** UPDATED 8/16/07 **
August looks to be a very busy month, with all sorts of events coming up:
AUGUST 4, Saturday – The Insight Meditation Center of Newburyport is hosting a half-day (9am-12:30pm) retreat with Chas DeCapua. The focus will be on working with difficult emotions. Chas is a senior student of Jack Kornfield and is currently the resident teacher at IMS in Barre.
AUGUST 10, 17, and 24, Friday – Actor-writer Even Brenner presents the story of the Buddha’s life in a one-man play entitled “Buddha: Triumph and Tragedy of the Great Sage.” Performances take place the next three Friday evenings at The Theater at 56 Brattle Street at the Blacksmith House in Harvard Square, Cambridge.
Boston Now, the Boston Metro and the Cambridge Chronicle each have online reviews. The Chronicle also has links to a short five-part video interview with Brenner, and there is a great selection of radio interviews on his website.
AUGUST 11, Satuday – Our sister UUBF sitting group, Great Pond Sangha at North Parish in North Andover, is hosting a half-day (10am-1pm) retreat on “The Joy of Meditation” with Lama Choying Palmo, a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen tradition. The retreat is appropriate for both beginners and experienced meditators.
For more information or to pre-register, contact Susan/Phil Malloy malloyps@yahoo.com (978-474-0823). Suggested donation $30. Reduced rate for students and those in need. Old Center Hall is located at 3 Great Pond Rd., directly across from North Parish UU Church.
AUGUST 18, Saturday – The 10th anniversary Lowell Southeast Asian Water Festival takes place on the the 3rd saturday of August.
AUGUST 18, Saturday – Vietnamese Zen teacher Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh will be giving a public talk entitled “Walking the Path of Love with Muddy Shoes” at the Boston Opera House at 7pm. (Discounted tickets are available for WGBH members.)
AUGUST 25, Saturday – Sharon Salzberg will lead “an afternoon of guided meditations, talks and Q&A” entitled “Tools for Awakening Courage, Wisdom and Compassion“ at Flowforms Yoga in Worcester. Registration is $30.
Sorry, the August 4 event at IMC Newburyport has been cancelled.
Today’s Lowell Sun has a nice article on the upcoming Water Festival:
http://www.lowellsun.com/lifestyles/ci_6639303
I went to see Sharon Salzberg this Saturday in Worcester. She was great!
The week before I had driven Abhaya out to the IMS center in Barre, MA. Abhaya had told me that I should focus exclusively on my Metta practice and to tell any teacher of mine that this is what was recommended to me. So I went up to the stage to talk to Sharon about Abhaya and my Metta, and she was thrilled to here about Abhaya. Sharon gets updates from emails, but now that the emails have slowed down, I told her what I knew of Abhaya and her schedule.
I later asked a question of Sharon about Mindfulness practice, saying that without an “A-Ha Moment,” meditation seems fruitless. Sharon talked about a student of hers that was practicing Metta exclusively for three years, and after three years he was worried because his practice hadn’t gotten any better, but Sharon made the student aware that he had changed as a person outside of the meditation practice almost completely, so the progress isn’t always about keeping away from Monkey-mind during practice, but can be about what happens to a person when not in quiet meditation.
Sharon quoted a few things:
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” (Mark Twain), which meant his worries of the future caused distress when just being present in the moment would have saved him much distress.
When they opened IMS (Insight Meditation Society), they received two pieces of memorable mail: one addressed to the “Instant Meditation Society” and one to the “Hindsight Meditation Society.”
She mentioned John Cabot Zinn, Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, who used to share a 1 bedroom apartment in Colorado together before they established IMS in Barre.
It was nice to stay in the moment for most of a day.