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Dear Still Water Friends,

This Thursday Evening, January 26, 2006, after our meditation period, we will practice the Five Touchings of the Earth, a guided movement meditation created by Thich Nhat Hanh that can help ground us in our personal histories, our collective histories, and in the relationships that now engage us.

In our program, we will focus especially on the fourth touching which is about transmitting love to those close to us:

In gratitude and compassion, I bow down and transmit my energy to those I love.

All the energy I have received I now want to transmit to my father, my mother, everyone I love, and all who have suffered and worried because of me, and for me.

I know I have not been mindful enough in my daily life. I also know that those who love me have had their own difficulties. I see that they have suffered because they were not lucky enough to have an environment that encouraged their full development, and I feel compassion for their suffering. I transmit my energy to my beloved ones: my mother, my father, my brothers, my sisters, my husband, my partner, my wife, my daughter, my son; to the family of friends I have created around me; and to the husband, wife, partner, and children I may have in the future.

I transmit my energy so that their pain will be relieved, so they can smile and feel the joy of being alive. I want all of them to be healthy and joyful. I know that when they are happy, I will also be happy. I no longer feel resentment towards any of them. I pray that all ancestors in my blood and spiritual families will focus their energies toward each of them, to protect and support them. I know that I am not separate from them. I am one with those I love.

For me, one of the most powerful parts of this Touching is the short sentence "I no longer feel resentment towards any of them." The teaching is that we can truly begin to love only when we give up our resentments.

I think of anger as being like thunder - when it is present you know it is there, and your attention is drawn to it. Resentment, however, is like water seeping into the beams. It is quiet, easily ignored, and insidious. It may be unnoticed until the beams rot and the house collapses.

In our daily life resentments are born when another person, even someone we are close to, acts in ways which we believe harm us or others, and we hold it against them. And continue to hold it against them, cherishing our spite. Implicitly we attribute to them a "self" that intends to hurt others. They, or at least part of them, then become the enemy, someone, or something, separate from us.

If we are not mindful of the resentments in us, if we don't learn how to reverse the process, deconstructing the evil "selves" we have created for others, the resentments grow and cause suffering both for ourselves and for those we resent.

For me, the teachings on letting go of our resentments are one of the greatest gifts of mindfulness practice. To let go of our resentments means to live without the desire to get even or to punish. It frees us to love fully.

Letting go of our resentments, however, doesn't mean to let go of our common sense or wisdom. It doesn't mean to not protect ourselves and others from physical and emotional harm. It simply means to let go of the stories we are constantly creating in which we attribute to others (and ourselves) evilness, meanness, or other inherent negative characteristics. Rather than the stories, we rely more on our eyes of compassion. We become more sensitive to the ignorance and suffering that underlies destructive (or self-destructive) behavior.

You are invited to join us this Thursday for our meditation period, the Five Touchings of the Earth, and our discussion on how love and resentment have interacted in our lives.

The best times to join us on this Thursday evening are:

You may also enjoy reading the William Blake poem, A Poison Tree, provided below. It was originally called "On Christian Forbearance."

Warm wishes,

Mitchell Ratner
Senior Teacher

A Poison Tree, by William Blake
(A copy of Blake's notebook sketch for the poem, completed in 1794, is below, followed by the text.)

A poison tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine -

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.