Wise Mindfulness_7: Community

Today's exploration is the seventh path factor of wise mindfulness and what bubbles up from the sixth path factor of wise effort as belonging, is community. Wise mindfulness in community. We get to see how much of ourselves we accept when we are in community with others. So wise mindfulness applies to the community. We depend on the people who truck in our food, the people who grow the food to bring to market. We are still members of community. We are a human community.

Transcript

So welcome to another week of exploring the Eightfold Path in a rather untraditional format of understanding.

Three weeks ago we started with wise view and I illustrated how the meaning that we give to what is happening creates a reality.

So to bring care to how we're seeing,

Taking a backward step and checking our perception.

And from view we traveled into wise intention or purpose.

Having a sense of purpose and practice is like having a flashlight in the dark.

It helps us make decisions by casting light,

What to focus on and what to do.

And wise speech I framed as healing speech.

When we look at speech we often think of our speech with others but rarely do we look at how we speak to ourselves.

A lot of times our internal speech can be harsh or critical and when we haven't met the unhealed parts of ourselves,

The unhealed pain from within,

It often comes out as speech that lacks openness,

That lacks understanding and doesn't have care and reconciliation at its core.

Wise action was next and I framed it as reconciliation,

Actions that reconcile.

The actions we take are in an effort to reconcile and restore ourselves to wholeness.

And wholeness,

It doesn't have an end point.

It's a direction.

So action is more like self retrieval in that.

And from action we explored livelihood and instead of looking at livelihood as a vocation or a career path,

I suggested that wise livelihood has more to do with agency.

Agency is a kind of extension of action.

It has momentum.

It's about how you are creating the future.

Then we explored wise effort and I proposed that wise effort was putting effort into cultivating our belonging,

Presenting our authentic imperfect self to the world and accepting all parts,

No part left out.

And just to say that all of these previous talks are available on Insight Timer if you missed any and you're interested in exploring them.

And today's exploration is on the seventh path factor of wise mindfulness.

And what bubbles up from the effort of belonging is community.

Wise mindfulness in community.

We get to see how much of ourselves we accept when we're in community with others.

It's interesting.

As Brené Brown points out,

She writes,

True belonging doesn't require you to change who you are.

It requires you to be who you are.

Be who you are.

So in community,

Who are we being?

Last week,

I shared the story of the prickly porcupine in our Wednesday group and I'm going to share it again because maybe you'll see yourself in the story.

It was the coldest winter ever,

So cold that many animals froze to death.

In an effort to save themselves from this icy fate,

The porcupines decided to gather together to fend off the chill.

They huddled close to each other,

Covered and protected from the elements and warmed by their collective body heat.

But their prickly quills proved to be a bit of a problem in close proximity.

They poked and stabbed each other,

Wounding their closest companions.

The warmth was wonderful,

But the mutual needling became increasingly uncomfortable.

Eventually,

They began to distance themselves from one another,

Scattering in the forest only to end up alone and frozen.

Many died.

It soon became clear that they would have to choose between a solitary death in the frigid wilderness and the discomfort of being needled by their companions' quills when they band together.

Wisely,

They decided to return to the huddle.

They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their fellows,

In order to benefit from the collective heat they generated as a group.

In this way,

They were able to survive.

So wise mindfulness applies to community.

We wouldn't have a new practice space if members in our community didn't step forward and put in some effort to explore a mid-valley location.

That's what happened.

Thank you.

We have school communities and senior communities and book clubs and knitting groups and painting groups and dancing and cooking classes.

We all gather around music and nature and spoken word and film festivals and advocacy groups.

At the very least,

We have to engage at the grocery store and the bank and the post office.

We have to speak on the phone to people to help us with our insurance or our technology or our banking questions.

We depend on the people who truck in our food,

The people who grow the food to bring to market.

We depend on people to put on our snow tires,

To service our cars,

To stock the shelves at the grocery store.

So even if you don't think that you're involved in your community,

Like maybe you're not one of those that will go to the town council meetings or you're more at home a lot and have more alone time,

We're still a member of a community.

We're a human community.

We all,

Or most of us anyway,

Breathe the same way.

We all use the toilet.

Some people have more hair in some places and less hair in other places.

And we forget all the time about our human community.

We often only bring effort to our tribe,

Right?

Our people.

Forgetting that all people are our people.

So wise mindfulness circles back to wise view in a way.

It sort of zooms out so that you're including more and more in awareness.

And when we zoom out,

There is absolutely bound to be other beings in the view.

Absolutely.

And we bump into each other like the porcupines.

We will needle our companions and wound our friends.

There will be misunderstandings and discomfort.

At times it will be difficult.

But the benefit of community to our life and well-being is,

It's indisputable.

I mean I suppose you could homestead and grow your own food and choose to live life off the grid and be completely self-sufficient.

But when you think about it,

Are you really?

There's a dependence on decent soil to grow food.

A dependence on the sun and the rain and the insects and the birds.

They're our community too.

We talked last week about wise effort and how it's really the effort we put forward to include all parts of ourselves.

To cultivate deep acceptance.

And with wise mindfulness and how it relates to community,

We take our belonging to ourselves and we share it.

We deliver our cargo to the world as Elder Melodama Somay would say.

We bring our gifts to our community.

And you know,

When engaging in community,

Maybe it isn't comfortable for you.

I had this story that I was an introvert and as long as that story of introvert was at play,

I would find myself in a corner at a party and stay at a distance from groups.

But when I drop this label of introvert,

Which I have to actively do,

Then I can relax and be myself.

I can be in the middle of a room,

Engaging in active listening,

Being really present with people while still feeling the energy that identifies as an introvert.

It's a really buzzy energy.

It's kind of like a thousand bees are trying to get out through my skin.

That's what it feels like for me.

But inevitably,

I will get to bear witness or take part in some beautiful exchange.

And all it took was showing up in community.

By nature,

We're interconnected.

We're social.

Our consciousness is joined.

That's how this world has been created.

And in the absence of experiencing community,

There's loneliness and isolation and suicide and depression.

In the early days of creating community at one of my spiritual homes of Spirit Rock in Woodacre,

California,

A community member wrote this,

Communities are places where each member can give something,

Where they can contribute something that they feel especially able to give,

Something they're good at,

The gift of each member is valued by the whole community and all gifts are unique and individual.

The gifts that community give back to each member is that place of connection.

Being who we are called forth with,

Beings who are called forth to love and respect and want the best for each other and ourselves.

This is why relationship essential to human life as is the air that we breathe.

So as we move in community,

May we bring mindfulness as our companion.

We bring the four foundations of mindfulness,

Mindfulness of body,

What it feels like to be with others,

Mindfulness of our feelings and mind states and mindfulness of our connection with the people we're interacting with,

Just like me,

All the same.

We listen actively,

Actively listening to hear their gifts.

This is from Coretta Scott King.

The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.

So thank you for your consideration of this broad understanding of wise mindfulness.