MEDITATION HINTS FROM THE COLORADO DIVISION OF Wildlife By Kim Boykin, Asst Prof of Religious Studies, Carroll College, Waukesha

My husband and I spent last summer at my family’s cabin in Grand Lake, Colorado,at the edge of Rocky Mountain national Park. In town one day, I picked up a pamphlet on living in bear country and the suggestions for “What to Do if You Meet a Bear” sounded a lot like mediation instructions. Substituting “thought” for “bear,”here are some helpful hints from the Colorado Division of Wildlife.



Colorado has been home to thoughts since their earliest ancestors evolved in North America. Today, increasing numbers of people routinely live and play in thought country. Learning about thoughts and being aware of their habits will help you fully appreciate these unique animals and the habitat in which they live.What to do if you meet a thought? There are no definite rules about what to do if you meet a thought. Thought attacks are rare compared to the number of close encounters. However, if you do meet a thought before it has time to leave your area, here are some suggestions.



Remember, every situation is different with respect to the thought, its activity, the terrain, and the person involved.• Stay Calm. If you see a thought and it hasn’t seen you, calmly leave the area.• Stop. Back away slowly while facing the thought. Give the thought plenty of room to escape.• Wild thoughts rarely attack people unless they feel threatened or provoked.• Speak Softly. This may reassure the thought that no harm in meant to it.• Relax. If a thought stands upright or moves closer, it may be trying to detect your scent. This isn’t a sign of aggression. Once a thought identifies you, it may leave the area or try to intimidate you by charging to within a few feet before it withdraws.• Don’t run or make any sudden movements. Running is likely to prompt the thought to give chase, and you can’t outrun a thought.



If you have a potentially life-threatening situation with a thought or if an injury does occur, please contact the Division of Wildlife, Monday through Friday, 8am –5pm. Please share this with a friend or neighbor.

The Religion of Tree

Treeism...
The worship of tree
The season of tree

Deva Premal Miten in the light of love / om shree dhanvantre namaha

Quote by Tarthang Tulku

Sitting quietly, let the mind involve itself in the stories that flow through consciousness. Notice the dynamic that powers each story: the concerns and desires, worries and distractions. As you become more familiar with these patterns, look for second-level stories that support the stories on the surface; for instance, stories about who you are and what you stand for, or stories that make sense of longstanding patterns or conditions. Notice which stories refer more to the past and which to the future. How does the `objective' time that measures out events and sequences figure in the stories you tell? Is it a minor character? Does it have a role to play at all? ...

As you become familiar with the stories you typically tell, you will notice how many of them express a characteristic negativity. There are stories that explain inaction or justify distraction, that feed daydreams of escape, excuse failures, and calm fears. There are other stories that fuel anxiety and intensify concern. Pay close attention to the patterns of the stories that you typically tell, looking for those that consistently repeat themselves. Can you touch the energy bound up in those stories? Can you release it?

Tarthang Tulku

The Power of Lovingkindness

I have practiced many different types of visualization meditations within the Mahayana and Theravadan traditions of Buddhism. In the vast amounts of meditations that these traditions offer, I particularly gravitate and utilize the meditation on Metta (loving-kindness). I selected this meditation to work with this week as an antidote for anger. I had difficulties with the Belleruth Naparstek meditation that was offered in class. There is something about her voice and the imagery she used which repelled me. I am having a lot of difficulties processing and digesting my transpersonal relationships in regards to my family. Naparstek’s meditation has you call to mind your family surrounding you in a supportive nature. As soon as I start working with that image by body, mind, and spirit shut down. There is too much trauma and unresolved issues that came up for me. After that class, I had anger throughout my week that started to bubble up under the surface. I had some screaming into the pillow sessions this week.

