Anacortes Mindfulness Community: Recent Episodes
Anacortes Mindfulness Community
In this talk, Jonathan examines the roots of our desire for certainty and how Zen practice can help us respond peacefully to uncertainty and change. Jonathan describes how a human brain that is wired to predict the future is at odds with our ever-changing world. He suggests how Zen practice can bring our brain into alignment with reality so that we can take effective action in this changing broken world.
How do we travel without adding to our planet's over-tourism burden? Jonathan Prescott shares insights from his recent month-long European walkabout. He shows how contemplative practice can make travel more meaningful for the traveler, as well as make us less of a burden on the places, people, and objects we interact with. This talk was given at the Guemes Island Community Church.
Jonathan Prescott offers a 4-step method for practicing Right Diligence. This talk caps The Anacortes Mindfulness Community's practice period, celebrating everyone's diligent efforts and inviting the Sangha to balance that effort with enjoyment and ease. The handout can be downloaded here: https://www.wisecaregiving.org/uploads/1/4/8/7/148725901/right_diligence_handout.pdf
Learning to rest in the arms of silence is a foundation for joyful living. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott helps you understand outer silence, inner silence, and the practice of silence. Knowing that silence can sometimes bring forward parts of ourselves we don't initially welcome, Jonathan shows us how to use the breath as a safe anchor. Enjoy!
Michael Daiun Melancon shows how practice forms create a field of happiness that supports personal and collective awakening. He encourages the Morning Light Sangha to cultivate awareness by using silence, bowing, Dharma Sharing, and more. Enjoy your tea!
Jonathan Prescott talks about practicing deep gratitude during his visit to the Guemes Island Community Church. He uses Zen stories to show how we can be grateful not only for getting what we want, but also for noticing the unnoticed, and for getting what we don't want. The deepest layer of gratitude is when we learn to be grateful not just for 'things' but for our relationship to life as it is.
Jonathan Prescott provides context for the Anacortes Mindfulness Community's deep dive into Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching.He offers historical background about the Buddha's life and teachings, and show us how the heart of these teachings arise not only from the historical Buddha, but also from our own Buddha Nature.
Jonathan Prescott shows what it takes to live a contemplative life - a life more concerned with finding the Divine in the present moment than with satisfying our self-centered desires. He describes how the contemplative life brings joy, and contrasts it with the hollow pursuits of a conventional life. This talk was offered to the Guemes Island Community Church and includes a short guided meditation.
Drawing from life stories, Buddhist teachings, and lessons from Plum Village, Karla Johnston explores how to respond skillfully to suffering by first recognizing the unique ingredients of our own lives and then examining the lens—historical or Ultimate—through which we view the world. Karla emphasizes connection, communal support, and mindful self-inquiry as essential practices for both personal growth and engaged, compassionate action.
Michael Melancon encourages us to embrace each moment as an opportunity to awaken and engage intentionally with life, highlighting the importance of mindful awareness of breath, heartbeat, and our relationships. Through personal stories and practical advice, Michael asks the guiding question, “What do I do now?” as a way to cultivate presence, patience, and connection to one’s True Self. By pausing and reflecting rather than impulsively reacting, individuals can cherish their precious lives, foster deep compassion, and navigate challenges with clarity and love.
Jonathan Prescott shows how mindful awareness of mental “seeds”—habits, emotions, and thoughts—can help practitioners move beyond reactive patterns toward insight and wisdom. Using the model of store consciousness and mind consciousness, Jonathan explains how seeds can proliferate and fill our experience, and encourages us to meet arising thoughts and emotions with kindness. The threefold practice of mindfulness, concentration, and insight offers a practical way to respond skillfully to difficulties, ultimately guiding each person toward greater freedom and skillful action.
Jonathan Prescott explores the distinction in Zen between the “small self”—our ego and personality—and the “True Self,” the universal, undivided wisdom and goodness inherent in us all. Through personal stories and Zen metaphors, Jonathan illustrates how spiritual practice is not about eradicating the small self, but about allowing it to become a clear conduit for the True Self to act in the world. He emphasizes how integrating faith, diligence, and letting go enables our small self to mirror the qualities of the True Self, continuously shaping how we answer the essential question, “What do I do now?”.
To live with grace means to flow freely with life. In this talk offered to The Guemes Island Community Church, Jonathan Prescott explores how Christianity tells the story of grace while Zen teaches the path to grace.
Jonathan Prescott explores how you can use contemplative practices to make your life more joyful. He shares his life-long contemplative practice techniques and encourages you to find ways to transform everyday activities into opportunities for deepening.
Many people around the world are suffering due to the actions of America's current President. Join Jonathan Prescott to explore how to find peace even in these difficult times. He helps us connect with the deep listening and skillful responses modeled by Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhistattva of Compassion, so that we can both protect ourselves from overwhelm and learn to respond effectively to this assault on American democracy.
Karla Johnston shares about how Zen practice supports us in using "imperfections" as gateways to increased awareness. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are expanded upon as tools for embracing an authentic life along with poetry, song and a brief guided "Imperfection" practice.
Jonathan Prescott explores how the Buddha's enlightenment story offers a map for creating a loving relationship between our ego and our awakened nature. This talk was offered to the Morning Light Sangha during a Day of Mindfulness.
The US election knocked many people off balance and caused them to grieve. Jonathan Prescott shows how to practice equanimity and wise grieving to help people find peace within, even during difficult times.
Michael Melancon uncovers the subtleties of our Zen practice forms so that we can be held in their wisdom. This talk was offered to the Morning Light Sangha. Enjoy!
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: 'It's not this moment that makes you happy. It's you who makes this moment happy.' But how do we do that?Jonathan Prescott points the way in this Dharma talk called Nurturing Delight. He shows us how to practice deeply so that delight is present even when things aren't to our liking. Delight isn't a feeling to grasp after; it's a sign that we're on the path of freedom.
