Coogee Buddhist Group

Silly Season Survival Kit

On Tue, 10 December, 2013 - 20:28
Dhammalata's picture
Dhammalata
Hi Coogee Meditators

Mindfulness of Breathing this week.

Meditation can be an excellent way to keep a pilot light of steadiness throughout ‘silly season’. There are so many demands of our time and resources over the lead up to Christmas and New Years; the perceived need to buy gifts, make plans for holidays and relative functions, etcetera, etcetera………………

So just being steady, holding a sense of perspective and balance throughout this time when it’s easy to be pushed and pulled by people and events is quite a trick. Even the management of Christmas Day can be an art if we want to do it with poise and moderation and not be swept into over-eating, drinking and mindless consumerism.

Creating time to contact yourself and stay in touch with your deeper aspirations through this time can be a lovely practice for those of us interested in meditation. Honouring ourselves enough to find spaces to meditate could be a really awesome thing to do and then consciously take the fruits and momentum of the practice into the way you engage with this season.

Metta is is a hugely appropriate quality to have in abundance around this time; thinking and behaving generously and kindly toward all we meet; a sort of secret Santa Claus giving out expressions of kindness wherever we go. Couple this with awareness of the situations we find ourselves in so that we make clear minded decisions about how we manage our time and resources and you’ve got a wicked silly season survival kit!

Try to bring it to practical day to day decisions: do I need to spend that money on that gift, that culinary item in order to practice kindness or it is a blind habit? Do I need to drink that much (or at all) just because others are?

There are no black and white answers to any of these things; that’s the beauty and challenge of mindfulness and metta practice – every situation in life is an opportunity to creatively grow and develop in.

Hope you can join us on Thursday night

My thinking at this stage is just to keep going with our Thursday nights (even boxing day) to help us keep our pilot lights burning

Much metta

Dharmalata

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Vimalasara's picture
Please could you share this on the eight step recovery space.