9/27/24: Today, I proposed to the group that we slow down our reading pace even more so by making this a book study. That is, we will read a few paragraphs out loud at a time and then discuss them together. This approach allows us to delve deeper into the material, as there is a lot to absorb. Given everyone’s eagerness to learn this path and deepen their knowledge and practice, I am structuring this in this way as a study group. This study may extend until June or even beyond, but the key is that we learn together by sharing together. By reflecting more, asking questions, and engaging in discussions, we can truly come to a depth of understanding.
***You are most welcome to join us at any point in our study. We only covered a few pages today and most likely that is how it will be moving forward.
Today’s meeting, we did refer to a few items from the Introduction, but our time was spent starting to read Chapter 1: Step 1-Skillful Understanding. The first section being “Understanding Cause and Effect.” We left off on approximately page 29. I’m reading on a Kindle so I’m not entirely sure if that is the page number.
I had forgotten to turn on the summary feature in Zoom so I am going by my memory as what we discussed with a few notes that I managed to take:
- It’s always our choice in what we feel, think or do.
- We cannot rely on what is outside of us to make us happy nor blame outside of ourselves.
- We have to take responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
- When we can be alone, we can free the mind through our mindfulness practice.
We will resume our study on Friday, October 11th at 12 pm Central Time. We will be staring with the paragraph:
Skillful actions are those that create the causes for happiness, such as actions motivated by loving-friendliness and compassion. Any action that comes from a mind not currently filled with greed, hatred, or delusion brings happiness to the doer and to the receiver. Such an action is, therefore, skillful or right.
Gunaratana, Henepola. Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha’s Path
………
I posted the folllowing to the Facebook Group before our session today.
FROM OUR BOOK “8 Mindful Steps to Happiness” that we are sharing in the Mindful Book Group. I think we are in for a slow read of this. It brings up so many points to think about:
In anything we do, the first step is to know why we’re doing it. That’s why the Buddha made Skillful Understanding the first step on his path to happiness. He wanted us to understand that the Buddhist path is not some abstract notion of “promising to be good” so that we can get some reward, not some mysterious code of behavior we have to follow to belong to a secret club.
Rather, the Buddha’s path is grounded in common sense and in careful observation of reality. He knew that if we open our eyes and look carefully at our lives, we will understand that the choices we make lead either to happiness or unhappiness. Once we understand this principle thoroughly, we will make good choices, because we do want to be happy.
Gunaratana, Henepola. Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha’s Path (Meditation in Plain English) (pp. 27-28). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.