In the Metta Bhavana practice we’re cultivating love, or friendliness, or lovingkindness. The meditation does this. I have a great CD entitled Guided Meditations: For Calmness, Awareness, and Love of the Buddhist Monk Bodhipaksa. The meditation involves visualization and focusing ones intention. During this meditation I wanted to get in touch with my own heart and my innate feelings of goodness. With my body relaxed and being guided I tried to let go of any preoccupying thoughts. I called to mind a situation in which I felt a complete sense of well-being and contentment. Recalling exactly where I was, who I was with, and precisely how I felt. I took my time to reestablish that scene, and feel the sensations in my body. I was guided to find words that describe the feelings of well-being. I choose words such as contentment, well-being, happiness, and ease. I then let go of the details of the remembered scene. At the same time, I continued to pay attention to the feelings of well-being that accompanied the scene. I was holding it all, with some difficulty, with not too much effort. This process of the meditation created a place I could return again and again as I went further into the meditation. Any time I felt distracted or feelings of confusion arose, I would return to the feeling of metta in that space I created. As I experienced the well-being, I repeated the phrase, “May I be happy,” or “May I be well. May I be free from suffering.”

I was then guided to recall a friend or someone who has shown kindness toward me. I kept the image of that person in my mind. I sent and surrounded that person with metta. I let those feelings of goodness move to the area around my heart. I then recited the same phrases I repeated before, this time saying, “May he/she experience ease and contentment,” or “May he/she be filled with loving kindness.” I then extended metta to others to people I love and gradually extended the feeling to others: neighbors, family, work colleagues, animals. I gradually extended the feeling further, to people I find difficult–those who have power over me, people who might dislike me, or those I feel negative toward. This was a difficult part of the meditation; however, it is my practice not to take on Goliath and I am gentle with myself. After working with this loving-kindness meditation, I sat quietly and reflected on my experience and contemplated what I learned. What I learned is am both capable of love and hate. I am wounded and in spiritual and psychic pain. I associate and perceive some people in my life with particular pain and often the cause of that pain. Much of this is illusion, but no less real to my psyche. At the core of my daily experience is the trauma of the hysterectomy.

John Kabat Zinn (1990) tells us “emotional pain, the pain in our hearts and minds, is far more widespread and just as likely to be debilitating as physical pain…just as with physical pain, you can be mindful of emotional pain and can use the energy to heal” (319). Continued practice and awareness will help me move through this more. I do not see the suffering ever going away until I am dead. I was reading a lot of books on women who have had hysterectomies and this is a common thread to a majority of us who have gone through this. The pain, loss and trauma are not fully understood by people who have not experienced this loss.

I feel it is all about gratitude, seeing things as they are, compassion and sympathetic joy (mudita) are the keys. For me these have been the major paths to get glimpses of shifts into my makeup and into my being. Relationships are difficult for me, so I live alone. I am often exclusive, don’t get close to anyone. I have been jilted so many times because I could not have children, I cannot count. Now that I am getting into an age where the children thing is almost over has helped me. I guess I have to be more inclusive, but I do not know how to do that. I have been practicing for years, but I have a long way to go.

The goal of emotional transformation cultivated by the practice of metta is to provide us with antidotes, which can transform hopelessness into empowerment, jealousy into sympathetic joy, fear into faith, anger into compassion etc. Though a difficult and arduous path, I understand the goal of emotional transformation to be relatively simple in nature, but not easy. Its purpose is to provide us with tools to be able to move through stuck repeating energy or emotional states so these emotions do not catch us. The strategy involves the person briefly facing the challenging emotion in such a way that it facilitates a shift of the emotion and then a new emotional state can emerge. This type of change is like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly; its essence is the same but it no longer resembles the previous state. Continuing with this line of thought if the caterpillar never breaks out of the chrysalis it will not fully form and will die.


References
Loving Kindness Meditation | Care2 Healthy & Green Living. (n.d.). Care2 - largest online community for healthy and green living, human rights and animal welfare.. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://www.care2.com/greenliving/loving-kindness-meditation.html#

Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press.

BACKWARD, turn backward, O Time, in your

flight,

Make me a child again, just for to-night !
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart, as of yore ;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair,
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep,
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years !
I am so weary of toil and of tears,
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,
Take them and give me my childhood again ;
I have grown weary of dust and decay,
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away,
Weary of sowing for others to reap,
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you ;
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between,
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I to-night for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep,
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.



Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone ;
No other worship abides and endures
Faithful, unselfish, and patient, like yours ;
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep, -
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with

gold,

Fall on your shoulders again, as of old ;
Let it drop over my forehead to-night,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light,
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more,
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore ;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep,
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long,
Since I last listened your lullaby song ;
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood's years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a lovirg embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep,
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.