Jonathan Prescott shows the benefits of responding with love rather than reacting with fear. This talk was offered to the Guemes Island Community Church on July 21, 2024
Do the conditions of your life cause you to suffer? Even when those conditions are favorable? If so, welcome to being human! In this talk, Jonathan Prescott shares a 3-step method for finding peace within yourself, even when your life is not ideal. This talk was offered during the Morning Light Sangha's one-day retreat on June 30, 2024.
In this talk delivered the the Guemes Island Community Church, Jonathan Prescott explains what a contemplative practice is and how to open the 3 Contemplative Doors. He finishes with a Metta practice to help us feel the practice in our hearts and bodies.
Buddhism has so many elements that it's hard to know how to use them effectively. Jonathan Prescott shows you how to focus your efforts by opening the 3 Doors of Practice.
Jonathan Prescott offers a 3-step process for spring-cleaning our hearts so that we can restore relationships that have soured over the long pandemic winter. This talk was offered to the Guemes Island Community Church
The Buddha taught that ignorance is the root of suffering. To ignore means to turn away from the truth. While speaking to the Guemes Island Community Church, Jonathan Prescott shows how Buddhism and Christianity both point towards overcoming ignorance through awareness and love.
Jonathan Prescott offered this exploration of hospitality to the Guemes Island Community Church. Jonathan uses poems and stories to reveal deeper aspects of hospitality, including the call to welcome those we don't agree with.
In Jonathan Prescott's final talk to the Anacortes Mindfulness Community, he offers a concise map of Zen practice, beginning with the establishment of happiness and ending with the depth of Zazen.
13 centuries ago, Zen Master Deshan encouraged us to grab the life of an ordinary person. What did he mean? Jonathan Prescott shows how our ordinary lives can be our awakened lives. We just need to stop.
In this talk, Jonathan Prescott helps us understand and feel our grief. He describes common types of grief and offers ways to practice so that we can transform our losses into compassion.
Deep within all of us is a golden Buddha. It's been there all along, radiating goodness and wisdom. But because we feel vulnerable in this challenging world, we've covered this precious gift with a 'self' that traps us in a cycle of suffering. Join Jonathan Prescott for an exploration of our own goodness. We'll look at the price we must pay to awaken, paid bit by bit with the transformed fragments of our separate selves, so that the Golden Buddha within can emerge.
Suffering and liberation are intimately bound together on a continuum of interbeing, intersection, and interpenetration. Liberation is the birthright of our Buddha nature, available to us in every moment. Shining the light within we touch our original nature. Therein lies the liberation we seek. This talk by Michael Melancon was offered at Radiant Light Zen's Interbeing of Suffering and Liberation retreat, on October 11, 2023.
We often come to meditation practice with an aspiration to alleviate and transform our pain.Yet for many, sitting in silence with awareness of the breath may actually be quite stimulating rather than calming.In this talk, Monica Kingsbury will explore how Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness helps us better understand how our brain and nervous system function as we practice, allowing us to maintain safety and emotional regulation.This talk was offered at Radiant Light Zen's Interbeing of Suffering and Liberation retreat.
We all suffer. And we suffer because we create a war between how things are and how we want them to be. Jonathan Prescott shares the story of his own suffering and how the Buddha's example inspired him to end the war with his life.This is the first talk given by Jonathan Prescott at Radiant Light Zen's Interbeing of Suffering and Liberation retreat and focuses on suffering. The second talk, Take Down Your Wall, focuses on liberation.
In an effort to protect ourselves, we wall ourselves off. But this very wall becomes the source of our suffering.In this talk from Radiant Light Zen's Interbeing of Suffering and Liberation retreat, Jonathan Prescott offers practices to liberate us and shows how love and surrender are powerful tools for dissolving our protective walls.
We’re not alone in our suffering and are not the first to yearn for liberation. Discover a Zen elder who teaches us how to work with suffering as a path to freedom. This talk was offered by Karla Johnston during Radiant Light Zen's Suffering and Liberation Retreat, October 12, 2023.Sources:Cambodia Oral Tradition, captured by Trent WalkerFirst Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening by Susan Murcott, Pamela Weiss article: https://tricycle.org/article/mahapajapati/The First Free Women by Matty Weingast
Jonathan Prescott describes how the precepts arose from the Buddha's awakened mind. All these centuries later, the precepts still call us home to our own awakened minds.
We spend our lives looking for love. But love has been in our hearts all along. Join Jonathan Prescott as he explores how you can feel the joy of meeting life with love.
In this talk, Tim Motley takes a closer look at the true nature of our existence. We walk this path, each of us a collection of mostly empty atomic particles, pulsed out of a quasar, condensed into this time and space, with the extraordinarily rare opportunity to embrace life and consciousness held by mindfulness.
Karla Johnston shares lessons of Spring in 50+ feet of Tahoe mega-snow: active patience and acceptance. Two questions are provided to deepen our practice.
Morning Light Sangha celebrates its 3rd anniversary. Join us as Jonathan Prescott shares MLS history, Michael Melancon describes our Zoomdo practice form, and the Sangha offers words about what MLS means in their lives.
Jonathan Prescott describes our Zen practice forms and how we use them to unearth the freedom that lies just beneath our veneer of suffering.
In this Dharma talk, Jonathan Prescott investigates generosity: How we begin by practicing generosity towards ourselves, then experiment with giving what we can while refraining from taking what isn’t offered. These practices show us our self-centered contractions and help us transform them into the joy of giving and receiving.
The point of all Dharma Teachings is that we can awaken and that such awakening is our birthright . . . . right here. right now. But how do we self-actualize our Buddha Nature?
The Buddhist Sutras are gems offered by our spiritual ancestors. This talk explores the origins of Sutras from the Theravada and Mahayana traditions and how we can use them to wake up.
Ram Dass once said: "If you think you’re enlightened, try spending a week with your family."In this week’s Dharma talk, Jonathan Prescott explores how Zen can help you smile to troublesome Uncle Ned and enjoy your sister’s dry fruitcake. Happy Holidays!
Bright Buddhas show us how to be free. Shadow Buddhas show us how to suffer. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott offers a 3-step practice to help us embrace our Shadow Buddhas and turn them into transformative teachers.
