These group meditations are free and open to the public. Our time together includes the following:
A thirty-minute guided meditation.
A talk as part of our series Being Medicine: How to Heal Yourself and the World.
About the Being Medicine Series
The Being Medicine series answers the following questions:
• How do we live as medicine so that we offer healing to ourselves and all whom we encounter? Love is the universal healing force, and true love is unconditional and boundless. Learn how to move from judgment, hatred, bitterness, and anger towards having unconditional love for all life without exceptions.
• How do we develop compassion so we can skillfully relate with a balanced mind and an open heart to unpleasant emotions such as fear, anger, hatred, craving, guilt, arrogance, sadness, overwhelm, and so on? If we run from our unpleasant feelings, we repress them and live in denial to the detriment of ourselves and all life. If we act out our unpleasant feelings, we behave unskillfully, harming ourselves and others. Learn how to hold and feel all feelings with a sense of peace and ease.
• How do we purify our motives, thoughts, and behaviors to lessen or end our contribution to the problem and teach by example? Because of our interdependent nature, we often contribute directly or indirectly to the problems we seek to solve. Self-purification practices such as meditation, inquiry, and journaling, and noncooperation help us see more clearly and live more skillfully.
• How do we purify our motivations so that our actions arise out of our inner love, respect everyone, show kindness to both victims and perpetrators, and seek healing for all life? Hatred injures the hater and the hated, creating a lose-lose situation. In contrast, our love benefits us and all whom we encounter.
• How do we love our adversaries? To create a more just world, we must increase the kindness, and we can’t beat kindness into someone. Committing to doing only kind and nonviolent actions improves our effectiveness, and safeguards us from becoming the hostility and cruelty we oppose.
• How do we remember that our true adversary is delusion, not the people confused by, and acting out, these delusions? In truth, the perpetrators of violence need saving as much as the victims of their unskillful actions do. Only by saving them can true peace, joy, and harmony be realized in the outer world.
These questions and more will be addressed in the Being Medicine series. We hope you can join us for one or all of these classes. Feel free to invite interested friends to join you.
Helpful information about the venue:
We will meet in one of the library conference rooms. Office chairs are provided to sit in. If you prefer another arrangement, you may sit or lie on the floor. Feel free to bring yoga mats, cushions, blankets or whatever you need to be comfortable during the meditation.
We encourage you to bring your journal for taking notes and doing written activities.
No donations will be requested or accepted at these meetings. This is the Dakota County Library Policy. If you feel moved to donate, follow the instructions on our donation page, but this is not necessary. These events are offered freely to you for your benefit and welfare.