Dhamma Dena: Self-Retreat with Arinna Weisman - Queer Online Retreat, October 2020 (Week 2) Where do we source the self respect needed to support our heart and mind in opening and healing? How do we enter into the understanding of why we’re practicing? In the Mahayana tradition, the Four Remembrances serve as an entryway for going into practice: appreciating the preciousness of life, considering impermanence, contemplating the law of karma, and contemplating the unsatisfactoriness of the conditioned worldly life. On the opening of this self-retreat, we reflect on the first three of these teachings.
Arinna 25:51: “Why contemplate anicca, anicca, and the vicissitudes of life? Because, in the acknowledgment that everything is changing, and that we can’t hold on […] When we allow nature to be be as it is — ourselves included — then that frees up ourselves from the constriction of ownership into a relationship of seeing ourselves and understanding ourselves as precious and sacred.”
Quotes from:
Marc Ian Barasch “Field Notes on the Compassionate Life”
“Reflections on Impermanence: Life of Chagkar. A Book of Teachings by the 18th Century Wandering Tibetan Yogi”
John O'Donohue "Beannacht (Blessing)