On the first evening of the Listening with Love Retreat, Jonathan Prescott introduces sitting, walking, and eating meditation.
In this second talk from the Listening with Love Retreat, Jonathan Prescott invites us into the joys of silence.
In this third talk of the Listening with Love Retreat, Jonathan Prescott shares a model for listening with the head, heart, and body.
In this concluding talk from the Listening with Love Retreat, Jonathan Prescott shares how to transform our habitual suffering so that we can listen with love.
Jonathan Prescott offers a model of how our core suffering begins, how we create a self to avoid our code suffering, and how we try to force the world to play along with our scheme. He then offers practices for transforming our suffering, our self, and the world.
Jonathan Prescott explores Right Effort, one of the elements of the Buddha's 8-Fold Path. He shares stories and insights to help us find the balance between effort and ease.
Photo credit: Steamfitter, by Lewis Hine, 1920
Since the human mind generates strong currents, we need a meditation anchor. Otherwise, we're swept away by thoughts and emotions. Join Jonathan Prescott as he demonstrates breathing techniques to help our meditation feel solid and fruitful.
Mercy isn’t often explored in Zen but it is a powerful way to release attachment and deepen joy. Jonathan Prescott tells stories of mercy and invites us to become more merciful.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that happiness is here and now. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott shows how to find happiness in your own here and now.
In the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara tells his friend Shariputra about the moment he awakened to emptiness. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott explores what these two ancient spiritual friends woke up to and how we can touch the same transformative insight in our modern lives.
In these three recordings from the Radian Light Zen Spiritual Friendship Retreat, Michael Melancon and Jonathan Prescott explore the role that spiritual friends play in our lives and practice. Michael shows us how to create and benefit from friendships, while Jonathan speaks about howpractice forms anchor us in the present moment and how adversarial friends help us wake up.
In these three recordings from the Radian Light Zen Spiritual Friendship Retreat, Michael Melancon and Jonathan Prescott explore the role that spiritual friends play in our lives and practice. Michael shows us how to create and benefit from friendships, while Jonathan speaks about howpractice forms anchor us in the present moment and how adversarial friends help us wake up.
In these three recordings from the Radian Light Zen Spiritual Friendship Retreat, Michael Melancon and Jonathan Prescott explore the role that spiritual friends play in our lives and practice. Michael shows us how to create and benefit from friendships, while Jonathan speaks about howpractice forms anchor us in the present moment and how adversarial friends help us wake up.
Gathas are short poems designed to change our minds. Jonathan Prescott shares how gatha practice can turn mindlessness into awakening.
In this joint talk by Jonathan Prescott and Michael Melancon, they point us toward the depth of Thich Nhat Hanh's central teaching and help us find liberation in our breath.
Zen can seem mysterious. How does a beginner begin? Is there some sort of training program? In this talk, Jonathan Prescott points to Zen’s counterintuitive core: To learn, we unlearn; to fill our teacup, we empty our teacup.
Pain and suffering enter all of our lives. How do we meet that suffering so that it transforms us rather than defeats us? Jonathan Prescott looks at what suffering is, how it arises, and how to practice with it.
The Buddha once banished 500 noisy monks from the monastery, sending them on a muddy march across India. Jonathan Prescott explores why Buddhist teachers sometimes behave strangely. How can we understand and make use of their unexpected teachings?
During the year’s darkest days, our natural response is silence. The world’s creatures know to settle into the comfort of darkness, stilling their bodies within the earth’s crevices and hidden places. Jonathan Prescott offers gentle words and practices to connect us with this elemental silence.
It’s not enough for us to practice for our benefit alone because, as Bodhisattvas, we aspire to save all beings. Jonathan Prescott turns to 9th century Zen Master Kyogen for inspiration on how to share our one fleeting, precious life with the world.
Inviting the bell is a deep practice. Join Jonathan Prescott and Michael Melancon as they point us toward the deep heart work that makes the bell beautiful.
Our adversaries allow us to see more broadly and act more skillfully. Can we find ways to make those adversaries more beautiful? Jonathan Prescott offers tools to help us open our hearts and work with everyone, even those we've learned to reject.
Rest is the absence of restlessness. Jonathan Prescott describes some of the forces that push us towards restless lives, then offers a guided meditation on coming home to ourselves. We are miracles and are already enough.
Jonathan Prescott offers insights into doing non-doing: Using the 'doing' of our practice forms to realize the 'non-doing' of deep rest.
In this final talk of the 8 Realizations Practice Period and Retreat, Jonathan Prescott tells the story of sailing your Dharmakaya Boat to the shore of Nirvana.
Michael Melancon points toward the deep realization possible when we transcend the ideas of birth and death. This talk covers the 8th Realization of the Great Beings.
Exploring the balance between too little and too much, Michael Melancon takes up the 6th Realization (Poverty) while Jonathan Prescott offers insights about the 7th Realization (Sensual Desire.)
Ignorance is the contraction of awareness. It is the foundation of our suffering. Jonathan Prescott describes how ignorance traps us and how the miracle of mindfulness offers a way back to the freedom of the present moment.
Jonathan Prescott describes how indolence is failing to act on what we know. We can be indolent by doing too little, but also by doing too much. This is the 5th talk in the 8 Realizations of Great Beings practice period.
Michael Melancon offers a beautiful explanation of how the human mind is always searching outside itself and never feels fulfilled. This is the 4th talk in our 8 Realizations of the Great Beings practice period.
Jonathan Prescott looks into the second Great Realization - that more desire brings more suffering - and offers a practice for transforming our own desire.
Gail Kirgis offers a beautiful guided meditation that brings us into intimate contact with impermanence.
Michael Melancon explores the first of the 8 Realizations of the Great Beings - Impermanence
In this first talk of the 8 Realizations of the Great Beings Practice Period, Michael Melancon shares the historical context of the Sutra's Silk Road roots and Jonathan Prescott explores the Sutra's first word - wholeheartedly.
