Weekly Email 10-4-22

Dear Common Ground Friends,

This week we share with you an article and invitation written by Common Ground Dharma Teacher Kyoko Katayama:

A Reservoir of Grief: An Invitation

We love. We care. We cherish.

Yet, the truth of impermanence pervades our lives. We lose our beloved life partner. An old friend succumbs to cancer. We make a difficult decision to euthanize a suffering pet. Sound of gun shots fills our once sweet neighborhood streets. Our cherished blue planet, our Mother Earth, shows us in innumerable ways how the global warming is changing her and our lives.

When we lose that which we cherish, grief is the most human and natural response. Grief is not so much psychological as it is a whole person experience. It is deeply felt in our animal body.

When our grief is fresh and raw, we will learn to hold it with tenderness and patience. Grief can be like a rope burn when the rope is pulled out of a fist. The pain of grief manifests in many ways: sharp, dull, or like a scream that doesn’t want to stop. It is common to experience multiple sensations, from ache in the heart to numbness. When we feel numb and shut down, we will learn to remember our aliveness in time. We can’t make the pain go away, but yes, we learn to hold it with mercy and wisdom in time.

The part of us that can witness the pain, our awareness, is the part that is not touched by pain. Our awareness is the light that illuminates the pain. It’s good to remember that the part of us that knows the pain is itself free of pain. In fact, awareness, when it sees suffering, compassion naturally rises. It is this loving awareness that can hold the pain of grief.

We grieve because we care. We learn to live with the consequence of love so we must bear loss as deeply as we cared. We will learn to trust our pain as we learn to deeply connect with our love. With courage, we trust the pain enough to explore what it has to teach us about what really matter to us in life.

Grief is a human –some would say mammalian—experience. It is universal and traditional cultures have rituals and ceremonies to honor and bear witness to it in the community. Unfortunately, in the West it is too often thought of as an isolated individual experience. An enigma of grief is while it is a universal experience, it can make us feel so alone with it. We are actually never alone in grief. In truth, grief when held in a community, a different level of opening and healing happens.

When we gather together to name our grief, and to bear each other’s grief in a community setting with care and wisdom, the community becomes the large container to hold each other’s grief. We recognize how we are not alone in our grief, that the experience of shared grief connects us to ten thousand others suffering this same sense of loss at this moment, it ripples across the shared reservoir of grief, turning it into an ocean of compassion.

Please join us on Sunday October 30th at 1:30 pm in person at the Dharma Hall at Common Ground for a community ceremony to honor our grief and create a shared reservoir. Of tender compassion.

Kyoko Katayama

Weekly Programs
To view our entire list of programs and to access Zoom links to participate in online programs, please visit the online calendar. 

Weekly Practice Groups

• Sunday mornings, 10:30-11:45am in-person and on Zoom with Mark Nunberg
  • October 9th Mark will be teaching virtually and live-streamed in the dharma hall
  • October 16th taught by Shelly Graf
• Sunday evenings, 7:00-8:30pm in-person with Mark Nunberg
  • October 9th with Shelly Graf
  • October 16th with Ramesh Sairam
• Wednesday evenings, 7:30-9:00pm on Zoom with Shelly Graf
  • October 5th will be held from 5:30 – 7:45 CT in order to include the community at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center.

• First Wednesday of the month: Community Group led by Matthew King and other practice leaders
• Third Wednesday of the month: Monthly Practice Group with Dharma Teachers and Community Leaders

The Practice of Generosity

Continuing in the tradition of Buddhist monasteries in Southeast Asia, all programs at Common Ground are offered free of charge in the spirit of generosity. This offering is possible because of the generosity of people like you—from the Buddha on down to all the people in our community—who contribute their practice, time, and financial resources to support the continuation of the center.

To learn how to support the center and our teachers, visit this page. Let us know if you have any questions.

Current Volunteer Needs 
Please contact Robin Major at robin@commongroundmeditation.org if you are interested in any of these volunteer opportunities:

• Adopt a Cleaning Task for the Common Ground building! Our meditation home is welcoming more traffic these days. If it would feel good for you to pick up a work task and give to the community in this way, please let Robin know a specific time you would like to come in and we can identify a weekly 15 minute cleaning task for you to do.
• Wishlist items: large pot (for over 20 servings), one bookshelf, large high quality wool rugs for the dharma hall at the retreat center, large indoor trees with nice pots.

Community News 

Weekly Tejaniya

When to Detach and When to Accept
When things are good, learn how to
detach from them. When things are not
good, learn how to accept them.

 Thanks to The Daily Tejaniya for this quote

Silver maple outside Common Ground Meditation Center