Sangha Day

• Join us via Zoom for our monthly sangha meeting.  We’ll give an update on upcoming programs and answer your questions. We plan to allow plenty of time for Q & A.
• The link and password are emailed to sangha members.

The format of this meeting will be slightly different than our in-person meetings. We’ll start by listening to you. How has your practice and the sangha remained relevant during this period of social isolation? Have the Zoom practices been helpful to support your practice? Has sangha communication been clear?

We’ll have an open discussion for the first 40 minutes. During the last 30 minutes, you’ll get updates from the Seattle coordinators for Study, Practice and the Path of Mindful Activity.  We’ll end by dedicating the merit.

Paramita of the Month

We usually start our sangha meetings with the paramita of the month, which for April is joyful diligence.

Karen Wallace has offered these words from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s Rebel Buddha, to read before this gathering:

“Ordinarily we equate diligence with a lot of effort. On the one hand, there’s a sense of physical or mental sweat. On the other, there’s a sense of being a good, industrious boy or girl – we’re working hard toward a goal and not letting up. But being diligent on our spiritual path doesn’t mean that we’re meditating for hours, vacuuming the shrine room and serving meals at a homeless shelter all in one day.

Transcendent diligence means that we take whatever opportunities we have to practice and we do those practices with a sense of appreciation and delight. In this sense, diligence is energy, the power that makes everything happen. It’s like the wind, a driving force that keeps us moving along the path. Where does this energy come from? It comes from the enjoyment and satisfaction we experience as we get further into our path.

The primary obstacle to diligence is, of course, laziness – the absence of energy. One problem with laziness is that it takes up so much time. Think of how much time taking it easy or spacing out requires. The problem with activities like going to the beach or hanging out is not that they’re negative; it’s our attachment to them. I’m sure more people go to the ‘beach’ that’s a state of mind than to all the resorts in Mexico.

Laziness shows up in other ways too. We can be attached to bad ideas or bad friends, or we can tell ourselves that we don’t have what it takes to be on this path. We can also get stuck in laziness by just remaining very busy all the time and never making time for our practice.

So in the beginning, some ordinary exertion is required. Yet when we break through our habits just a little, we begin to feel this rising breeze of delight. As it grows stronger, we become so inspired that no matter what happens, we never lose our sense of appreciation or enthusiasm for our path. Then whatever we do becomes as effortless as sailing on the open sea. The work of getting away from the shore and catching the wind has already been done. All that’s left to do is just to keep our hand on the tiller.”