Take some time to be still and enjoy a guided and silent 30 minute mindfulness meditation. If you prefer a guided meditation that includes gaps of silence, this one is for you.
Guided Mindfulness Meditation
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Tag Archives: buddhism
Basics of Mindfulness Meditation and Lovingkindness Course
Sponsored by One Dharma Nashville
Thursdays, 9/10 9/17, 10/1 10/8, 7- 8:30 p.m.
Led by Lisa Ernst
This 4 session course is appropriate for beginners as well as more experienced meditators who would like to nurture a continuity of mindfulness in a group setting. In a step-by-step process you will learn the basics of insight meditation and lovingkindness practices. You will learn to be more in touch with your body and emotions and develop a healthier relationship with your thoughts. You will leave the class with tools to establish an effective, ongoing practice. These practices will help you reduce stress and expand your capacity for well-being and self-compassion. The class will provide a supportive environment with ample time for discussion and Q&A.
Led by One Dharma’s founding teacher Lisa Ernst, who has been meditating for over 25 years in the Zen and Vipassana traditions. In her teaching, Lisa emphasizes both transformational insight and everyday awakening as an invitation to embrace all of the path’s possibilities.
Course fee is $100. It can be paid through Paypal here. To confirm space availability email onedharmaretreat@gmail.com.
Loneliness and The Heart of Equanimity
New dharma talk on finding peace and and open heart in the midst of life’s challenges and heartache.
Daylong Meditation Retreat: Touching the Boundless Mind and Heart
Please join us at a beautiful, rural West Bellevue location for a day of sitting and walking meditation. In this silent retreat, we will stabilize our attention and deepen concentration through the breath and body, then gradually open our awareness to the boundless space of mind and heart. These practices help us touch moments of freedom from our habitual patterns and thoughts and find equanimity in our present moment experience.
Led by meditation teacher Lisa Ernst, this silent retreat is suitable for beginning as well as experienced students. The retreat will include periods of sitting and walking meditation, instructions and dharma talk. Cost is $50. There will be a separate opportunity at the retreat to make a dana (generosity) offering to the teacher. A reduced fee spot is available in the case of financial need. Please inquire for details.
Paypal is available here or write a check, made out to One Dharma Nashville, and send to: One Dharma Nashville, 2301 12th Avenue South, Suite 202, Nashville, TN 37204. Please include your email address. For questions, email onedharmaretreat@gmail.com.
New Dharma Talk and Guided Meditation: Awakening to Yearning
Cultivating Lovingkindness, Compassion and Equanimity
June 13 Daylong Meditation Retreat
There’s still time to register for our daylong meditation retreat focusing on cultivating calm presence and lovingkindness. Held at the Nashville Friends House, the cost is $50. Please see full information here.
Riding Free
Its like you’re throwing away your canoe and oars and are riding the waves of emptiness. Its scary at first, you’ve no control. You feel vulnerable and completely without knowledge of where you are going, or even where you are. So you have to surrender completely to the waves when they come. It may take a while. It may take weeks or months or years. You may ask, “what if I drown?” Then I ask you, “who and what drowns? What do you lose? And what might you gain?”
You may decide to climb back into your canoe if you can. But if you’re truly on this path, the water will draw you in again and again until finally you drown and then you’re riding the waves and those waves are you, and you are the waves, there’s really no difference any more, and you arrive exactly where you need to be, where you always have been, but just didn’t know it until now. You are home.
~Lisa Ernst
Morning Beams
Flowering Lotus Lovingkindness Retreat Recap
Last weekend I led a lovingkindness retreat at a beautiful retreat center in Magnolia Mississippi, a place I’d never been before. Magnolia is a small town aptly named – the minute we entered the city, blooming magnolias were everywhere. Founded by Dolores Watson about 5 years ago, Flowering Lotus Retreat Center has grown considerably and has hosted teachers such as Phillip Moffitt, David Loy and John Orr. Dolores is a remarkable and energetic woman who so obviously loves the dharma. I first met her last November when she attended my seven day residential retreat here in Middle Tennessee. I wasn’t at all surprised that the care and thought she has put into the center shines through in every detail. She has her own bold and unique style, which I loved.
The experience level for this retreat ranged from four or five people who had never meditated before to several with extensive retreat experience, and everything in between. We focused on lovingkindness (metta) practice for the weekend, which I always appreciate teaching. Watching hearts open and barriers dissolve, seeing people finally realize its ok to offer kindness and love to themselves, is a deeply fulfilling experience for me. I remember how hard it was the first time I tried it many years ago, how I felt guilty and even selfish spending so much time giving metta to myself. But when my heart finally cracked open, I was able to receive and extend love to all beings for the first time. That has stayed with me ever since when I practice metta. At this retreat, as we moved our metta outward to loved ones, family friends, indifferent and difficult people, some at the retreat got a taste of the heart that is not separate from all beings, the heart that can love unconditionally. This is the realm of true compassion. 
May all beings be free from suffering. May they live in equanimity.You Don’t Have to Believe Your Thoughts
by Lisa Ernst
You’ve probably heard that before, right? It sounds pretty simple and maybe sometimes it is, but at other times, nearly impossible. Why? Because for many of us, certain thoughts appear as unassailable “truths,” specific stories about our lives, about ourselves and others. As long as these thoughts operate below our awareness as stealth narratives, they can’t be seen for what they are, impermanent conditions that arise and pass away. We remain bound by these thoughts and they may lead to significant suffering and even depression.
When we identify with a thought or emotion as “I” or “mine,” our boundaries of inside and outside remain intact. There’s me, and then there is the outside world. This is only a perception, but its so strong as to feel solid and real. Buddha taught that this idea of a separate, inherent self is the root of suffering.
As a practice, try asking yourself, “is this thought me; is this thought mine?” You can do the same with emotions. This exercise is not intended to suppress or push away thoughts or emotions, but to allow you to begin seeing them without personal identification. This opens space to perceive the thoughts and experience the emotions as they are. This practice, reflective inquiry, isn’t a form of analysis. You’re letting the question remain open ended, to allow experience itself provide the answer. As you do this, you are opening yourself to the realm of dharma, where customary ideas and everyday perceptions don’t apply. The good news is, you don’t need them as you experience your thoughts and emotions appearing and falling away. Here you can access the heart’s true wisdom.
“When Ajahn Chah said it was possible to learn as much from stupid thoughts as wise ones, that was such a radically different approach. A wise thought arises and ceases. A stupid thought arises and ceases. A painful thought arises and ceases. A painful feeling arises and ceases. A pleasant feeling arises and ceases. I realized I didn’t have to feel ashamed when there was confusion in the mind. Just let it be and know it for what it is. They are all just states of mind, coming and going. Rather than anxiously holding on or to try to make sense of everything all the time, I got a feeling for letting go and letting be.”- Kittissaro, Listening to The Heart.
The Lotus Blooms in The Mud 