Mangala Shri Bhuti - The Link

Speaker: Aline Gomes. As a member of MSB Brazil, Aline joins her sangha's regular efforts to release crabs and other animals back into the wild. More than 200,000 beings have been freed to date. Today's LINK illuminates the practice of life release as a direct and tangible expression of aspiration and application bodhicitta. Aline describes how saving a life moves practice beyond the theoretical into the living, visceral field of experience. Life release becomes a direct way to cultivate the six perfections: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration and wisdom. In caring for beings on the threshold of death, practitioners encounter the generative qualities of intention and motivation and also directly penetrate the nature of cause and effect.

Speaker: Bob Reid. Bob explores bodhicitta and the heart practice of the four immeasurables. He shares an approach he learned from Pema Chödron that enables him to work with the difficult tendencies of self-aggression and lack of warmth towards his own experience. In this approach, one begins with loving kindness towards oneself instead of loved ones. He further describes how the four links can be supportive in cultivating bodhicitta. The fourth link of prayer has been particularly helpful in cultivating a tender heart of ‘tsewa’- the sincere wish for beings to find peace and liberation. Bob concludes that bodhicitta is the heart of the whole path and therefore reminds us that we can turn our everyday experiences into a paramita practice and thus become a bodhisattva.

Speaker: Sharon Lukert. Sharon explores how the Buddha's teachings on birth, old age, sickness, and death can be brought directly into the lived experience of illness. Sickness brings us into intimate contact with our deepest attachment, which is the body itself. Drawing on her lived experience with Alzheimer's disease, Sharon shares how she has adapted her Dharma practice in response to this diagnosis. As outer cognitive capacities diminish, illness offers a deeper recognition of impermanence, and a tender cultivation of compassion for herself and others. She offers a line from the great Dzogchen master Jigme Lingpa for our contemplation: "Do not place the sickness on your mind, but place your naked intrinsic awareness upon your sickness."

Speaker: Kate Keach. Kate reflects on the challenges of walking the path of daily practice. Following Rinpoche's new ngöndro parameters, she experimented for two months with establishing a consistent daily practice. Kate reads from the journal she kept during that period and shares her three biggest challenges: waiting for inspiration, preferences and concepts, and focusing on just one thing. She acknowledges spiritual friends at MSB who have supported her aspiration to connect with ngöndro and practice to her heart's content.

Speaker: Wendy Conquest. Wendy shares her process of discovering equanimity, the first step toward a mind poised for bodhicitta. The wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings is challenging. It requires acknowledging the equality between ourselves and others in our shared wish for happiness. Authentic concern for all beings is the heart of the practice and the key to dissolving self-centered mind. Through mindful introspection, Wendy was able to shift from equanimity as a concept to directly experiencing it as bodhicitta, allowing her to see beings as they are, expand the heart, and acknowledge the essential equality of all beings.