Judy Lief

Buddhism – Shambhala – Profound Treasury – Making Friends with Death

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Blog 9: In All Activities Train with Slogans

May 20, 2014 By Judy Lief

A year of Atisha Slogans

9. In all activities train with slogans.
Pretty much anything we do can be joined with slogan practice. If you study and memorize the slogans, you will find that slogans appropriate to the occasion will pop up on their own. You can find ways to remind yourself, as well. You could keep a set of slogan cards on your desk, which you could buy or create in your own style. You could read and study the many commentaries on the practice.

Once you understand the underlying point—to increase loving-kindness and concern for others and to decrease self-absorption and ego fixation—you can make up our own slogan. One suited to where you feel most stuck.

Slogan practice is practical. It applies to everything that we do. There is guidance for meditation practice as well as for all the hassles of daily life. Slogan practice applies to the times when we drop our guard, and we see where we are really coming from. It applies to how we are, as opposed to how we think we should be. The point of mind training is not to smooth everything out, but to work with what is not smooth. It is to work with what is challenging, embarrassing, intense, and confusing. Slogan practice is an uncovering process. It includes everything!  In whatever we do, it is possible to flip our perspective from self to other.

Today’s Practice

Where do you place the boundaries of your practice? Where do you shut it down? Choose one situation outside that boundary to include in your slogan practice.

 

Upcoming Events: Profound Treasury Retreat

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8th Annual PROFOUND TREASURY RETREAT at Saco, Maine 

June 12-24 at Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

 

Living Dharma: The Joy and Challenge of Joining Practice and Action

 

 

“Mindfulness practice is not just about what is happening to you individually and personally—it is about how much you are going to transmit your sanity and your insanity to the rest of the world.”—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

 

“If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”  Charlie Parker

 

Living Dharma

The Joy and Challenge of Joining Practice and Action

 

In these times of turmoil, it’s important to reflect on ways to bring our lifestyle and our actions into greater accord with the dharma.   If your life does not reflect your practice, what is the point of meditation and study?

 

The time spent in sitting meditation is much less than the time spent going about our everyday lives. Therefore, postmeditation practice is essential. The combination of meditation and postmeditation makes our practice complete—running through our entire life rather than something we turn on and off.

 

In this class, we will focus on the challenges of living a dharmic life, and how they are addressed in the three stages of the Tibetan Buddhist path.  We will work with the foundational or hinayana guidelines for living life with simplicity and contentment. We will study mahayana teachings on how to activate compassion and benefit others. Finally, we will explore vajrayana teachings on how to engage more freshly and spontaneously by cutting hesitation and fixed views.

 

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Topics include:

The three essentials: discipline, meditation, and wisdom

Refraining from harm: working with the five precepts

Being of benefit: practicing the paramitas

Overcoming hesitation: engaging with the four karmas

Obstacles, mistakes, and fresh starts

 

From Judy’s Blog

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Judy Lief • 802-598-5832 • judy@judylief.com