In this conversation between old friends, Jonathan Prescott and Michael Melancon discuss joy - what it is, what it is not, and how to foster it in your life. They look to their 20+ year friendship as a training ground for finding joy in practice forms, generosity, relationships, and the accomplishments of others. Although they use different language to describe joy, both agree that joy is what surfaces when we let go.
Fear stalks us all. It lurks in the shadows and avoids our conscious awareness. But fear is not something to fear. It is something to turn towards, embrace and transform. Fear is an energy that both protects us and distorts us. Helpful fear keeps us out of danger, but sometimes hardens into unhelpful fears that color our perceptions and separate us from reality. Our practice is a healing balm that can liberate us from unhelpful fear by creating space in which we can see our fearful mental formations, experience their distortions, and transform them with patience and kindness. Liberation isn't easy and it isn't quick, but having a Sangha and a teacher helps. Listen to the talk for more detail and inspiration.
Jonathan Prescott tells stories of kindness so we can feel kindness come alive in our bodies. But kindness is more than a feeling; it's an action, so we explore what kindness is and how we can cultivate kind actions that benefit everyone.
This week, we bathed ourselves in kindness. We enjoyed stories told by both the givers and receivers of kindness and felt the experiences in our own bodies.
Kindness is a lens through which we see (and interact with) the world. We always see through some lens or other, and kindness is a particularly helpful lens because it reveals life's underlying warmth and tenderness. It's a lens that sharpens, rather than distorts, our view.
Kindness is an ability, not a feeling. As we develop the ability to be kind, we discover that it has four facets:
Facet 1 - Compassion: Compassion is the active face of kindness; we see a need and act. We don't calculate or make a cost/benefit analysis. We see; we act; we let go. It feels wonderful to be spontaneously kind.
Facet 2 - Sympathetic Joy: English lacks a single word for the concept of taking joy in another's joy, but a friend suggests 'joynerosity.' Whatever we call it, this facet of kindness opens us up to infinite joy. If we only feel joyful about what benefits 'me' we don't have many opportunities to smile. But when we take joy in another's joy, an infinite number of joyful opportunities present themselves. Joy is suddenly everywhere!
Facet 3 - Equanimity: Resting in equanimity allows us to share that calmness with others. Our own happiness is self-centered only if we stingily hold it for ourselves. When we share our peacefulness, happiness becomes a gift that multiplies and spreads. Our own kind heart benefits the whole world.
Facet 4 - Generosity: To be generous is to loosen our grip. A clenched first withholds; an open hand offers. Generosity erases the distinction between giver and receiver. Who benefits more from my kind act, me or you? The more we give, the more our heart expands, the more we have to give, and the happier we become.
As practice deepens and settles our hearts, we learn that kindness is the undercurrent of all things. Kindness is what arises when its impediments are transformed. As Ram Das used to say, at root, we are all kind awareness.
Take care of your neighbor Do it quietly Without their knowledge Without seeking praise Do it in such a way that They are unaware of your efforts This is the hidden gate The one you have been looking for...
-- Rick Terwilliger
We might not be sure whether a Buddha gets angry, but we're certain that anger stalks us. In this talk, Jonathan explores how to practice with our anger by walking that knife's edge between denial and indulgence. ~~~~ This week, we asked 'Does a Buddha get angry?' Well, who knows? But it's clear that anger stalks each of us, so maybe a better question is 'What do we do with our anger?'
The Buddha taught that we must inhabit that knife's edge between denying our anger (a particularly common tactic among spiritual seekers) and indulging our anger (a response held widely in our culture.) This practice is subtle and not for the faint-hearted: lean too far towards denial and we fall into the hell of aversion; lean too far towards indulgence and we fall into the hell of grasping.
We can indulge our anger by acting out (raging, speaking unkindly, imposing physical violence) but we can also indulge our anger by 'acting in.' A common type of 'acting in' is rumination, in which we turn the story over and over, deepening our suffering with every rehash. It's important to return to present-moment awareness of our bodies in order to notice how much our rumination causes us to suffer, leading us to see that our ruminative stories don't explain our suffering; they cause our suffering. Until we see this for ourselves, it's very difficult to release the rumination and transform our anger into understanding and love.
As challenging as this practice may be, success is possible because you have Buddha Nature. If the Buddha could transform his anger, you can transform yours. Listen to the full Dharma Talk on our Podcast page.
Silence is the foundation of a contemplative life. Jonathan Prescott explores outer silence, inner silence, and their roles in deepening our engagement with the world. ~~~~~ May you open the gift of solitude In order to receive your soul; Enter the generosity of silence To hear your hidden heart; Know the serenity of stillness To be enfolded anew By the miracle of your being. -- John O'Donohue
John O'Donohue invites us to enter the generosity of silence so we can hear our hidden hearts. Silence is not an end, he suggests; it is a means. Even though silence is a foundation of contemplative life, if it's used as an end it can trap us into believing that we can only be happy when the world is silent.
Why do we cultivate silence? Here are three reasons you might consider:
Silence quiets our own shouting so we can hear the world’s whispers.
Silence quiets our passions so we can awake to the suffering of others.
Silence quiets our individualism so we can find our right place among all.
We cultivate silence by calming ourselves. We calm ourselves by living and behaving simply so that we don't complicate or disturb our environment. As we do this, inner silence arises and strengthens until we see that inner silence isn't dependent upon outer silence.
Listen to the entire Dharma Talk on our Podcast.
In this second Unapoletically Ourselves Retreat talk, Michael Melancon leads us towards finding equanimity and balance so that we can be ourselves in this challenging world.
In this first talk of the Unapologetically Ourselves Retreat, Jonathan Prescott shows how vulnerability and difficulty can open the door to our True Self.
Zen invites us not to simply answer the questions, but to question the answers. Jonathan Prescott explores how to use the open mind of Great Doubt to foster awe, wonder, humility, and connection. ~~~~~ We humans are a curious lot. We have questions and want answers. But Zen reminds us to not simply answer the questions: Zen questions the answers. It challenges our certainty with paradox and our opinions with, ‘Are you sure?’
