Episode

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-11-13

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework Reflect on how generosity is related to equality. When you offer a gift to someone you perceive as unequal is that generosity or pity? Feel the difference between these two forms of giving. How does the heart feel and how does the mind hold the offering in a generous act and in pity? When you perceive someone as a human being regardless of their present condition you can only perceive them as equal. When you give to the less fortunate, you are lost in the pain of the circumstances. The generous heart feels that pain but gives to the human being.

This week find several occasions to give something away to someone less privileged. Before you do, release the projections and allow equality to surface. One person giving to another. Look the person in the eye when you hand them the gift. Let your heart meet theirs. Feel the humility of true generosity. Feel the joy of release. Notice the qualitative difference between giving with humility and the self-importance of “helping the disadvantaged.”

TalkID=767

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-11-03

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework This week watch your reaction to the success or failure of others: a friend closes the deal on a new house, another parent’s child succeeds in a way your child has not, a co-worker is praised by the boss. Watch what impedes your joy—the feelings of envy, jealousy, and comparison. Feel the sense of disconnection when those emotions are acted upon. Watch your need for recognition and success and how it feeds upon your deprivation of spirit. Repeat the phrases, “Your joy is my joy. May your good fortune never leave you. May your happiness continue.” This will help open the heart beyond self-interests.

TalkID=760 SeriesID=33

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-10-20

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework This week make a point to experience pain wherever you may find it. Read the paper and listen to the news from this perspective. Put aside your defense mechanism that says, “They deserve what they got.” Revise your perception to see the world in terms of suffering and the end of suffering rather than good and bad. Do not seek a defense from the pain in your heart. Feel the pain on the other side of these issues. Picture the human beings behind the stories. Feel your own vulnerability, how this could be you. Whenever you encounter pain this week offer the phrase, “May you be free of pain and sorrow.”

TalkID=758 SeriesID=33

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-10-06

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework Practice metta this week while walking down the street. Send lovingkindness to all beings on the street without discrimination. Walk at a normal pace and begin by directing metta toward yourself. As different beings pass by offer metta, “May you be content. May you have ease of well being…” You don’t know who will arise in your awareness—friends, neutral people, those that bring up fear or aversion. See this exercise as an adventure in metta, not knowing who will arise in your field of attention moment after moment. Include other beings besides humans in your practice. Alternate between yourself and other beings as you practice metta.

TalkID=749 SeriesID=33

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-07-21

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework Exercise one: Ask yourself what you understand about the dharma—not what is intellectually satisfying but what you truly understand. For instance, do you understand how suffering arises? Do your actions demonstrate this wisdom? How deep is this truth? How far has it reached into your cells?
Take a point of dharma that you frequently hear in talks but is not sufficiently integrated. For example, dharma talks speak about the pure, clear mind of awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance. Have you experienced this firsthand or is it a conceptual understanding? First know the difference between the two forms of knowledge. How will you go about understanding dharma issues more directly? Is thinking about them sufficient? Take the issue you select and attempt to experience it firsthand. For example, what is the mind like when it is free of judgment, and what is it like when it judges? Which mind is clearer and therefore more accessible to wisdom? Work with the dharma point all week and notice how wisdom arises naturally from interest and bare attention.
Exercise two: When you sit in meditation, notice how the noise of thought seems to keep you away from the breath. Observe how “you” are very present, struggling to get back on your breath. You may believe you are struggling with the thinking to return to the breath, but the struggling is actually creating more thought that does the opposite. You are working against wisdom. Watch the defenses against silence (emptiness) arise when you are able to be with the breath. Notice your boredom, restlessness, and desire for stimulation. These are mental states that keep “you” being “you” and ward off the wisdom of seeing clearly. Be careful not to struggle with even these states of mind. Attempt to open and include all states of mind. To open is the opposite of struggle and therefore in alignment with wisdom. The mind is very tricky and there is a proper place for wise effort.  But does that effort have to be so forceful and striving? This week examine the differences and linkage between forced effort, opening to a mind state and the noise of the mind.

TalkID=747 SeriesID=17,32

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-06-30

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework What value does focused presence have on your life? Can you think of any activity that a steady mind does not enhance? What external and internal conditions cultivate this steadiness? Notice the effect of stimulation on your stability of mind. Notice the effect of argument and controversy. Is there a way to move your life towards greater clarity?
This week investigate the relationship between simplicity and your ability to focus. As an experiment, try to eliminate any distractions that are not absolutely necessary. Plan the week in advance so everything nonessential can be postponed. Deliberately slow down so you always know what you are doing while you are doing it. What effect does the speed of your day have on your clarity? Structure the week so you have fewer commitments, fewer auditory and visual distractions, socialize a little less, and have a regular disciplined sitting practice. You may want to extend this week into several weeks. Notice the effects this intentional simplicity has on your stability of mind.

TalkID=746 SeriesID=17,32,38

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2003-06-16

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

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Homework Why be mindful? What is the value of mindfulness—not theoretically, but practically–in your life? Has it become a necessity, like taking a shower or eating, or is it a burden, something added mechanically because you think it is good for you? What would make the practice your own? What would make it effortless and natural, a faithful interplay between you and the experiences of living?
What is your life like when you sit every day and what is it like when you do not? Start noticing the qualitative difference between being mindful and being lost in thought. How does the world feel when you are thinking about it as opposed to living it? What difference does mindfulness make in the subtle sensitive moments when you hear a bird call or feel the brush of a breeze or in the more gross reactive moments of anger or fear? Unless the reasons for practicing are internalized, the meditation will not be your own.

TalkID=720 SeriesID=17,32,38