Weekly Guiding Teacher Reflection

Dear Common Ground Friends,

When we pay attention it becomes clear that how we think, speak, and act matters. It leaves an immediate impression on our hearts and also affects others. This world is made up of these wholesome and unwholesome impressions which live on by shaping how we relate going forward. This can be good news. Whatever our life situation is, we have the ability to set good in motion. This isn’t something to believe in. We need to confirm the lawfulness of this in our actual experience until our confidence becomes unshakeable. When we act with greed, with hate, with cruelty, then suffering will arise in our hearts and in the world. When we relate with non-greed (generosity, contentment, renunciation); with non-hate (kindness, compassion, appreciation); and with non-cruelty (valuing non-harming ethical conduct); then the deepest healing and release are set in motion.

Dhamma practice is by my definition an engaged practice; we are learning to use our whole life as a training ground. Every situation and every responsibility is an opportunity to learn how to set good in motion and how to refrain from feeding cycles of suffering. None of us stand alone; all our actions affect ourselves and others. Let’s notice if we tend to swing between moments of strong attachment to our views about how things should be, to moments where we indulge in a nihilistic indifference that dismisses worldly affairs as entangling and leading nowhere. I aspire to show up, feel deeply, and respond nimbly to whatever comes my way, in my heart or in my world. I aspire to build my capacity to be tenderly engaged without being dependent on fixed views. My experience has taught me that real freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion is only realized when I am willing to be more open with the world as it is, in its depth and in its complicated and ambiguous breadth.

Here is an article by the respected Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi with his reflections on how one can rely on one’s practice when voting: Your Vote Matters: Vote Wisely.

May the deepest wisdom and love guide and protect us all,

Mark Nunberg
Co-Guiding Teacher