Hakuin Zenji used the phrase ‘Great Doubt’ to describe this process. Great Doubt isn’t satisfied by superficial answers that put an end to inquiry. Great Doubt asks us to let go of the certainty that separates us from humility, connection, compromise, and awe and to rest in the present moment - the only place we can encounter and respond to our lives.
Current scientific research helps us understand why Great Doubt is hard to practice. Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, describes how humans evolved to think fast (immediately and unconsciously reacting to the environment) as a survival technique. Slow thinking (deliberately holding our minds open so that we can understand and respond) was a luxury early humans couldn’t afford. Slow thinking used too much time and exhausted precious caloric resources.
Meditation trains us to think slow: we hold steady while fast thoughts race by, waiting until slow thinking insight arises. Slow thinking meditation helps us foster Great Doubt.
So when you find yourself rushing to answer questions, try using Great Doubt to come back to the present moment, pull the rug out from under your certainty, and question your answers.
Join Jonathan Prescott for an exploration into our ancestors. Our ancestors were humans, just like us. They made mistakes, just like us. Can we find a way to forgive their shortcomings right now, in our own lives? And can we learn to be better ancestors ourselves? ~~~~ This week, The Anacortes Mindfulness Community held our ancestors in love. We practiced the 5 Earth Touchings to bring to honor those related to us by birth, spiritual tradition, and location, whether they have loved and supported us or harmed and burdened us.
Jonathan Prescott offered a Dharma talk that explored who our ancestors are and what they have done. Physical ancestors seem easy to identify as ‘mine’ or ‘yours,’ but when we look closely, it isn’t so simple. Humans inter-are not only with each other, but with everything.
A more profound set of ancestors are our continuation ancestors, whose actions continue by rippling out long after their bodies have died. Many of our ancestors rippling actions were wholesome, but as we learn more about social justice, we see that some of their actions caused suffering. It can be hard to forgive them for what they’ve done.
Jonathan laid out a 4-step practice for forgiving our ancestors shortcomings:
Understand forgiveness: To forgive doesn’t mean to allow bad behavior. True forgiveness is the art of transforming the present moment consequences of past actions. This allows us to drop resentment, resistance, and blame.
See clearly: We may not know exactly what happened in the past, but we can know how the past manifests now in our bodies and minds. We must see our suffering clearly before taking the next step.
Allow the pain: Seeing isn’t enough: We have to have the courage to allow our pain's presence. This isn’t easy. Pain suppressed is pain amplified. Therefore, we acknowledge and allow our pain.
Respond with compassion: Knowing how our ancestors’ pain has continued in us gives us the fierce compassion to say, ‘It stops with me.’ We respond strongly and compassionately to transform the pain in ourselves here and how so that we don’t pass it along to future generations.
Our ancestors are everyone and everything; no exceptions; no matter how wholesome or harmful. Our compassionate response is to honor all, forgive all, care for all.
Jonathan Prescott offers practices to help us smooth our sharp edges and become beacons of love in this world of suffering. ~~~~~ Oh boy! We don’t seem to be getting along.
Pundits shout => Leaders fail => We fall.
If we don’t change, if we don’t stop screaming, ‘IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!’ our suffering will only get worse.
Luckily, we have access to something far more powerful than suffering: Love. Our very nature is Love, whether we want to call it ‘Buddha Nature,’ ‘That of God in everyone,’ or ‘Compassion.’ All these names point toward the unnameable Awakened Heart present in all things since the very beginning. We don’t have to improve our ability to love because it’s already fully formed. We simply need to practice in such a way that we transform the behaviors and beliefs that obscure our loving nature.
I propose a three-step practice: Setting intentions, stopping, and letting go.
Intentions
Intentions direct us. Without clear intentions, we risk replaying old habits of belief and action and squandering this one precious life. Plum Village Zen offers concrete ways to set our intentions and reminds us that each act can wake us up. For example, when we brush our teeth we can recite the gatha, ‘Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth, I vow to speak purely and lovingly. When my mouth is fragrant with right speech, a flower blooms in the garden of my heart.’ You can search the internet for Plum Village gathas and find many to help set your intentions.
Stopping
Old beliefs and habits arise before we’re even aware of them, coloring our mind and body and controlling our behavior. But when we practice stopping, we have the possibility of responding rather than reacting. It is possible to respond from our intentions rather than react from our habits. Practice is based on stopping: We sit, breathe, listen to the bell, and find other creative ways to make space for things as they are.
Letting Go
We are originally endowed with Awakened Nature, so we already know how to love. Our practice is the art of letting go of whatever blocks this Essential Love. Noticing, naming, and letting go of our unhelpful beliefs and behaviors is the hard work of personal change. But loving is the easy part. I like to breathe in things just as they are, drop what-is into the deep well of Love, then allow Love to breathe out. The breathing in takes effort; the breathing out is letting go. The breathing in takes courage; the breathing out is joy.
These three steps - setting intentions, stopping, and letting go - are how we learn to get along. Deepening our awareness of our Loving Nature by transforming all that blocks it changes us and, paradoxically, changes others. We aren’t separate from others, so how could it be otherwise?
In this week's Dharma talk, Jonathan Prescott offered 5 ways to understand (and benefit from) the teachings of our Golden Age Zen masters.
During Zen’s Golden Age in China (6th - 10th centuries), Zen teachers spoke a direct, poetic language. Modern English speakers can have a hard time understanding what they were saying, so Jon suggested that we learn a few Zenglish hints. They include:
The Zen Master is answering a deeper question than the one you asked
Confusion is a good thing
Shouts and blows aren’t about shouts and blows
The best way to say something is to say nothing
Zenglish becomes clear and elegant as you become clear and elegant
Confused? Wonderful! Listen to the talk on our Podcast page, and see if you can crack the Zenglish code.
This week, we returned to the ‘our minds are a mess’ theme and looked unflinchingly at the three-ring-circus of our minds. Even as we resolve to sit in meditation and simply observe, we find ourselves almost instantly swept into our minds' dramas and ruminations. In Buddhism, we name this experience samsara. In English, we name it delusion.
