Sit-and-Share Topics : Mindfulness (Sati) and Meditation (Bhavana)

Sample Topics for Contemplation

Mindfulness
Meditation

The following topics and themes are just to get you started…

As well as considering the dark side – if any – of these topics and how they may have brought suffering into our lives; it is essential to also reflect on the bright aspects that have directly affected our recovery and our being.

The Commitment to Compassion

The commitment to compassion is an inner and outer journey.
You are learning to radically alter the course of your heart and mind, moment to moment.
Fear, judgement, and anger still arise, but you can refrain from wallowing in them.

Christina Feldman ‘Compassion : Listening to the Cries of the World’ (p49)
Rodmell Press © 2005

Know that you are safe

Know that you are safe; nothing else is happening; you are breathing and alive.

Source: Adapted and used with the kind permission of Martine Batchelor from the book Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits’.

The power of awareness

The regular practice of meditation is a good way to develop the power of awareness, a power that can eventually become stronger than the power of your negative habits. The power of awareness gives you the strength to do things differently and the courage to go beyond your habitual limitations.

Source: Adapted and used with the kind permission of Martine Batchelor from the book Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits’.

What is Awakening?

The short-term aim of meditation is to bring calm and stability to the mind/heart, and through that provide a basis for insight into the issues that govern our lives. Such fundamental life-topics as pain and pleasure, wanting and resisting, identity and relationship – are all food for insight when we have the skills to contemplate and handle them wisely.

Source: ‘Meditation – A way of Awakening‘ by Ajahn Sucitto

Serenity & Insight

“..for direct knowledge, for the full understanding, for the utter destruction, for the vanishing, for the fading away, for the cessation, for the giving up, for the relinquishment of intoxication, these two things are to be developed.

Which two? Serenity and insight.

For the relinquishment of intoxication these two things are to be developed.”

Source – Buddha (Anguttara Nikaya. : Book of Twos)


Related Pages:

‘Sit-and-Share’ Topics for Contemplation and Sharing

Truth, Karma and Commitment to Recovery

Generosity in thought, words and deeds

Ethics (All or individual Precepts or Harmlessness-Blamelessness)

Loving-kindness, Compassion, Joy-gladness and Equanimity

Forgiveness

Mindfulness and Meditation

Admirable Friends & Fellowship

Buddhist Core Principles & Themes