What Inspires You?

Written By Dhamma Server

Thank you to all attending the community-led "What inspires you?" Saturday sit session on August 20th, 2022. Dan provided a recorded dharma talk by Steve Armstrong an experienced meditator and dharma leader who shared his experience recovering from a brain tumor. This launched our group into sharing some our own sources of inspiration.

 

Inspiring People

  • Those who have gone through challenges.

  • Those that have modelled commitment to the practice and have been able to put the practice into everyday life.

  • Well known individuals, but also everyday people who have left the modern world behind to practice (East-West Consciousness on YouTube, my apologies I could not find the link)

  • The Dalai Lama

  • Treat every new person as an old friend

  • Remember to practice for the benefit of all beings

  • Radiate love

 Cultivating a Daily Meditation Practice, listening to the Dharma

 

Books

Stephen Levine – Healing Into Life and Death

  • Meditator focused on illness, death and grief

  • All became forgiveness

 Music

  • Ysaye Barnwell and Sweet Honey in the Rock – Wanting Memories

  • Playing and composing music – learning about oneself and connecting with others

Poetry and Nature

Mary Oliver – The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Honey Bees

  • Sitting with the bees daily, being mindful that they can sense our stress

  • Parallels between bees and humans, we are part of a collective

 

Additional resources related to "What inspires you?"

Richard Shankman - Inspiration from the Great Masters
John Travis - The Long and Winding Road to Joy and Inspiration
Nick Keomahavong - I Have Lost All Motivation.  What Can I Do?

 

Dhamma Server