Session Five

Session Resources

Session Leaders

Lama Willa Miller

Willa is the Founder and Spiritual Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship in Boston, MA and its retreat center Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH. She is Visiting Lecturer in Buddhist Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. As a writer and editor, her work has been published in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Buddhadharma, and the Tibet Journal. Willa’s teaching interests include compassion, non-dual embodiment and contemplative care.

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Dharma Offerings

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Practices

We offer here a set of contemplations, inquiries and group practices that support this step in our journey. Consider these suggestions and feel free to customize, replace and augment. But we strongly suggest that you explore at least one contemplation and one inquiry with each session.

Contemplations

If you have a meditation practice, the contemplations we offer might be integrated there. Alternatively, you might return to your “Sit Spot” in a natural or semi-natural setting (for easy reference, he’s that Shambhala Sit Spot Practice Guide from Session One and courtesy Acharya John Rockwell and Acharya Adam Lobel).

Explore Lama Willa’s practices that support transformation of difficulty:

• Titrating – experimenting with and discerning the timing, duration and level of connecting with difficulty
• Turning the gaze within – maintaining full sensitivity to the embodied experience and going slow, invite and befriend the difficultly
• Metabolizing – staying with the difficulty long enough to allow a shift
• Throughout, bringing fundamental kindness and resolve to remain with uncertainty

Inquiries

Individuals and group members can explore these inquiries on your cushion, and then in writing with journal. Groups might follow up with or go directly to dyads or triads.

• How might I practice even more deeply with the refuges of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to support me in opening to uncertainty?
• In what ways do I avoid uncertainty and vulnerability connected to ecological crisis? What happens when I bring compassion to that avoidance?
• If the practice of RAIN is meaningful to me, what step feels most alive and necessary for me right now?
• What paradox (e.g., the relative within absolute, acceptance and wanting change, intimacy with life by drawing near to death, compassionate accountability, or some other paradox) is calling me and feels helpful to explore?
• If emptiness practices are familiar and meaningful to me, how might I bring these into responsive relationship with ecological breakdown?

Group Practices

If you developed some shared agreements in session one, you might check with members to see if any revisions are necessary to continue with the course. After that, we suggest that groups reflect on contemplation or explore inquiries in per the interaction structures you prefer.

We’ll repeat here from Session One, you might choose a go-to structure for sharing that you can use as part of every meeting. Liberating Structures is an excellent resource and we especially like 1-2-4-all and Conversation Café.

Supplemental Resources

• Comes the Night: Gifts and Risks of the Winter Dark
• Lama Willa’s EcoSattva Vows:

  Gaia is in peril; I vow to protect her.
  Climate change is relentless; I vow to end it.
  Gaia’s teachings are infinite; I vow to hear them.
  Awakened love is inconceivable; I vow to embody it.

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Homework for the Next Session

We encourage you to take extra time in practice to explore the practices listed above and listen deeply for what wants to emerge. Thank you for your practice!

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