2015 Monthly Schedule

PLEASE NOTE: We now meet on the second Tuesday of each month in Room #1 at the Northbrae Community Church in Berkeley, CA. The group facilitator listed below is subject to change with short notice.

Tuesday, January 13: Walt Opie
Tuesday, February 10: Walt Opie
Tuesday, March 10: Walt Opie
Tuesday, April 14: Walt Opie
Tuesday, May 12: Walt Opie
Tuesday, June 9: Walt Opie

Upcoming Schedule

Tuesday, December 16 - NO GROUP due to Family Emergency

Tuesday, December 23 - NO GROUP due to Holidays

Tuesday, December 30 - Walt Opie & Special Ritual
Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - Walt Opie

The Four Principles of Mindful Transformation (taken from The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield)

RAIN (technique for looking at our difficulties):

1 – Recognize (pause & step out of denial for true freedom from suffering—name and inwardly bow to our experience—“ah, the judging mind…”)

2 – Accept (relax & open to the facts before us, not passive; Say, “This too.”)

3 - Investigate [body, feeling tone, mind & dharma] (also called "seeing deeply"; Jack Kornfield says, “Whenever we are stuck, it is because we have not looked deeply enough into the nature of the experience.”)

4 - Non-Identify (notice how we identify it as “me” or “mine” + awareness)

Upcoming Schedule

Tuesday, July 8 - Walt Opie
Tuesday, July 15 - Jeff Lindemood
Tuesday, July 22 - Walt Opie
Tuesday, July 29 - Walt Opie
Tuesday, August 5 - Walt Opie
Tuesday, August 12 - Walt Opie
Tuesday, August 19 - Walt Opie
Tuesday, August 26 - Walt Opie

Nothing Extra by Joan Halifax

[This is a quote from last week's talk that seemed to resonate with people. -w.o.]

Nothing Extra by Joan Halifax (Zen teacher):

"Some years ago, walking across the Himalayas, I realized I would never make it over those mountains unless I let go of everything extra. That meant I had to lighten up my mind as well as my overloaded daypack. It all came down to one simple sentence: Nothing extra! Just as these two legs carried me across mountains, those same words carry me through complicated days. They always remind me to let go. They also remind me of the weightlessness and ease of a whole and dedicated heart." 

(From "Being With Dying," by Joan Halifax Shambhala Publications, 2008. Image below by AniMac.)

A Few Quotes from the Last Talk

Here are a few quotes from last week that people really liked and requested:

From As Bill Sees It:

“We recovered alcoholics are not so much brothers in virtue as we are brothers in our defects, and in our common strivings to overcome them.” –letter by Bill W. in 1946 

From Small Boat, Great Mountain by Ajahn Amaro (pg. 91):
Even when we’re getting the axe internally, such as intense waves of greed or waves of fear and anxiety or waves of nostalgia and longing, it’s that gesture of turning towards these experiences and accepting them as they are that allows the heart to be free. True wisdom, far from being beyond the practice of kindness, actually depends on such undiscriminating acceptance of the beautiful and the ugly alike. When we stop running away from things that are apparently painful, even unbearable, and fully engage in the gesture of acceptance and surrender, there is a magical transformation. We transform the so-called difficulty and move into an entirely different state.

Upcoming Schedule

Tuesday, April 22 - Walt Opie

Tuesday, April 29 - Jeff Lindemood

Tuesday, May 6 - Kevin Griffin

Tuesday, May 13 - Walt Opie

Tuesday, May 20 - Walt Opie

Tuesday, May 27 - Walt Opie