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CURRENT UPDATE

5/4/2021

 
Easing Awake
​Sangha Update for 
​4 May 2021
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Below is the program for Tuesday's Sangha meeting, and a few messages from the Sangha.

Living Dhammā:
The Spectrum of Awareness
with Doug Kraft
​May 4

Awareness is central to the Buddha’s teaching and practice. Awareness varies over a wide spectrum that becomes more refined as our practice deepens, as shown in this accompanying diagram.
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This evening Doug will lead a discussion based on Chapter 4, “Fluidity of Awareness” of his latest book, Resting in the Waves. A pdf of this chapter is available.

About Sangha:
A Community Discussion
with Doug Kraft and all of us
May 11

Doug will be stepping back as our Guiding Teacher in late June. On this Tuesday he will lead a discussion on the nature of sangha, what role we’d like this sangha to play in our lives, and how to help that come to be. Your input is important.

Mindful Check-In:
Looking at our Meditation Practices
with Doug Kraft
May 18

The Mindful Check-In is an opportunity to talk with others about our own meditation practice and life experience. What does your practice need now? What are your growing edges and what do you think might best support that growth?
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Reflect on these questions and bring your thoughts to our small and large group discussions. Come prepared to scoop up some wisdom from your fellow yogis.

Easing Awake Online Monthly Group
First Fridays

This group serves as a place to meet and share thoughts about our practice and lives. We meet on the first Friday of each month at 4:30pm - 6:00pm US Pacific Time. No registration necessary. You can come any time during this window and leave at any time. Please contact Prashant at billore.prashant@gmail.com for the zoom link and a recurring calendar invite.

Are you getting the Sangha newsletter updates?

Newsletter updates having been coming out each weekend (exception April 13). If you have missed some, please check your spam and see if you can un-spam them. The newsletter is being posted on our website (easingawake.org), so you can pick up any you missed.

And if you still don’t get them, let us know by signing up for it again on the home page of our website and we’ll look further into it. We’ve had some trouble with the newsletter getting spammed, so we’re investigating it on our end as well.

And if you’d rather not get our newsletter, please let us know and we’ll take you off the list.
Thanks.

Sangha Update 4/27/21

4/27/2021

 

Easing Awake
Sangha Update for 27 April 2021

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Below is the program for Tuesday's Sangha meeting, and a few messages from the Sangha.

Mindful Check-in: 
Looking at our Meditation Practices
​ with Doug Kraft April 27

The Mindful Check-In is an opportunity to talk with others about our own meditation practice and life experience. What was your best meditation in the last several weeks? What happened? What was your worst sitting? How do you regard both of these kinds of sittings? What would it be like to look at these with the same kindness and peacefulness?
 
Please bring your responses and thoughts to our small and large group discussions.

Host: Claudia Carey
Zoom Host: Will Lister

Living Dhammā: The Spectrum of Awareness
​ with Doug Kraft May 4

​Awareness is central to the Buddha’s teaching and practice. This evening Doug will lead a discussion based on Chapter 4, “Fluidity of Awareness” of his latest book, Resting in the Waves. A pdf of the chapter is available here.

About Sangha:
A Community Discussion
with Doug Kraft and all of us
May 11

Doug will be stepping back as our Guiding Teacher in late June. On this Tuesday he will lead a discussion on the nature of sangha, what role we’d like this sangha to play in our lives, and how to help that come to be. Your input is important.

Your Response Requested
Easing Awake's 501(c)(3) Status

The Board is reconsidering Easing Awake's 501(c)(3) status and would like to gather some information from sangha members about tax itemization in this 2-question survey. Please click on the link below.

Click here​

Tuesday Evening Sangha
meets at 6:30 pm
Pacific time on Zoom

Find the direct link here:
http://easingawake.org

Sangha Update 4/20/21

4/20/2021

 

Easing Awake

Sangha Update for 20 April 2021

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Below is a letter from Doug, the program for Tuesday's Sangha meeting, and a few messages from the Sangha.

