Amita Schmidt

Meditation Teacher, Buddhist Minister

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Prayer or Despair?

In difficult times, choose prayer instead of despair.  Despair and fear lead to a freeze response in the body. Prayer unfreezes the heart and moves us towards connected action.

The immediacy of the world problems are our teacher now.  Many years ago during a retreat, my teacher Matt Flickstein asked me to carry a knife 24/7 for a week. I had to carry it on the toilet, in the shower, meditating, making food, brushing my teeth, at the dinner table, talking to others, and in bed all night while sleeping.  He told me, “Death can come at any moment. The knife will make sure you do not forget this.”  Carrying the knife made it clear that each moment could be my last, and reminded me to pray, be mindful, and express gratitude constantly that week.

In the weeks after I put the knife down, I soon forgot the fierce necessity of prayer and mindfulness.  Now, with nuclear and environmental destruction so immediate, all of us have a knife by our side.  It is not something we can “put away.”  The knife is here while we are on the toilet, making love, at the dinner table, or in the shower.  Rather than creating fear or despair, this can create a fierce reminder to be mindful, love and connect 24/7.   Prayer or despair?

 

 

 

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Cultivating the Heart: A 5 day Retreat in Indiana

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“We don’t stop the suffering of life. Instead we maximize our capacity to love.” Adyashanti

 

The idea of living a connected and compassionate life appeals to us, but we often find it difficult to meet the challenges of our daily lives with an open and caring heart. It is easy to forget that we care when faced with the struggles of the moment, and we may find ourselves acting or reacting from well-established patterns. It is possible to change these patterns, and to increase our capacity to love. A loving heart is one of the most valuable things we can offer as human beings.

We will cultivate the heart in three areas—a pure heart: a heart that is able to see the world through a fresh perspective, unburdened by the past; a joyful heart: a heart that meets the suffering of the world rather than shutting down to it; and a radiant heart: a limitless heart that lives in peace, freedom, connection and action.

This 5-day retreat will be held in silence, and will consist of focused meditation practices, time for unstructured meditation, and periods of walking meditation. The retreat is suitable for those who are new to meditation as well as for those with an established practice.

DATES: July 14-19, 2017

LOCATION: Oakwood Retreat Center – Click Here for directions.
COST: $575
TO REGISTER:  http://www.tristatedharma.org/Residential.htm

Amita Schmidt was a resident teacher at Insight Meditation Society (Barre, MA) for six years. She has been practicing Vipassana meditation for over three decades and teaching since 1993. She is the author of the book, Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master (BlueBridge, May 2005) and a contributor to Buddha Laughing: A Tricycle Book of Cartoons. She is currently a psychotherapist in Hawaii and works with healing depression, anxiety, and trauma. She integrates both the spiritual and psychological perspectives to help each person find wholeness and freedom.

John Cunningham has been teaching meditation for 15 years.  His practice and teaching combines Vipassana, loving-kindness and non-dual teachings from various spiritual traditions. John has studied with several teachers, but his primary teacher is Matthew Flickstein.  Work with Matthew includes numerous retreats and several extended study programs, including teacher training programs, a one-year study of the Satipatthana Sutta, and a two-year program on non-duality.

John’s personal retreat experience in recent years has focused primarily on self-retreats and on retreats associated with the training programs with Matthew. John recently completed a two-year non-dual teacher training program.

John is the primary teacher for Insight Meditation of Cleveland and leads several sanghas in the northeast Ohio area.  John has led retreats and workshops throughout the eastern United States.  John is married and has three sons, ages 36, 32 and 6 years old.  Together with his wife, Laurie, John leads a mindful parenting group in the Cleveland area.

