Heart of the Blue Ridge Sangha - Mindfulness Practice Community

"If you can maintain mindfulness of compassion alive in your heart during the time of listening, then you're protected by the energy of compassion, and what the other person says won't touch off the energy irritation and anger in you...When people listen to each other like that, they truly recognize the humanity nd suffering of the other person" - from "The Mindfulness Survival Kit" - Thich Nhat Hahn

“Awareness is at the same time cause and effect, concentration and understanding, stopping and looking. As soon as the light of awareness is lit, we concentrate, we are peaceful, we see ourselves more clearly.” - Thich Nhat Hanh from “The Sun My Heart”

“We’re so used to running from discomfort, and we’re so predictable. If we don’t like it, we strike out at someone or beat ourselves up . We want to have security and certainty of some kind when actually we have no ground to stand on at all…The next time there’s no ground to stand on, don’t consider it an obstacle. Consider it a remarkable stroke of luck. We have no ground to stand on , and at the same time it could soften us and inspire us. Finally, after all these years, we could truly grow up.” — Pema Chodron, from “When Things Fall Apart”.

Inclement Weather Policy:
Cancellation of Sunday morning Sangha due to weather will be announced no later than 8 AM that Sunday morning. The announcement will be sent via email and also placed on our page (Heart of the Blue Ridge Sangha - Mindfulness Practice Community).

"...as spiritual seekers, we have to take our whole life as our practice, as our path. Life is our path. From the moment we wake up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night, our whole life is filled with opportunities for cultivating acceptance, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, awareness, and mindfulness".- Anam Thubten (Tibetan Monk/Teacher) - "No Self, No Problem"

"Mindfulness is the awareness of what is going on in us and around us in the present moment. It requires stopping, looking deeply, and recognizing both the uniqueness of the moment and its connection to everything that has gone before and will go on in the future" - Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Mindfulness Survival Kit"

“Some people do not even want to look at a person when the person is alive, but when the person dies they write eloquent obituaries and make offerings of flowers. At that point the person has died and cannot really enjoy the fragrance of the flowers anymore. If we really understood and remembered that life was impermanent, we would do everything we could to make the other person happy right here and right now.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life

From the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet) Celebration on February 18 HBRSangha.

"To fully experieine life as a human being, we all need to connect with our desire to realize something larger than our individual selves. This can be motivation enough to change our ways so we can find releif from the noise that fills our heads". - Thich Nhat Hanh, "Silence: The Power of Quiet In A World Full of Noise"

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
― Pema Chodron

"If we experiment, to the best of our current ability, in letting things naturally unfold, I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised. We go ahead and make our plans, but we’re open to seeing them change. As a result, our insistence on predictability may steadily weaken. Sometimes our old habit will still be too seductive and it will be nearly impossible to trust the natural choreography. In those cases, the best advice I’ve been given is just to notice the tendency to control and to own it with kindness. This is very different from mindlessly wanting to pin everything down, with no awareness of what we’re doing and no sense of its absurdity. It’s just a matter of seeing our habit and not criticizing ourselves for it. This kind of simple self-reflection will also give us empathy for all the other people who want so badly to be in control—meaning just about everyone on this planet." Pema Chodron, from "How We Live, Is How We Die"

"When we see things or listen to other people, we often don’t see clearly or really listen. We see and hear our projections and our prejudices. We are not clear enough, and we have a wrong perception. Even if our friend is giving us a compliment, we may argue with him because we distort what he says.

If we are not calm, if we only listen to our hopes or our anger, we will not be able to receive the truth that is trying to reflect itself on our lake. We need to make our water still if we want to receive reality as it is. If you feel agitated, don’t do or say anything. Just breathe in and out until you are calm enough. Then ask your friend to repeat what he has said. This will avoid a lot of damage. Stillness is the foundation of understanding and insight. Stillness is strength."
From “Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living,” Thich Nhat Hahn