Naming helps. Naming is a three-step practice:
Name what is - We practice mindfulness to become aware of what is happening, simply noticing our sensations, thoughts, emotions, and perceptions
Allow what is - Once we see what’s happening, we allow it to be present. This takes courage and kindness. It isn’t easy.
Name what is - We gently give our experience a name, such as ‘anger,’ ‘frustration,’ or ‘rumination.’
Naming in this way gives us clarity. We see how we habitually create similar experiences over and over, and when we see that what we name is our own creation, it’s easier to let it go.
But naming isn’t enough. Naming our mind’s tangles doesn’t transform them. For this, we need to practice un-naming, or signlessness. The Buddha taught that when we create signs (another word for names) we also create delusion. Signs become simple shorthands for complex realities. When we engage only with the sign, we fail to engage with the underlying reality.
One sign alive for us today is the sign of race. Long ago, humans noticed that there were differences among us; we varied in skin tone, eye shape, hair color, and more depending upon where our ancestors lived. We created such signs as ‘white,’ ‘black,’ ‘asian.' These signs helped us distinguish one from another but they also became barriers for seeing that all humans are one.
Signlessness is a deep practice. It invites us to look past surface qualities and instead see interbeing. Thich Nhat Hanh poetically invites us to see the cloud in our tea, the compost in the rose, the mud in the lotus.
Practicing Zen means living in the balance of naming and un-naming. We lean into naming when necessary and into un-naming when necessary, not getting caught in either extreme. This allows us to see beyond self and other, beyond subject and object, beyond perceiver and perceived, yet also to act in this world of names. It is a path with nowhere to stand, yet we stand everywhere.
A Dharma talk is just a sign. Don’t be satisfied with the names I use. Please touch the reality for yourself.
If we want to escape being victims of our mind, we have to understand how our mind works. A map helps; even (and especially) a simple one. The simple mind map we’ll look at today has only two elements: perception and evaluation.
Perception: Our mind perceives what arrives through the senses. Humans have many ways to perceive the world (more than the traditional five senses) and in Zen we recognize that the mind is also a source of perception. Our mind takes in lots of data yet we are aware of only a little. Becoming aware of what we perceive is called ‘mindfulness.' Mindful living is enjoyable yet we don’t often simply perceive and enjoy things as they are.
Evaluation: The ego mind fixates on evaluating objects of perception, constantly asking, ‘Will this person benefit me, or not? Will this activity get me what I want, or not?’ So when we notice a perception (mindfulness), instead of remaining with that perception over time (concentration), our mind quickly begins evaluating whether what is seen or heard or thought about benefits itself. We abandon the experience of ‘just this’ in the pursuit of ‘just me.’
Mindfulness practice is the art of embracing perception. We know what is present; we remain with what is present; we embrace what is present. Living in this way is joyful. We are freed from the constant dissatisfaction of seeking our own benefit. We learn to regard our preferences as passing thoughts and drop our demand that things be like that rather than like this.
Ajahn Chah, the great Thai Master, said: If you let go a little, you’ll have a little joy. If you let go a lot, you’ll have a lot of joy. If you let go completely, you’ll have complete joy.’
Test his words for yourself. Let go of evaluation a little. Do you feel a little joy? Let go a lot. Do you feel a lot of joy? Your own experience is your most reliable mind map.
Guest teacher Michael Melancon shares warm wisdom about using COVID to see more deeply into our relationships with the earth and our practice.
This week we continued our study of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace Is Every Step by reading and discussing how to decompartmentalize our lives and embrace aimlessness.
Thay points out that it’s common to be mindful in the meditation hall yet not in the kitchen, or to be kind to strangers but less kind to our spouse. He invites us to see every moment and activity as a single compartment that holds our mindfulness, leaving nothing out, treating all people with love and respect.
Jon offered a short Dharma talk about how to enjoy online meditation. We know how to make our physical meditation hall feel sacred through rituals that invite us to slow down, reconnect, and see sacredness. We haven’t yet created similar rituals for our online gathers, but that doesn’t mean all the elements are less sacred. Jon offered some concrete practices we can use to make us more intimate online while still practicing social distancing. You can listen to the talk on our Podcast page here: Anacortes Mindfulness Podcasts
Next week, we’ll enjoy a Dharma talk from visiting teacher Michael Melancon. The following week we'll resume our study of Peace Is Every Step by considering pages 41-47: Hope As An Obstacle; Flower Insights; and Breathing Room.
We met online again this week, welcoming guests from as far away as Canada and Connecticut. The evening began with a short Dharma talk and guided meditation to help us transform our fear. Jon invited us to identify and embrace five debilitating, chronic fears in order to see them as states of mind that prevent us from living happily in the here and now. If you missed it, you can listen HERE.
After sitting together, we continued our Peace Is Every Step practice period by reading aloud the next 5 chapters. Our discussions were a beautiful example of shared Sangha wisdom.
We’ll continue meeting online until COVID-19 calms down a bit. During social isolation we have the opportunity to practice deep connection. Isolating ourselves from others doesn’t mean isolating ourselves from life. Separation and stillness actually free us to embrace moments and activities that we’d otherwise rush by:
As we wash our hands to protect others, can we nourish ourselves by enjoying the warm water and slower pace?
As we communicate online rather than in-person, can we use our computer monitor as a bell of mindfulness that calls us back to this precious moment?
As we cancel our plans, can we embrace the unexpected spaciousness without recreating our habitual busyness?
COVID-19 might offer just the conditions we need to wake up. As we say in Zen, this is it.
Next week, Gail will lead sitting and Sue will facilitate discussion of the next few chapters of Peace Is Every Step. Please read pages 20-27: Cookie of Childhood, Tangerine Meditation, The Eucharist, Eating Mindfully, and Washing Dishes. Bring a tangerine (or other treat such as a piece of dried fruit) to eat together mindfully during our tangerine meditation practice.
Be safe. Be Happy.
This week we enjoyed our first-ever Anacortes Mindfulness Community online gathering. We shared our open-hearted presence without sharing any pesky viruses :)
We began our Peace Is Every Step practice period by learning a bit about Thich Nhat Hanh, including what led him to write the book we’re currently enjoying. For more information about Thay’s life, explore this article.
