This summer I have been gifting myself a weekly learning session with my friends Brian Hoover and Shasta Martinuk who are leading a TaKeTiNa workshop here on Bowen Island. TaKeTiNa is a moving rhythm meditation that provides a learning medium for dealing with questions, inquiries and awareness. In many ways it is like a musical version of the aikido based Warrior of the Heart training that we sometimes offer around Art of Hosting workshops. It is a physical process that seeks to short circuit the thinking mind and bring questions and insights to life. We do this by creating difficult …
Was listening on the beach yesterday to a good talk by Joseph Goldstein about four reflections that bring the mind to dharma. These relections are used by Buddhists to become mindful in everyday life. Mindfulness – individual and collective – is a resource in short supply in the world. A lot of the hosting work I do is about bringing more mindful consciousness to what groups are doing. These four reflections are useful in that respect. From a dharma perspective, the four reflections are: Precious human birth Contemplation of impermanence The law of karma Defects of samsara On their own …
Links I’ve grazed this week. A soldier writes from the front, and from the grave.
My friend Tenneson Woolf sent along a glimpse of the wholeness that is an Art of Hosting gathering. Tenneson and I work a lot together doing these things, and this is the best version of what happens over four days: 1. Arrival. Coming Present. Feeling Shared Purpose. The intention of this first time, often in an evening, is to help people arrive. Show up. Begin to see each other. Begin to see more of themselves. To open participants to being in the event context, in the learning space, and in the community for the next period of time. To begin …
On the eighth ballot in a drama filled election my friend Shawn Atleo won the position of National Cheif of the Assembly of First Nations. He neede 60% of the vote to win and he went several ballots against Perry Bellegarde from Saskatchewan even tying him on one ballot. But in the end he started pulling away and eventually won the vote. Shawn is an amazing speaker and a very thoughtful leader. He is the first National Vhief to also be a hereditary leader and the first NOT to have gone to residential school. He represents at once a new …