Satya Robyn leads a Buddhist practice session with guided meditation, chanting, and a dharma talk about following your yearning. She reflects on a recent Cornwall weekend and the idea of joining something like Song Carriers, a group aligned with your deepest pull.
Chapters
I hate that start to service. American woman. Welcome everybody, my name is Satya Robyn and I'll be leading practice this evening. Welcome in the shrine room here to the people that live in the temple, and fi, got Izzy, Philip, Bry, Jahmei, and me. Caspar will slip in at some point, he's got another meeting, and at the moment welcome to Sam who's not too far away from here I think, and we may have some other people sliding in at some point. I'm really enjoying the white flowers on the shrine tonight, Brian. I'm gonna have to ask you where you got them from. In the garden somewhere, I guess. Ah, he's not gonna tell me. So I'll talk us through what we're doing a little bit because there's a couple of people here tonight who haven't been here before, and we start with a dharma talk. And I wanted to say something this evening about my weekend. Just come back from Cornwall where there were various protests against the lack of, the lack of various things that the G7 leaders could have been doing. And we had our two dogs with us So the idea was always it would be half protest, half holiday. But one of the things that I was really reflecting on over the weekend as we joined in various things and sat on the beach and ate ice cream was that I felt that I could do with some kind of role within these protests. That I wanted to do something. I wanted to be useful in a particular way rather than just floating around and helping out when was, when, when was needed. And there are lots of different roles. Our friend Chris, who came with us, drove a minibus. There's people who make food. There's legal observers, there's well-being, and quite a few of those roles I felt like I could do, especially well-being. That's my job. I know I could do a really good job of that. And as I was driving home, I was thinking, okay, and maybe I should just sign up to well-being. But something didn't quite feel right, and I remembered that one of the things that happened this weekend when we were on the one of the big marches is that I— there's always a samba band, and the samba band, well, there are 3 samba bands, the samba bands were loud and nice and energetic. But what I was really drawn to in the march was a little band of maybe 8 people who were singing, and they were singing various chants and songs, some of them with different harmonies. And it felt really beautiful to be near them as we walked through St Ives. And I realized that I didn't have to do the thing that I knew I could do, or that I'd be good at, or that I was comfortable that I could do the thing that my heart was calling me towards. And I've been in touch with Marcus today, who leads the singers, and there's workshops and they're called Song Carriers, and you learn all the tunes, you learn all the chants, and you wear a white sash, and then you wander around and you bump into someone else with a white sash, you can just break into a song together, or you can start the chant going, or you can be called in when things are maybe getting a bit high energy or agitated, just to sort of calm everybody down. And I'm really excited about putting some energy into learning those chants and joining my voice with other people in that way. And it reminded me of another story that my friend Mark told me about the first rebellion that was organized in London a few years ago. Most— a lot of the organizing was done by a young woman in her early 20s, and it was an amazing feat. Thousands of people came together for the first time and created something. And my friend said to this woman, what's your secret? How did you, how did you do it? Thinking that she was going to talk about being great at organizing. And what she said was, 'I asked people what they love to do, and then I told them to go and do that.' So if people love to make art, they would get involved with making art. If people loved to organize other people, you would get involved in that. And what the result of that was, was an amazing variety of things and people all working together. And of course it's not always that simple in life. Cleaning toilets, for example, is maybe something something that less people are called to do than is required. And sometimes we do just have to do things that we don't want to do. Since when we're on holiday, we've got an email telling us that someone had reported the temple for the new colour, and the council were asking us various questions which we thought we, we thought we'd covered, but turns out maybe we hadn't. So that's all been pretty horrible this week, and I think it's— we're at the other end now. But, um, you know, we just had to deal with that. Life sometimes presents us with things we just have to deal with it. I guess that my invitation is that we