Thay can’t be understood deeply without also understanding the Sangha, particularly Sister Chan Khong, his long-time companion and a great teacher in her own right. A lovely article about her can be found HERE
We read aloud the first four chapters of Peace Is Every Step and Jon offered some insights based upon his own practice of them. You can listen here: Podcast.
Next week, we’ll examine pages 11-20: Thinking Less, Nourishing Awareness in Each Moment, Sitting Anywhere, Sitting Meditation, and Bells of Mindfulness. Please read them often and allow Thay’s gentle poetry to sink into your heart. How does practicing with Thay's words effect you? How do these practices feel in your body? What insights arise?
eSee you next week!
Zen is a meditation-based form of Buddhist practice that offers a stripped-down, direct experience of the present moment.
Zen is lived rather than understood. Words about Zen are nonsense.
And yet, here are some words...
You may have noticed that our world is filled with suffering.
The Buddha noticed this, too. His first teaching was that suffering exists. While it’s easy to see suffering ‘out there,’ the Buddha challenged us to see suffering ‘in here’ and know that each of us is a real mess; our minds are neighborhoods best not entered alone.
This week’s Dharma talk suggests a three-step plan for coping with suffering so that, rather than being oppressed by life’s inevitable hardships, we use them to fuel our transformation:
Naming: The first step is to know that we’re suffering (which is often not obvious.) We look to our bodies and name the physical sensations (tightness in the shoulders, twisting gut) rather than rely on the mind’s labels (anger, frustration.) The mind habitually blames something ‘outside,’ while the body reports the truth of the present moment.
Allowing: Once we recognize what’s happening, we allow our suffering to be there. This feels counterintuitive because our ego structure marshals a host of habitual coping mechanisms to hide internal suffering from ourselves and others. Allowing has two aspects: Not indulging our coping mechanisms, and turning towards suffering with curiosity and patience.
Embracing: Allowing, by itself, isn’t enough. We must invite loving kindness to hold our suffering in it’s gentle, non-judgmental arms. This loving response to suffering is awakening itself.
As poet John O’Donohue wrote: The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind. For those who follow the Zen path, we transform our suffering minds by naming, allowing, and embracing.
Enjoy the Dharma talk!
This week we focused on teachers: who they are, how to choose one, and how to benefit from a student/teacher relationship.
Teachers come in two varieties - the Guru and the Spiritual Friend. Gurus pass an entire lineage to their students, while Spiritual Friends facilitate the student’s awakening. Gurus, Roshis, and Zen Masters embody powerful mythological forces to transmit an idealized lineage, offering fantastical stories, larger than life ancestors, and impossible precepts that shock us out of our small selves and into a practice worthy of our imaginations. Unfortunately, these mythologies are often taking in literal or fundamental ways that end up burdening both teacher and student.
Spiritual Friend teachers, on the other hand, facilitate their students’ growth by meeting them where they are. They embody the practice and teach with their freedom. These teachers can be found anywhere and don’t rely on transmissions, robes, or institutions. They are real-world partners rather than mythical examples.
When choosing a teacher, trust your own wisdom. Observe the teacher. Are they trustworthy? Are they kind? Are they happy? Be willing to hold both the teacher and yourself accountable. Is the teacher accountable to others for their ethical behavior and integrity? Is the student accountable for observing and transforming their own stuck places?
To benefit from a teacher/student relationship, both need to show up. Teachers and students awaken together, supporting each other and being supported by each other. Teachers hold the space for students, who typically cycle between engagement and withdrawl, especially during the early years of practice. Students hold the space for teachers with their generosity, giving dana that makes it possible for teachers to support students.
The teacher/student relationship is a partnership of mutual transformation.
Thanksgiving gives us the chance to offer thanks for our abundance (thanks-giving) and to celebrate our ability to give (thanks for giving.)
Because we live this balance between gratitude and generosity in the often challenging environment of our extended families, I ’d like to offer 5 practices that can help us align our behavior with our ethical aspirations.
See the Process: Everything changes. The Buddha taught that much of our suffering comes when we see things as fixed and ignore their ever-changing nature. How might you apply this insight to those you consider adversaries? Rather than hang a sign on your adversary labeling them ‘difficult’ or ’stubborn’ or ‘jerk’ could you instead see that they are in the process of growth and change?
Give Away Control: When you identify and uphold your bottom-line principles, you have a firm spine. This then allows you to offer a soft front for incidental tussles that come along. How might living in the balance between a firm spine and a soft front allow you to be kind to your adversaries?
Let Go of Anger: Many of us carry anger about other's past behavior. We hope that our hard hearts will somehow punish or exclude them, but in reality, our anger harms only us. What would it be like to let go of your anger towards an adversary? How might you feel lighter and more free?
Help Your Adversaries Be More Beautiful: Everyone has a beautiful seed within them. We can choose to water those beautiful seeds or we can water seeds of conflict and strife. What are your adversary’s beautiful seeds? How might it change your relationship if you watered them?
Help Yourself Be More Beautiful: There’s only one you. We need you to be the most beautiful person you can be. What would it be like if you gave yourself permission to be beautiful right in the midst of difficulties? How might your beauty change the situation? How might it help others?
Please don’t wait for conflict to begin practicing these techniques. We can practice them in every moment so that, when conflict arises, we have confidence in our ability to embrace change, give up control and anger, and water beautiful seeds.
Living ethically is an important part of practice. The 5 Mindfulness Trainings point us toward freedom without serving as judgemental commandments. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott explores how taking the precepts allows the precepts to take us.
What do we mean when we use the word, ‘Love’? It commonly refers to preference, greed, infatuation, lust, affection, and more. But in Buddhist practice, ‘Love’ means something different.
Loving-kindness (along with compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity) is a Brahmavihara - a facet of Awakened Mind that is vast, bottomless, non-personal, and fully developed within each of us. Loving-kindness isn’t like the set of afflictive mind states we usually refer to when we use the word ‘love’: When love is a preference, attraction, or transaction, it afflicts us with desire and it’s inevitable shadow, aversion.
