“Crossing the Floods” with Jean this Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion

If you’re like me, you might be feeling overwhelmed by the volume of bad

news coming your way. Not only is there objectively a lot of very scary and

cruel stuff happening, but we tend to pay more attention to it because of the

way our brains work (i.e., the negativity bias). As Rick Hanson wrote many

years ago, we need to pay close attention to the good in our lives in order

for it to sink in.

Although this may sound simplistic, I’ve found this to be a helpful way to

balance my nervous system so that I can continue the fight for what’s

wholesome and kind in this world. And it’s been a good reminder to also

give something good for others to focus on, rather than the usual criticism

and complaints.

Using the parami as guides has been especially helpful in this regard.

They are the qualities and virtues that the Buddha manifested in his time on

earth, perfected over the process of many lifetimes. In the Theravada

tradition, they include generosity, morality, renunciation, discernment or

wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, kindness, and equanimity.

In the introduction to his book The Parami: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods,

Ajahn Sucitto writes:

A way of talking about transcendence, liberation, or however you conceive

of a spiritual path, is to use the metaphor ‘crossing the floods.’ Interest in

deep change gets triggered by the feeling of being swept along by events;

by the sense of being overwhelmed by, and even going under, a tide of

worries, duties and pressures. That’s the ‘flood.’ And crossing them is

about coming through all that to find some firm ground. It takes some work,

some skill, but we can do it.

Methodologies for transcendence include meditation, prayer, devotion,

yoga, fasting, even psychotropic drugs. In the long run, the ones that are

the most useful are the ones that can be integrated into daily life with the

minimum amount of dependence on external circumstances or internal

ideology. Then the method will be applicable to a wide range of people and

it will not become the source of more stressful mental activity.

The parami take spiritual practice into areas of our lives where we get

confused, are subject to social pressure and are often strongly influenced

by stress or stress-forming assumptions. Providing alternative ways to

orient the mind in the stream of daily events, the ‘perfections’ can derail

obstructive inner activities and leave the mind clear. Cultivating parami

means you get to steer your life out of the floods.

Several weeks ago, Alex M. spoke about the parami of patience. This

Sunday we’ll look at first quality, generosity, and explore how it might help

us steer our minds out of the floods.

If you’d like your very own copy of Ajahn Sucitto’s book, you can find it here.

We hope that you will join us for this exploration on Sunday! Registration and Zoom information available here.

With mettā,
Minneapolis Insight

‍