Do We Have a Mind?
or Does Mind Hold Us?

In sangha this week we talked about the nature of the mind. Mind is fundamentally different from any other experience. Indeed, it is the container of all we experience.

It’s been said that mind is like the sky and our experiences are like clouds. On a clear day, the sky is empty. Well, it may appear to be blue, but the color is not the sky itself. The hue is refracted sunlight. The sky contains the air and blue color. But it extends beyond that atmosphere into the endless expanse.

Space contains everything — blue light, clouds, flying birds, the pencil in my hand, the page I write upon. Like empty space, the mind contains all these but is not any of them. It is shunyata — emptiness. Without the empty space of mind, we could know nothing. Without it, we can’t experience anything.

As the mind quiets in meditation, we can see how attention tends to stick to objects — perceptions, people, ideas, feelings, and more. It shrink-wraps around stuff. As the mind relaxes, it becomes less sticky. We begin to notice the empty spaces around our perceptions. Awareness may shift from what we perceive to the awareness itself.

The hand that holds this pencil will disintegrate someday. A hundred years from now there won’t be a trace of it. But the empty space that held it will still be here.

Is awareness like a pencil or hand that comes and goes? Or is it like the sky/mind that goes on forever? Do each of us have our own minds? Or is there one empty mind (shunyata) that we all tap into?​

Figuring out answers to these questions is not important. But relaxing into them with clarity and gentle heartfulness may reveal peace and contentment that has been waiting there all along.

Namaste,
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An Evening of Inquiry: 
The Change Triangle
with Prashant Billore

The Change Triangle is a map, a guide to carry you from a place of disconnection back to your more authentic self. Come hear how Prashant has used Hilary Jacobs Hendel’s exploration of this step-by-step process of getting reacquainted with core emotions to deepen his own meditation practice.

In preparation for Prashant’s talk, you might want to consider some of these questions: What defenses have you used in the past that helped block your core emotions? How do you work with anxiety, shame or guilt? Have you recently opened up to one of your core emotions? How did it make you feel?​
Host: Eli Kramer
Zoom Host: Claudia Carey

Mindful Check-in: 
Looking at our Meditation Practices
with Doug Kraft April 27

The Mindful Check-In is an opportunity to talk with others about our own meditation practice and life experience. What was your best meditation in the last several weeks? What happened? What was your worst sitting? How do you regard both of these kinds of sittings? What would it be like to look at these with the same kindness and peacefulness?
 
Please bring your responses and thoughts to our small and large group discussions.

Living Dhammā:
The Spectrum of Awareness
with Doug Kraft May 4

Awareness is central to the Buddha’s teaching and practice. This evening Doug will lead a discussion based on Chapter 4, “Fluidity of Awareness” of his latest book, Resting in the Waves. A pdf of the chapter is made available in advance. 

Your Response Requested
Easing Awake's 501(c)(3) status

The Board is reconsidering Easing Awake's 501(c)(3) status and would like to get a quick answer from sangha members regarding tax itemization in this 2-question survey. Please click on the link below.​

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZau2sJ5Ii41c_4C8OJQfN1xSje3E2ypy0KwSFd1paOgp6bg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Tuesday Evening Sangha
meets at 6:30 pm
Pacific time on Zoom

Find the direct link here:
http://easingawake.org

Sangha Update 4/6/2021

4/6/2021

 

Easing Awake
Sangha Update for 6 April 2021

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Below is the program for Tuesday's Sangha meeting and a few messages from the Sangha.

An Evening of Inquiry: Freedom Behind our Bars
​with Maureen Sullivan

Maureen Sullivan will share the true story of Jarvis Jay Masters, who lives in solitary confinement on Death Row at San Quentin. In his book, The Buddhist on Death Row, he finds that in the deepest of dark and confining spaces, hearts expand and freedom is found within, always accessible, independent of our circumstances. What can we learn from this man, as burdened by pain, loss, and regret, he committed himself to practicing Buddhist principles and meditation? While living in solitary confinement, he found and continues to find, peace, equanimity and generosity through his journey.

