Achieving Calm and Clarity Through the Setting Up of Mindfulness
with Anne Teich.
April 24th – April 26, 2009.
Buena Vista, Colorado.
In this weekend we worked diligently to transform the ordinary mind through the practice of yoking mental awareness to an object. This is known in the Theravada scriptures as Satipatthana, or the setting up of mindfulness, and it is the gate-way to all meditative concentration. Through guided sitting and walking meditation sessions, the retreat aimed to loosen the obstacles of restlessness and worry, and of grasping and averting, in order to reveal to the practitioner the luminous qualities of calm and clarity, so characteristic of the awakened mind. As the Dhammapada reminds us, “He who having been heedless is heedless no more, illuminates this world like the moon freed from clouds.”