave this world having been kind, compassionate and helpful.

I recently took a course from Stanford University called CCT - Compassion Cultivation Training.  What a phenomenal course!!!  The Dalai Lama’s former translator - Thubten Jinpa - and Stanford worked together to do research on compassion.   Studying about this and reading the text “A Fearless Heart: How The Courage To Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives" (by Thubten Jinpa) proved to me that while compassion might not be my default, it certainly can become a well trained muscle and be my default with practice.  I so enjoyed reading the research behind this concept. 

We hear about the bullies, we hear about the war mongers and our attention is constantly being drawn to them with news, social media and the posturing and parading of a few. But I truly believe that the core of the world is bound by compassion . . .

Again, studying with others from around the world reinforced my faith in the world as again it proved to me that the underlying force on this planet is compassion.  Men and women from all over the world are trying their best to respond to life’s difficulties with open hearts and kindness.  We hear about the bullies, we hear about the war mongers and our attention is constantly being drawn to them with news, social media and the posturing and parading of a few. But I truly believe that the core of the world is bound by compassion and we see that demonstrated in the protests here and in other places of the world. We can see it in the Go Fund Me pages to support the hurt and suffering and the kindnesses of the people responding to those hurts and needs.  

So, I might not see you in Sangha, but I am there in spirit and so appreciate Josh, Kel, Rob, Sarah and Daybreak Oneness ministries for getting me started in Buddhism and sending me on my journey: to learn and reflect and respond to life from a Buddhist perspective. I return to Daybreak Oneness again and again as it is a place of total acceptance, inclusion, encouragement and compassion.