Articles
6/9 Practice Circle: Letting Go
In the Pali texts, Gotama teaches that one cause of our suffering is our inability to allow and accept our experience the way it is. Because we so desperately want conditions to be the way we want them, despite the realization (or perhaps because of it) that we can’t really control our circumstances in any…
Read More5/26 Practice Circle: New Attitudes of Mindfulness: Gratitude & Generosity
At Practice Circle, we have worked with Jon Kabat Zinn’s Seven Attitudes of Mindfulness: Acceptance, Nonjudging, Nonstriving, Letting Go, Patience, Humor, Trust, and Beginner’s Mind. In their terrific training manual for mindfulness teachers, A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness, Christina Wolf and J. Greg Serpa add three more: Curiosity, Kindness, and Gratitude and Generosity. When Practice…
Read MorePractice Circle 5/12: New Attitudes of Mindfulness: Kindness
At Practice Circle, we have worked with Jon Kabat Zinn’s Seven Attitudes of Mindfulness: Acceptance, Nonjudging, Nonstriving, Letting Go, Patience, Humor, Trust, and Beginner’s Mind. In their terrific training manual for mindfulness teachers, A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness, Christina Wolf and J. Greg Serpa add three more: Curiosity, Kindness, and Gratitude and Generosity. When…
Read MorePractice Circle 4/28: Mindful Self Compassion
We’re fortunate this Sunday evening to have Amy Balentine lead us in Mindful Self Compassion practice! Beside being the principal of the Memphis Center for Mindful Living, Amy is also an SBA board member, and has recently been trained in MSC. Amy Balentine has been a licensed psychologist in Memphis since 2004. She grew up…
Read MorePractice Circle 4/14: New Attitudes of Mindfulness: Curiosity
At Practice Circle, we have worked with Jon Kabat Zinn’s Seven Attitudes of Mindfulness: Acceptance, Nonjudging, Nonstriving, Letting Go, Patience, Humor, Trust, and Beginner’s Mind. In their terrific training manual for mindfulness teachers, A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness, Christina Wolf and J. Greg Serpa add three more: Curiosity, Kindness, and Gratitude and Generosity. Over…
Read MoreA Buddhist Utopia from an Unlikely Source
In the 1890s Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Song of the Cities”, a poem comprising quatrains in which 16 of the chief cities of the British Empire report to London (and/or Queen Victoria). Most of them, it seems, are doing fine. A typical example is Singapore’s contribution :- Hail, Mother ! East and West must…
Read MoreMetta Meditation from Loving-Kindness to Fellow-Feeling
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. – Whitman, “Song of Myself” Four Cardinal Virtues of Buddhism are Metta ‘Loving-Kindness’, Karuna ‘Compassion’, Mudita ‘Empathetic Joy’, and Upekkha ‘Equanimity’. As with all Buddhist virtues, these are to be applied to oneself as well as to others. But one, Metta, seems to…
Read MorePractice Circle 3/24: Relax
I think every contemplative technique I’m aware of involves at least some degree of relaxation. The practices I was taught in MBSR all begin with bringing awareness to areas of tightness and holding in the body and inviting them to relax; the Body Scan, which is the first technique one learns in MBSR, consists of…
Read MoreOur Website Needs Your Help
You have probably noticed something funny going on with the SBA website recently – like the fact that there’s been no new content in months, articles and other content disappeared, and recent comments and forum posts are missing. You probably have been unable to log on to your account. Worst of all, Ted’s podcast, Doug’s…
Read MoreTwo Important (but Rather Overlooked) Episodes in Human History
I Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta — Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion – Samyutta Nikaya 56.11 The End of the Buddha’s First Sermon The Buddha’s First Sermon is a very important event in human history indeed – but fortunately it cannot be said to have been overlooked. In it the Buddha expounds the Middle Way and…
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