Enhance your Practice in your own environment

Join in our Connected Practice for Wesak 18-29 May 2013. Anyone who wishes to participate is invited join us in a commitment for a period of connected and enhanced practice. We will undertake this in our daily lives, whether at home or in the workplace, with the silent support of knowing that we are not practising alone. We intend to raise the tempo of our practice for the period around Wesak, increasing our capacity to be aware in our daily lives. A bell will be rung at noon every day, when all participants will pause and be joined in the silence that the bell marks. Members of our Sangha may use this opportunity in different and creative ways.

For an informal chat about connected practice or to join the group contact Hilary Richards at hilary@hilaryandclive.co.uk

Connected Practice for Wesak

Buddhists find practising as a sangha to be essential, but it is not always easy for people to come together. The WCF Practice Committee has agreed an experiment to link practitioners at different locations to practise within a virtual sangha over the forthcoming celebrations of Wesak.

Wesak celebrates the Enlightenment, Birth and Death of the Buddha. It is traditionally held over the last full moon in May. We are using this celebration to create a “Connected Practice for Wesak” opportunity. The WCF Cardiff group has experience of this kind of event and we are adapting their model. The objective is to see if members find this supportive and helpful and whether setting up the connection makes any difference to practice. This year Wesak falls on Saturday May 25th. The WCF has four retreats around this time - Sophie is leading a weekend in Cornwall 18-19 May; Jake is leading a Silent Illumination Retreat in Devon 22-29 May, Hilary is leading a Wesak Weekend at Hourne Farm, Sussex 24-26 May and Fiona is leading a Wesak Day in Derbyshire.

Participants outside these retreats will practise together at specified times during the period 18th – 29th May, each person in their own environment. Suggested times are 6.30 to 7.30am and 8.00 to 9.00pm but individuals can adapt to personal circumstances. Those wishing to practise for a whole day or more could follow a retreat schedule. A “Mindfulness Bell” will be rung at noon each day.

The type of practice will be up to each individual and depend on personal circumstances and choice. Each person will need to decide which day(s) they wish to participate and what they want to do. This could be any type of practice, for example: extended sitting, extra sitting, mindful walking, chanting, prostrations.

After deciding on an appropriate practice, participants should let Hilary know they are participating. They can discuss their intentions with her if necessary. With consent, we will create an email list of participants so we can share.

As this is an experiment, the WCF will want to find out what has gone on. Hilary will contact everyone who has joined in at the end of the connected practice period and ask for feedback. There will then be an anonymous evaluation of the project so to see what to do, or not to do, next time. The report will be sent to the WCF Committee and to all participants, and may be published on the website or in New Chan Forum.

Choosing the Practice

The full moon of Wesak is on May 25th. The connected practice period will begin on Saturday May 18th near the beginning of the Cornwall Wesak celebration and end on the morning of 29th May at the end of the Bala Brook Silent Illumination retreat.

As we all know, continuing practice in daily life is not easy. Hours can go by without any kind of attempt at being mindful. It's hard to find time to meditate. This is our challenge, to integrate our practice into the confusion and business of our daily lives. The connected practice period will nurture the discipline do some small thing each day to bring us back to the moment and to awareness. The key thing when choosing your practice is to choose achievable activities that are appropriate for you as the person you are right now, rather setting impossibly high standards for 'the Buddhist you think you ought to be'.

To start, first ask yourself what will make a difference. Then you could make a commitment to some of the things suggested below. For example, you could:

• Meditate once or twice daily through the period.
• Walk to the car with awareness.
• Pause to take three mindful breaths at moments during the day / take a breath before answering the phone at work.
• Create a space in which to drink a mindful cup of tea.
• Set your watch to go off every hour, and just take a breath when it does.
• Go for a mindful walk every day.
• Take extra care with a challenging relationship at work / home.
• Commit random acts of kindness (to yourself or others)
• Set your phone each day for a moment of collective silence at noon when the daily bell is rung.

Ringing the Bell

Rob Stratton (Jan 2011)

What happens when the bell is rung at noon? No-one hears it. Yet ‘ringing the bell’ creates an opportunity for connection. When I ring the bell, I am aware I am not alone in my practice. That other members of the Cardiff Sangha are ‘listening’ in. Suddenly, in a moment of time, we are connected in our daily lives, in a way that perhaps we haven't noticed by just meeting twice a month on Wednesdays. Yet how are we connected? I am the one who physically rings - and hears - the bell. But that’s not the important bit. The important bit is to be ‘listening’, to be aware of the bell being rung.

It doesn’t matter that we can’t hear the bell. It is the silence the ring marks, the sound we all hear, that connects us. The bell merely creates a time and space that draws our attention to the silence. All we need to do is listen to the silence. Indeed, if I am not near a bell at 1pm, I ring the bell by taking three deep breaths instead. That's still 'ringing the bell'!

So how is this 'walking through the snow alone'?

Eddy's intention for this period of Enhanced Practice was for "each of us to use it as an opportunity to develop our own enhancement - the main idea being to learn to rely on ourselves for discipline." Yet, here we are, sitting together, practising together, and even listening to the bell at noon together.

Even though others may even be listening, I still have to find my own path through the snow, to develop my own practice. But the bell reminds me I am not the only one finding my way. This naturally raises compassion for our shared efforts. I find myself aware of Peter and Paul, who have to fit practice into a busy family life. I don't have that struggle. Superficially, I might not know Luke very well, but that doesn't matter when I ring the bell. We are each, in our own way, learning to listen, and our shared effort connects us.

To take this a step further, any act, washing up, walking down the road, done mindfully, is also ‘ringing the bell’. If we walk with mindful attention, we go silent. When we go silent, we become aware of our walking.

As we practice mindfulness we become aware of how walking, and the bell, are inseparable from the silence. Like how the letters on a page are connected to the paper they are written on. Reading, we don't notice the paper. Yet it’s impossible to separate the letters from the paper, for they are just smudges of ink soaked into the paper. Perhaps the silence is like this, a space from which everything - all phenomena - arises: the sound of the bell, the bell itself, including ourselves, whatever we are. Perhaps none of it could exist if it wasn't for the silence.

The more we can surrender to this silence, the more connected we feel, and the less alone we are with our difficulties. Furthermore, silence, found through mindfulness, helps us take our difficulties less personally.