Includes instructions on 6-Part walking meditation at the end.

Principles and clear practices for wise mindfulness with emotions. An alternative to "RAIN" is "RAFT": recognize, allow, feel, tease apart (and trust).

As mindfulness practice unfolds, our experience of dukkha (suffering, dis-ease) naturally shifts and changes. Compassion morphs to meet it. This talk explores five faces of compassion that are cultivated through our mindfulness practice: patience, capacity, humility, spaciousness, and not-self.

We invite the mind and body to unwind easefully, as we arrive for this first full day of practice. This guided meditation emphasizes simplicity, ease, and settling while introducing mindfulness practice with the breathing.

After some personal stories from Donald about his father, who was a veteran, and about Donald’s experiences growing up at the time of the Vietnam war and being introduced to nonviolence, we explore the three main dimensions of our practice (training in ethics, meditation, and wisdom) related to the holiday. We focus on the ethical teachings about killing and nonviolence, including the complexities of these teachings; the importance of bringing mindfulness to grief, loss, and sadness, and of grounding in kindness, compassion, and love; and the wisdom and insight teachings about seeing the roots of violence. The talk is followed by discussion.