Loving-kindness is an inexhaustible love that arises from Awakened Mind. It flows universally to the ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’; to those we like and don’t like; to those who benefit us and harm us. We don’t need to develop loving-kindness: we simply need to practice ardently so that the barriers to loving-kindness within our hearts and minds soften and allow True Love to flow.
Metta practice is an effective way to transform personal qualities that prevent the flow of True Love. Traditionally, loving-kindness is offered first to yourself, then to others who are close, neutral, and distant from your heart. I suggest that we practice this only for ourselves and trust that loving-kindness will tell us when we’re able to extend it to others.
Here’s the practice:
Breathe in and out with the following phrases, allowing them to unfold at their own pace. You don’t need to figure them out. When done daily, the practice becomes a joy.
May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be well. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.
On the in-breath, accept whatever is present. On the out-breath, relax completely and allow loving-kindness to breathe out. This cycle of ‘breathing in life, and allowing loving-kindness to breathe out for you' is very healing. It is a lovely way to flow with this moment. This is the practice of love.
Michael Melancon offers this talk about the nature of the illumined mind - what it is and how we cultivate it. ~~~~~~ A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” reads the mantra of the United Negro College Fund. There’s so much profound truth and wisdom in those eight simple words.
The untrained mind leans toward discontent, unhappiness, fear, anger and a sense of isolation. Untrained mind pursues the past, gets lost in conjecture about a future that may or may not come, and gets swept away by a present that feeds on overwhelm.
We sit in meditation to train the mind. Training the mind means developing a habit of mindful awareness, of mindful presence. Mindful awareness. It’s an experience that eludes description. We can only point at it by calling it “awakened mind” or “luminous mind”
or “universal mind.”
Trained mind “looks at life as it is in the very here and now,” as the Buddha says in his Discourse in Knowing The Better Way To Live Alone. The trained mind transcends conceptual thinking and the conventional way of experiencing the world around us. Trained mind sees clearly; it sees things as they really are. That is, it goes beyond our limited view of life, and opens up to embrace and rest in a vast “not knowing.”
This silent illumination is universal; that is, it’s available to everyone equally. Yet each of us must personally learn to open to and allow it in order to know it for ourselves.
Awakened to this luminous mind we dwell in stability and freedom. Stability and freedom manifest as presence, joy, and contentment with things exactly as they are.
Luminous Mind is a gift. When we stabilize ourselves in reflective and contemplative awareness, we find ourselves steeped in curiosity, openness, acceptance and love. We find ourselves immersed in life itself in all its glory, grit and consequence.
Awakened Mind . . . Illumined Mind is the evidence that beyond this world we can see, feel and touch, there is something so much more. And each of us has access to and can touch that something more. It’s available in every moment of every day. There’s nothing to get. THIS is it. This is IT.
Thich Nhat Hanh describes meditation as the art of dwelling happily in the present moment. This requires a balance between skillfulness and awareness. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott explores meditation skills, the nature of awareness, and how our own hand can help us dwell happily in the present moment.
This talk addresses how to practice when things don't go our way. Can we find peace right in the middle of this life of gain and loss? Yes, but it takes practice! Enjoy...
Practice forms help transform our self-centered stories into stories that speak instead of connection, stillness, gratitude, and presence. Forms also invite us to become intimate with life in ways that transcend whatever stories we might tell. Jonathan Prescott offered this talk to the Desert Cactus Flower Sangha in Phoenix, AZ.
Visiting Teacher Steve Wilhelm brings his knowledge of early Buddhism to AMC and shares six themes from the life of the Buddha that have relevance for our lives today.
In this short talk, Jonathan Prescott shows how our behavior is mirrored in meditation. Kind, clear behavior is reflected in kind, clear sitting. Meditation gives us an opportunity to experience the consequences of our actions and helps us develop compassion.
In this talk given at the Puget Sound Zen Center, Jonathan Prescott cuts to the bone and addresses a realization that's difficult to face: Knowing that you will die. This seemingly bad news is actually good news because it spurs us to explore how this finite body expresses reality's no birth, no death nature.
The truth of impermanence can feel like a slap in the face: We're going to lose everything we love, everyone we love, and, eventually, our own lives. But in reality, impermanence is good news. It is a gateway to happiness. In this talk given to The Anacortes Mindfulness Community on May 21, 2019, Jonathan Prescott explores how to embrace life's ever-changing nature.
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says that the point of spiritual practice is to generate happiness and transform suffering. In this talk to the Anacortes Mindfulness Community, Jonathan Prescott explores what this means and how we can practice happiness.
Jonathan Prescott describes the formal process for taking refuge in the 5 Mindfulness Trainings, including why we do this, how we do this, and the benefits of walking the path of freedom.
In this final talk of the Four Noble Truths Practice Period, Jonathan Prescott gives an introduction to the ethical practices of Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood and the awareness practices of Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
Jonathan Prescott offers the first in a series of eight talks on The Four Noble Truths, a foundational teaching of the Buddha. This talk was given at the Anacortes Mindfulness Community (www.anacortes.mindful.community) on January 15, 2019.
Welcome to week 6 of The Anacortes Mindfulness Community's 8-week long Four Noble Truths practice period. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott introduces the Noble 8-Fold Path and dives into Right View and Right Thinking. Think non-thinking!
In this fourth talk of the series on the 4 Noble Truths, Jonathan Prescott shows us how suffering arises, from sensory contact through to the creation of an 'I'. He also touches on the nature of liberation.
In this third talk of the Anacortes Mindfulness Community's Four Noble Truths practice period, Jonathan Prescott explores how we suffer even when we have what we want. This talk examines the Human, Asura, and Heavenly hell realms.
Jonathan Prescott offers the second Dharma talk of The Four Noble Truths Practice Period. He speaks about how to use mythical Buddhist hell realms to understand our own suffering. This talk addresses the Hell, Animal, and Hungry Ghost realms.