Our Practice
The heart of our practice is learning to live with mindfulness in each moment. Mindfulness can be described as the energy of being aware of what is going on in us and around us. When we live with mindfulness, we have the capacity to touch life deeply, whether we are talking, taking our cup of tea, or walking.
During our time together on Sunday evenings, we do very much the same things that we do when we are at home or elsewhere – sitting, walking, eating, or having a discussion – except we do them with mindfulness, with an awareness that we are doing it.
In practicing together as a Sangha, as a community, our practice of mindfulness becomes more joyful, relaxed, and steady. We are bells of mindfulness for each other, supporting and reminding each other to live fully throughout our lives. With the support of the community, we can practice cultivating peace and joy, within and around us, as a gift for all of those whom we love and care for. We can cultivate our solidity and freedom – solid in our deepest aspiration and free from our fears, misunderstandings and our suffering.
Our usual meeting format is as follows:
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
1st Sunday
Chanting and Recitation (Incense Offering, Opening Verse, The Heart Sutra, The Five Mindfulness Trainings, Touching the Earth, The Three Refuges, Closing)
Every other Sunday
6:00 pm – 6:20 pm Sitting (with Mindfulness)
6:20 pm – 6:40 pm Walking (with Mindfulness)
6:40 pm – 7:00 pm Sitting (with Mindfulness)
7:00 pm – 7:10 pm Enjoying our Tea
7:10 pm – 7:45 pm Dharma Discussion
4th Sunday
Discussion Engaged Buddhism
5th Sunday
Playtime! (Something fun and creative)
7:45 pm – 7:55 pm Healing/Loving-kindness Circle
7:55 pm – 8:00 pm Announcements, Closing
Mindful Sitting
Sitting meditation, or simply sitting, is a time to enjoy our sitting! We return home to ourselves to give ourselves the full attention and care that we deserve. We sit, with the community, in a comfortable way and return to our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mind and our consciousness. We observe what is going on within us and around us and we let our minds become spacious and our hearts soft and open.
Sitting mindfully can be very healing. We may realize that we can just be with whatever is within us – our pain, anger, and irritation, or our joy, love, and peace. We are with whatever there is without being carried away by it. We let our thoughts and feelings come, let them stay, and then let them go without trying to push them away. We observe the thoughts and images in our mind with accepting and loving eyes.
Mindful Walking
In between sessions of sitting, we also practice walking meditation, or simply walking. We walk together as a community, freely, with nowhere to go, simply enjoying our steps. We walk with the awareness of our movements, our breathing, each other, and of the Earth. With every step we can arrive in the present moment. Whenever we are not standing, sitting or lying down, we 
are walking, so this practice has the potential of transforming much of our daily lives.
Please refer to this page for some guidance on walking mindfully
Drinking our tea mindfully
After our sitting and walking we enjoy a cup of tea together with mindfulness. The time we spend eating or drinking can also be a meditative practice so we take some time to fully enjoy our tea!
Discussion of teachings
Each week we also spend time sharing our insights, experiences, our joys, our difficulties and questions relating to the practice of mindfulness. We practice deep listening while others are speaking, we help create a calm and receptive environment. By learning to speak out about our happiness and our difficulties in the practice, we contribute to the collective insight and understanding of the Sangha. We base our sharings on our own experiences of the practice rather than abstract ideas and theoretical topics. Sitting, listening and sharing together, we recognize our true connections with one another. All that is shared during the discussion time is confidential.
Being Engaged with our Practice Outside of Sangha Meetings
As Engaged Buddhists our practice is the practice of being aware of our 
mental states, our speech, our actions and also of what is going on around us throughout our lives, in every moment. We eat, walk, talk, sit, and consume like everyone, but we do these activities with the awareness that we are doing them. When we shine this light of awareness onto our daily activities, we create opportunities to bring about profound transformations. The simple act of observation creates new possibilities for us to start living in ways that are best for ourselves, humanity, other species and the planet.
As engaged practitioners of the Buddha’s teachings, our intention is to carry with us the energy of mindfulness beyond the two hours we spend together as a Sangha, into all aspects of our life so that we are truly engaged with life. There is perhaps a greater need to do so at this point in time, than any other in recent times, in light of the great environmental destabilization, social injustice and personal isolation we are currently witnessing.
The list below highlights particular areas of our lives that we can pay additional attention to to ensure that we are indeed living our lives in ways that bring peace and happiness to ourselves, humanity, other species and our planet. This list is simply a start.
Practices/Actions to reduce our impacts on people and the planet:
- At Home
- Sign the Earth Peace Treaty
- Conduct a comprehensive personal environmental impact assessment or a greenhouse gas emissions inventory looking at how your daily activities impact the planet:
- Key actions to reduce impact:
- Food
- Reduce consumption of meat and dairy products each week
- Replace your lawn with a vegetable and fruit garden
- Electricity and Energy
- Purchase your electricity generated from clean and just energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal)
- Conduct an energy audit and take advantage of energy efficiency opportunities
- Transportation
- Commit to several no-car days each week
- Purchase offsets for air-travel
- Waste
- Reduce all waste that goes to landfills, compost, recycle
- Purchase local and seasonal items with low-packaging
- Reduce unnecessary catalog mail (www.CatalogChoice.org provides a free service)
- Food
- On your campus
- Be part of/or initiate efforts to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions on campus and to reform the curriculum so that more students graduate with an understanding of what is happening to our planet
- Engage fellow-students about solutions that help both people and the planet
- In your community and beyond
- Vote for leaders (at all levels) that support bold and urgent action on climate change and clean energy solutions at the national and international levels
- Redefine what is politically possible by holding your elected officials accountable by meeting them, calling them and emailing them on a regular basis.
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