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BPF/NY Peaceful stories

Please feel free to read stories from chapter participants in The Village Zendo's Journal, True Expression:

• Sangha Treasure: Life as an Instrument of Peacemaking
• MeditateNYC
• Heaven and Earth: Precepts and Taxes

Peace Practice: Choosing Peace

Any time is a fine time to pay attention to intention. How does the changing of a season, any reminder of impermanence, connect us to our heartfelt aspiration?

The practice of mindfulness, especially while sitting or walking, offers a concrete way to check in with intention and how it relates with changing feelings, thoughts, and sensations.

Specifically, when encountering difficulties, notably stress, how can we choose to meet the thoughts and feelings with an intention to connect, communicate and care? Right there, in the intention itself. This moment of choice, this path of peace, is a practice of acknowledging one's experience and then meeting whatever is happening right now with kindness and compassion.

Here's how the practice works:

Choosing Peace --- Connect, Communicate, Care

1. CONNECT: Whenever distressing/uncomfortable feelings or sensations arise, ask:

What am I thinking and feeling right now?

Try to be concrete with this and limited in scope, for instance:
Anxious, mind racing, angry, out of control. I've got to get out of here!

2. COMMUNICATE: After you realize the thoughts and feelings, ask:

Where in my body do I experience these?

For example:
Heart racing, palms sweating.

Offer yourself time to breathe into these areas, listening deeply.

3. CARE: Now ask,

What would help me to choose peace right now?

For example:
Breathe, slow down and breathe.

This might be followed by:
Love you.

Become aware of where you experience that sensation of loving or being loved. This might inspire you to keep breathing into this part of your body, deepening an experience of this sensation.

Pay attention to how these feelings and thoughts arise in relationship. Does interacting with certain people bring up these feelings and thoughts? Certain environments?

As you explore and let go of the mindstates fixated on judging good and bad, right and wrong, you can transform unskillful habits into the means of awakening, of naturally choosing peace, which is vibrant and fully functioning in harmony with everyone and everything.

Try it out and let's share what we discover. Feel free to write to the bpfny elist and share your impressions. As we practice together, may our loving steps reveal the marvelous path, which benefits all beings.

in peace,
Judy

Judy Seicho Fleischman
Coordinator, BPF/NY