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Blessing practice

Our mind is a bit one track when it comes to emotions.  Give your mind anger, and it goes on and on about anger.  Give it something to bless or love, and it does that instead. Point your mind in an emotional direction and that’s essentially it’s direction.  This one track mind can work to your advantage as a channel-changer for difficult emotions.  When I find I am being angry or judgmental, I begin blessing someone, something, anything.  It doesn’t have to be the person I’m upset with.  Heck no, not yet.  But I can say a blessing for the earth, my neighbor’s dog, kids, someone driving by in a car, or anything else in that moment.  And after about three minutes of blessing I don’t really have an interest in going back to the anger.  Ditto if I’m in a car and someone in car in front of me does something that scares or angers me.  Instead of going on and on about the person who cut me off, I send a blessing to someone in another car alongside of me, or behind me.  This focusing on blessing another immediately stops the anger.  It’s not that anger is bad, it’s simply that if given the choice of having anger or having kindness, I prefer the latter.  And blessings can extend to neutral moments as well; the checkout clerk, sitting at a stoplight, waiting for an elevator.  There are always people around you to bless no matter what is happening.

This is a story given to me by the late Father Theophane, a Trappist monk who wrote “Tales of the Magic Monastery.”  This is an unpublished story in his genre of spiritual teaching reflections, and it relates to blessing:

She told me just to sit in the back and bless everyone. That’s what I did. It felt funny at first. Who was I to bless people? But I kept at it. Kept trying different ways. I assumed she’d give me more instructions about how to do it, but no, she never did. And I assumed she’d pass the job to someone else at some point, and give me some serious instructions in meditation. The others all seemed to know how to meditate—they’d sit there so still for hours. All I could do was bless them—one by one.

 I found myself thinking about them—what’s on this one’s mind? What’s that one like? How is he meditating? Is she happy? Judging was there too. Don’t judge—just bless. But some don’t seem to need blessing. That’s judging.

 It’s been so long now. Sometimes I wonder—does anyone know what I am doing? Does anyone appreciate me? Does anyone care? What would it be like to sit up front and do some serious meditating?

 

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The Chaos Virus

unnamedThe chaos virus is something that takes over individuals, a community, a country, the world. The chaos virus begins when we merge with defensiveness, greed, hatred, and fear.  It becomes a time of division, survival, overwhelm, anger, and not knowing what is true or not true.  It is fueled by the “self” and the illusion of separation. We have forgotten the Whole. We have forgotten interconnection.

You must prepare to be resilient and not get lost in anxiety, confusion, or fear.   In times of chaos it’s about the “how” equally as the “what.”  How do I conduct myself?  You must give life your all even if there are no hope of results.  In chaos there might be no results.  You only have the “how.”  Find your source of true courage and self-lessness.

During this time of chaos, you must also prepare to be spiritually aware, emotionally strong, and grounded in a power greater than yourself.  This power could be love, God, the force of the universe, or some consciousness greater than yourself (scientists are now able to measure consciousness, and they know that it is a continuum and that humans might only be somewhere in range of that continuum). It is a greatly challenging time where we cannot merge with our own personal suffering.   There is something more important, and it is the Whole.  It is the Source.

If the chaos virus goes viral here are some things to remember:

1) Be aware of the chaos virus.  Commit not to get lost in it or come under it’s spell.

2) Ground into your being, and connect fiercely to the deepest version of love that you know.  Hold fast to love.  No matter the storms of hate, or fear, or confusion.  Do not be swayed from the force of love as you know it, in the center of your being.  Love is all you are.  It will bring you back home.  It is all you ever do and are.  Do not be confused by anything else.  You are not pleasure or pain, success or loss, praise or blame.  You are love.  Please trust in this, even if you can’t feel it yet.

12592338_1081727765200263_1431145295415637829_n3) Call constantly upon the wisdom of nature, animals, the sun/moon/stars, the ancient ones/ancestors, chants, ceremonies, spirituality.

4) Do not merge with your thoughts or technology. Use your thoughts and technology as tools only. Your thoughts are not the essence of life. Technology, VR, internet are not reality.  Put down your thoughts. Call upon the Great spirits.  Call upon the Whole.  Call upon your ancestors.

