Class # 11

Today’s class began with a two questions about happiness:

The first question was, “Why does the Buddha state that taking care of your parents/family leads to happiness”

            To answer that, we had a discussion about our role as care receiver and then growing into care giver.  Different students shared their stories about their role as caregivers and both the joy and suffering that it caused.  We learned that without  the Buddha to guide us, we have only our parents.  We also discussed the question whether we have to take care of our parents if they did not take care of us.

We learned of a holiday on Aug 30^th to honor our parents as well as a story of a supernatural monk who although he could see and interact with the spirit world, was unable to help his loved one.  Her anger turned all she touched to fire.  The Buddha and the other monks prayed for her and she was able to find peace.

The balance of the class was about mindfulness.  We looked at how to develop our practice.  This began with the warning that only studying, without practice is almost worthless.  We concentrated on mindfulness of the body and read a description of how we can develop the ability by concentrating on our breathing, position, fluids, etc. can lead us to a true understanding of our physical state.