What is mindfulness?
Last updated on 3rd November 2011
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is hell?” I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yesterday we had the twelfth & final session of this "Life skills" evening class. There was scheduled to have been a bit less than a three month gap since the last - eleventh - session. However the heavy winter snow we'd experienced had resulted in this last session being postponed.
What's in the way is the way
- Mary O'Malley
... and you too have come into this world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.
- Mary Oliver
I wrote yesterday about the first part of this tenth "Life skills" evening. I particularly discussed development of Goodwill practice - very much in the "Nourishing positive states" section of the "Four aspects" diagram (below). In the second half of the evening we moved on to the "Exploring & processing" section of the diagram with the introduction particularly of various forms of therapeutic writing.
"These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions" ... we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- Aristotle/Durant
If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion. Dalai Lama
[This is] the doctrine that we cannot accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the ultimate basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is our responsibility to judge whether this command is moral or immoral. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But unless we are physically prevented from choosing the responsibility remains ours. It is our decision whether to obey a command, whether to accept authority. - Immanuel Kant
Yesterday was the ninth evening of this "Life skills" training. I wrote about the eighth session last week. The sequence of regular weekly classes now moves on to increasing gaps between sessions - so it's three weeks until the tenth, a further five weeks until the eleventh, and then an additional eleven weeks until the final twelfth session. My hope is that we will be able to arrange occasional follow-up meetings even after that.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The larger the island of knowledge, the greater the shoreline of wonder. - Ralph Sockman
Any unexplained phenomenon passes through three stages before the reality of it is accepted. During the first stage it is considered laughable. During the second stage, it is adamantly opposed. Finally, during the third stage, it is accepted as self-evident. - Arthur Schopenhauer
Yesterday we had the sixth session of this twelve evening "Life skills" course. I wrote last week about the fifth session. A dozen slides covering material we explored are viewable/downloadable at slides 1-6, Powerpoint or slides 1-6, PDF and slides 7-12, Powerpoint or slides 7-12, PDF.