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Dear Still Water Friends,

This Thursday evening, we will begin our program with a recitation of the Five Mindfulness Trainings and focus our discussion on the First Training, Reverence for Life:

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

In our program, we will discuss how we could better protect life and what keeps us from doing it. We will begin with answering for ourselves these questions:
In the excerpt below Pema Chodren tells a powerful story about a young warrior who learned from the embodiment of fear how not to be controlled by fear.

You are invited to join us for our meditation, our recitation, and our discussion.

Also, this week only I will be attending the Sunday night Still Water gathering in Columbia (beginning at 6:30) and we will have the same recitation and discussion. You are welcome to attend even if you haven't attended there before. Directions are on our website.

Warm wishes,

Mitchell Ratner
Senior Teacher

From When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron:

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went to fear, prostrated three times, and asked: “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said: “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission. “Then the young warrior said: “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied: “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

This is how it actually works. There has to be some kind of respect for the jitters, some understanding of how our emotions have the power to run us around in circles. That understanding helps us discover how we increase our pain, how we increase our confusion, how we cause harm to ourselves. Because we have basic goodness, basic wisdom, basic intelligence, we can stop harming ourselves and harming others. Because of mindfulness, we see things when they arise. Because of our understanding, we don’t buy into the chain reaction that makes things grow from minute to expansive. We leave things minute. They stay tiny. They don’t keep expanding into World War III or domestic violence. It all comes through learning to pause for a moment, learning not to just impulsively do the same thing again and again. It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.

The result is that we cease to cause harm. We begin to know ourselves thoroughly and to respect ourselves. Anything can come up, anything can walk into our house; we can find anything sitting on our living-room couch, and we don’t freak out. We have been thoroughly processed by coming to know ourselves, thoroughly processed by this honest, gentle mindfulness.