Host: Jean Biegun

Zoom Host: Judy Bell

Living Dhamma
April 13
with Doug Kraft

Awareness arises from the point of contact between an object and our organism. From that raw experience we extrapolate outward to discern what created the sensation and inward to guess what the mind is that is having the experience. When we look closely at the experience, the mind is a lot more fluid than we’d like to think. This evening Doug will lead a discussion based on Chapter 3, “Fluidity of Mind” of his latest book, Resting in the Waves. A pdf of the chapter can be found here. 
Tuesday Evening Sangha
meets at 6:30 pm
Pacific time on Zoom

Find the direct link here:
http://easingawake.org



Easing Awake Dana

The Easing Awake Sangha supports itself through Dana, a long-established Eastern tradition and practice of generosity. Teachers and guest speakers who enrich our practices and our sangha gatherings are supported through these free will donations offered by sangha members.  Dana also covers whatever administrative costs the sangha incurs as a non-profit organization. 

The practice arose in cultures in which social prestige is more about how much people give than how much they have. It’s the opposite of Western capitalism where value is placed more on what we keep rather than what we give. When we don’t assign a value to an experience, people often unconsciously think it’s not worth much or we would have put a price on it. The suggested price is one that expresses the value you derive from the experience within the context of what your budget allows. We are grateful for your involvement in the sangha and whatever you can offer.  Please let us know if you have questions about Dana.

Here is information about how to share your Dana with Easing Awake:

Dana Links: Easing Awake website 
https://www.easingawake.org/dana-links.html
(You can send dana via PayPal to dana@easingawake.com)

Mailing Address: Mail a check to
Easing Awake, 1126 McClaren Drive, Carmichael, CA 95608

We are grateful for your participation and look forward to sharing more sangha gatherings with you.

At the Moment

3/9/2021

 

Easing Awake
Sangha Update for 9 March 2021

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​It’s time for me to begin pulling back from some aspects of Easing Awake. There’s no precipitating crisis. Just normal aging. My memory is not as sharp as it once was. When I work at a pace that was comfortable for me years ago, I tire more rapidly and recover more slowly. Several months ago a medical scan revealed some brain shrinkage. “Nothing abnormal for your age,” the doctor reassured me. I know the human brain is typically at its maximum around the age of 35. Still, to have empirical evidence of decreasing gray-matter is sobering.

I love our sangha and our members. I love discussing our meditation practices and our insights into enriched living. I don’t plan to disappear. I want to stay engaged. 

However, I don’t enjoy preparing long dharma talks. (Besides, most of what I have to say about large topics is articulated well enough in the four books I’ve penned on meditation.) And I take less pleasure in working with the institutional machinations necessary to support our sangha community.

Outside the sangha, I have two young grandchildren who won’t be young for long. I want more time with them. Erika and I want to explore this new phase of our life together. And I want more time for my own practice. When I have quiet space, my spirits become quite spacious.

So I want to step back but not disappear. I want to be available for mentoring and support to all of you. I love sharing the dhammā. I want to support some of the teachers that are emerging amongst us. But I don’t think it’s wise for me to be the de facto CEO of our sangha or put as many hours into sangha administration.

Starting this summer, I’ll pull back from some areas of the sangha. I don’t know yet all the implications of this. I’ve been discussing it with the Board and I’d like to talk about it with all of you this coming Tuesday. I look forward to working together to envision the next phase of our journey together

Namaste,
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Staying Connected in a Storm

3/20/2020

 
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Click here for Vol 6, No 2

Impeachment Contemplations

1/4/2020

 
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Click here for Vol. 6, No.1

The Year Before Us, Together

12/6/2019

 
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Click here for Vol. 5, No. 8

Priority for Nothing

11/22/2019

 
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Click here for Vol. 5, No  7

Welcoming the Mind

10/1/2019

 
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Click here for Vol. 5, No. 6
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