5) Do things that connect, connect, connect.  Music, art, service, family, friends, community, food, gatherings, animals, children, hugs, nature, play. Connection is the doorway to wholeness and away from the disease of self.

6) Cultivate the “we” verses the “I.”  Creating an illusion of a separate self, and then serving this illusion, is part of the virus of chaos.   Develop an awareness of “I.”  Know when you are lost in “I, me and mine” thinking. Move from “I” sight to “We” sight. Start thinking about your life as part of the well-being of all.

stevemccurry7) Become a living prayer.  Make your mind, body, and spirit a constant prayer for all beings.  This is the way to break the illusion of self. Think in terms of the whole world.  Dedicate every thought, every action, every emotion to the well-being of all.

8) Practice deep meditation.  Do retreats.  Dig deep. Soul search.  Know what is most important, no matter what.

9) Stay sober.  Clean up your life.  Stay away from addictions: alcohol, drugs, overeating, internet, consumerism, gambling, workaholism, pornography, gaming, and thought addictions.  You will need a heart that is clean and clear. As things get more chaotic you will see more people getting lost in addictions. Be the person that lights the way rather someone who is lost in the pain.

10) Develop empathy, compassion, kindness, love.  Keep increasing your capacity for these emotions, even as times get difficult.  Do not succumb to the prevailing attitudes of others. Do not be afraid of your own suffering.  Let it fuel for an even more loving heart in yourself.

11) Zen master Bankei’s advice from centuries ago is useful for the chaos virus now:  “Do not sell your unborn nature to fear.”  “See into others’ hearts with your birthless eyes and to sense what is binding them.”  Rest in the Heart.img_0031

 

 

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Worry or Prayer? “Courage is fear that has said it’s prayers.”

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“Courage is fear that has said it’s prayers.” -poet Karle Wilson Baker 1921

Just for today, do you want to focus more on worry or prayer?  I have worked with people who have had so much anxiety they could not ride in planes, cross bridges, shop in major grocery stores, or drive a car.   Through meditation, prayer, and a commitment to not velcro to their anxious thoughts, I have seen these individuals completely turn their lives around. Anything is possible.

Worries have no end point.  You are not your anxiety and worry.  Where will all your anxieties be after you die?  They are not truly who you are. Take a moment and decide, “Enough.  From now on more prayer, less worry.” It takes a conscious commitment one day at a time, until prayer takes over on it’s own. If you want, eventually prayer will take over. Your body and mind are a vehicle for prayer.

When worry comes let it move through, without indulging, fearing, or pushing it away.  Worries are not your fault and not something wrong with you.  Let worries roll through like a big wave. In Hawaii if you get pulled under by a big wave, you roll with it, and in a few minutes the ocean gives you a lull to swim to safety. If my daily worries go into hyper-drive or panic, I remind myself that even panic tends to last less than 5 minutes, and if I can roll with that too, it will move through.   Rainer Maria Rilke advised his students: “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

If all else fails, breathe. Breathe into your belly.  What can you trust at your core? When you are on your last breath you will have prayer. If a tragedy happens you will have prayer. Prayer is always here waiting for you, as a friend, a guide, and an eternal resource. A Buddhist friend who died of ALS a few years ago mentioned that meditation was his best friend in the final stages of the disease, and without it he would have crumbled due to the pain.

Find time each day to cultivate your friendship with prayer and meditation. Your prayer might be something as simple as blessing people.  In busy airports or stores if I find I’m getting overwhelmed, I start to bless everyone I see.  This reminds me that each person is someone to love.  Each day I also repeat, “Trust life,” Thy will not my will,” and “I don’t need to be general manager of the Universe.”

Overall, prayer and meditation is how we meet each moment.  Prayer is a willingness to meet each moment with heart.  Ultimately there is no other choice. Start now.  Aloha.