MINDFULNESS MEDITATION KAUAI
"Mindfulness in Daily Living"
Friday Mornings 830-10
Princeville Community Center
"Mindfulness in Daily Living" meets weekly on Friday mornings, focusing on practical ways and means of living mindfully. Each session includes meditation and simple yoga, along with other insight practices of awareness. Our intention is to bring attention in the moment to what's really at the heart of our health and well-being.
From "beginner" to "advanced" in practice experience, you're welcome to join in.
We meet next on Friday March 1st
(Below is an email sent after one meeting as an example of a mindfulness practice other than meditation that might be featured.)
The focus on gratitude in daily living follows this invitation in a poem by Rumi which you may know-
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi ~
"Frame It With Gratitude" is a moving short story about a simple daily practice for answering Rumi's invitation to
"be grateful for whoever comes".
Finally, in the poem "Thanks" we see this practice responding to the full catastrophe of living in times like these.
Thanks
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directionsback from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank youover telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank youwith the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
W. S. Merwin - 1927-2019
From Migration: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)
Mindful Living meets again on Friday Nov 18.
With Aloha,
Don
MindfulKauai.com
"Mindfulness in Daily Living"
Friday mornings 830-10AM in the Aloha Room at the Princeville Community Center
Free. $5 donation suggested.
https://www.princevillecommunity.com/view/community-center-information.aspx
Please contact me if you have any questions.
Don Maurer
