Reflective Meditation

Gathered notes

Meditation and reflection and conversation together.
- Every once in a while, share your experience with a trusted friend or teacher.
- Group talking informs and cross-fertilises understanding.
The path develops slowly, for most people, most of the time.
All things arise from causes and conditions.
- Let this bring more kindness and curiosity to yourself and others.
- When we lessen the sting, we spend less time trying to avoid it.
- Freedom lies in perceiving this, not trying to escape it.
- Notice the causes and conditions that contribute to your different states.
- Notice the causes and conditions that lead to the three poisons: greed, anger, delusion; grasping, aversion, ignorance.
Find relief from yearning to be different, gain curiosity about how things are.
- Learn how to hold more complexity and contradictions.
Listen to yourself while listening to others. Let others influence you, but not dominate.
Learn from what happened. Do subtle experiments, not big changes.
People’s high ideals fuel their shame.
Looks for the seeds of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity.
Softness, gentleness, friendliness lead to relaxation, calm.

Power needs its buddies: boundaries and compassion.
- Peer groups often hope to equalise power, but often it’s just drive underground instead.
- Embedded in power dynamics is competition and scarcity.
Let other view influence you but not dominate your perspective.
- With receptive listening we grow our capacity to listen to ourselves while listening to others.
Feministic. Gentleness, receptivity, relational approach, inclusivity, responsible and transparent use of power, accountable collaboration, respectful feedback.
Seeing conditionality changes how we perceive ourself and others, how life unfolds.
- All things arise from myriad, ever-changing, causes and conditions.
- Freedom doesn’t lie outside conditionality, but in perceiving it.
Ride the waves of who and what is going on as skilfully as we can.
When we’re feeling out of sorts, bring gentleness and kindness.

Hold principles and teachings as foundations, but don’t let them override your individual experience.
Be nudged towards self-honesty, kindness, and care during meditation.
Have a safe, nutritious, space in meditation. Somewhere that arises with ease, is stabilising, comforting.
The language of experience draws us closer to what happened.
- Learning this language gives us more choice over our actions.
Notice the conditions that contribute to different states.
- We being to look upon our own, and others’, life experiences with more kindness and curiosity.
- Apathy, indifference, and hostility get worn away.
All experience is a story.
- Examine your stories, develop a nuanced relationship with them.
Every once in a while, share your experience with a trusted friend or teacher.

Learn from what happened. Do subtle experiments, not big changes.
- Transformations that arise out of care and friendliness can be more subtle.
Retreats can have a light schedule that is grounding.
Try meditating in various emotional states.
The Middle Way: bounce back and forth to find what works for you.
Sometimes the best choice is to press on, sometimes it’s to stop.
Become more friendly with whatever’s happening.
- “Free-range meditation”: give your experience a big field to roam in.
People’s high ideals fuel their shame.
In meditation we let go of a major desire: to take action.
Be relatively still. Something calmer develops.

It’s hard to value our experience when we’re always trying to change it.
Journal about your meditation. It’s impossible to remember it all, or most. Just “let it rip” when writing.
Talk about your meditation. Group talking informs and cross-fertilises understanding.
We all have skin in the game when talking about something that affects us.
Find relief from yearning to be different, gain curiosity about how things are.
Become friends with the hindrances.
Learn how to hold more complexity and contradictions.
- Not transcend daily challenges, but be with them with more awareness.
- When we lessen the sting, we spend less time trying to avoid it.
Beware of false dichotomies, like spiritual or psychological.

Dharma teachings intertwine, are inseparable. But we separate them to see each one more clearly.
The three marks of existence: we seem to know them, then keep forgetting them.
The three conceits (higher than, lower than, equal to) arise from and reinforce the sense of self.
Dukkha: vulnerability, dissatisfaction, imperfection, hurt, loss, stress.
A possible fourth mark: needs to survive and thrive.
We don’t go beyond the three poisons, we just become more aware of their conditions.
Eightfold path samma: right, useful, appropriate, helpful, skillful.
Letting our meditative attention roam freely can make it more easy to settle and focus attention.
Explore the tension before opposing factors.
The four-corner argument: true; false; both true and false; neither true nor false.
- The last one is away from judgement into just being.

We sow the seeds of kindness, gentleness, care, curiosity.
The path develops slowly, for most people, most of the time.
Wisdom and confidence that develops slowly is more reliable and steadfast.
Looks for the seeds of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity.
Softness, gentleness, friendliness lead to relaxation, calm.

Added 2024-06-30.