don't always leap to doing the thing that we feel we ought to do, or the thing we feel we can do, or the thing we feel other people want us to do, but to just tune in to our longing, to tune into our yearning, to tune into what makes us excited, and just experiment with stepping in that direction. And I generally feel like when we're happy doing the work we're doing, the work benefits from that. The stones that get painted here at the temple are all— they contain the spirit with which they are painted. When people find them, some of that spirit gets passed on. And Buddhism encourages us to live as much of our lives as we can in that spirit, that we care for the things around us, we pay attention, we offer, we offer what we have to offer. And that when we do that, we create little pure lands around us, little fields of beautiful objects or intentions. And we're all finding out what our own particular yearning is, what our own particular what your particular calling is. Sometimes that takes a whole lifetime. So we'll move in now to sit in some silence together. And as you sit in silence, you might just want to notice your breath. As it goes in and out of your body. Don't make any attempt to change it, just notice whether the in-breath is a short breath or a long breath. Notice the pause. Notice whether the out-breath is short or long. Notice the pause. Just allow your breathing to breathe itself. And when you get distracted, as you will within several seconds probably, just bring your attention gently back to your breath. People sometimes say that they don't feel like they're doing meditation properly because their minds are kind of whirring. I always say that is meditation, as long as you're sitting still still as you can. That is meditation, but that our minds are often whirring, but that very slowly, if we keep returning our attention to our breath, that whirring slows down a little bit. We maybe even get little tiny moments of silence, stillness. And after a while of sitting quietly, I will begin chanting, and I will chant the word Amitabha. Amitabha is the Buddha of infinite light, and do join in the chanting wherever you are. Namaste. Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Ami. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Ameeksha. Ameeksha. Ameeksha. Saba. Ami Tama. Ami Tama. Aami toora.
Aami toora.
Aami toora. Ameetabh. Ameetabh. Ameetabh. Amee tava. Amee tava. Amee tava. Ame taba. Ame taba. Ame. Aami Chamba. Aami Chamba. Aami Chamba. Amit, Amit, Amit. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.
Now recite the refuges together. All Buddhists take refuge in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Buddha's teaching, and the community of practitioners. For refuge I go to the Buddha. For refuge I go to the Buddha. Namo Buddha. For refuge I go to the Dharma. For refuge I go to the Dharma. Namo Dharma. For refuge I go to the Sangha. For refuge I go to the Sangha. Namo Sangha. And then we'll repeat the precepts. Which are some guidelines for how to live an ethical life. With faith in the Three Jewels, we pray that we may not take life. With faith in the Three Jewels, we pray that we may not fall into wrong speech. We pray that we may not fall into wrong speech. With faith in Three Jewels— With faith in three jewels we pray that we may not steal; We pray that we may not steal! With faith in the 3 jewels—we're faithful to Jesus—we pray that we may not fall into sexual misconduct; We pray that we may not afford it to sexually misconducted; Faithful through Jews—with faith in the Three Jewels we pray that we might avoid intoxication; We pray that we may avoid intoxication. Just like to alter the order sometimes, just to keep you on your toes. And then finally, we recite the Bodhisattva vows, which are expressing an intention to be of service wherever we can.
Innumerable sentient beings, we vow to save them all. Inexhaustible are deluded passions, we vow to transform them all.
Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings.
We vow to master them all. Infinite is the Buddha's way. We vow to fulfill it completely.
And then we'll finish with prostrations. So the words of the chant that we chant are Namo Amida Butsu. Amida is the same as Amitabha, and Namo means 'I call out to,' so it's the Japanese form of connecting with, taking refuge in Amida Butsu. Buddha, and we prostrate to the floor. You might not be able to see, Sam, but any kind of bowing is good. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. You can all stay where you are and just point yourself towards the floor.
Namoh Amida Buddha. Namoh Amida Buddha. Namoh Amida Buddha.
To our seats. So then we bow to each other and to the Buddha, and then to our seats. And then Sam, do unmute if you are able, and we will recite a closing verse together, which I'll just put in the chat box. Still haven't printed out any bits of paper, so we should do that. So, blessed by Ajahn Thar, take care for all living things. Gonna stop the recording.
