 Here I am. I'm Dhamma Shari. I'm the chairperson at Nagaloka Buddhist Center, and we're located here in Portland, Maine at 1 Forest Avenue. And Nagaloka is a center for people who would like to participate, wouldn't know themselves through meditation and studying the Dhamma, which is the Buddhist teaching. So we're part of a larger order, which is worldwide. It's called Tri Ratna Buddhist Community, and it actually is an order for Westerners. So it was created by an English gentleman named Sangarachadar, and we've been around here in Portland for almost 20 years, so maybe a little bit more. Hi, my name is Louise, and I'm center manager here at Nagaloka Buddhist Center. And I came to Nagaloka three years ago when I moved to Portland, and I came on a friend's night, on a Wednesday night, and I've never left. I come weekly. And one of the things I love most about Nagaloka is that it accepts you for who you are, and you come in and you begin wherever you are. It's a really a wonderful community, which is called the Sanga, the members that come here, are people that just want to come and meditate and practice the Dhamma. It's really all about self-awareness and finding kindness and mindfulness, and you put that into your life and you bring it out, and so it's a wonderful place to come to meditate and be a part of a Sanga of like-minded people. You're going to take part in one of our Sunday morning meditation sessions. We just came into the shrine room, and I thought it might be nice just to introduce you to the Buddha. The Buddha on the shrine represents enlightenment, so basically that's why we meditate and practice being a Buddhist so that we can gain enlightenment, the perfect human state. So let go of all of our burdens. We have flowers normally, so flowers are quite beautiful, aren't they, but they fade and fall and impermanence, so we just have a symbol of impermanence on our shrine. And also we usually have candles, so that represents the light of the Dhamma. So the light that we light is the same light that the Buddha has. We're inspired to to shine the light of the Dhamma on all beings. We also at the current time have some pitches down below on our shrine of Dada Ruprashe, who was one of Sangarachitra's teachers, the founder of our movement, and there's some pitches of Sangarachitra and Dr. Ambaka, who is quite popular in the 50s in India when he converted a lot of untouchables to Buddhism, and then Sangarachitra took over after he passed away. And then there's the young Dada Ruprashe, the rebirth of the original Dada Ruprashe, who's 21 years old now, and he was just here in the United States. So we also have an opportunity to burn incense, the fragrance of the beautiful, perfect life. So it's pretty sweet and fragrant. And so also you'll see Sunday morning I'll also ring the bell of enlightenment to just to bring us here in with awareness, just touching the senses. So we have the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the sense of seeing. So it just brings us more into the moment with awareness. What we do in Sunday morning when you come here for meditation, first we honor the Buddha and the Dhamma and the Sangha by saluting what we call the shrine. We'll do this in Kallim Respawni. And then what we do is we chant the refuges and precepts. We do that in Kallim Respawni, if there's new people here, but we also do it in Unison for those people that have been coming around for quite a while, eventually we'll learn them. So we chant the refuges and precepts in a way that we're going to refuge to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, not once but three times. And then we say the precepts. So the negative and the positive precepts both. So it's staying from doing certain things and I'll explain that more later. But we also take on a practice of doing certain things in our life that are more positive in a way that we take these principles of practice on all by ourselves. So they're just a way of being more positive in the world. Sammasambuddhasa Sammasambuddhasa Sammasambuddhasa Pana Tipata Sikapadam Sikapadam Samadhyami Samadhyam Sikapadam Samadhyami Samadhyam Savadha Savadha Remini Sikapadam Samadhyami Samadhyami Remini Sikapadam Sikapadam Sikapadam Sikapadam Samadhyami Samadhyami With deeds of loving kindness With deeds of loving kindness I purify my body I purify my body With open-handed generosity With open-handed generosity I purify my body With stillness, simplicity, and contentment With stillness, simplicity, and contentment I purify my body With stillness, simplicity, and contentment I purify my body With truthful communication With truthful communication I purify my speech With mindfulness clear and radiant with mindfulness clear and radiant. I purify my mind. Before we meditate, I'm magically going to do a chant. I'm going to start a chant. A chant for the bodhisattva of love. He's called Amitabha. So we'll do a chant before we start meditating. And when we let that chant die out, it will do it all on its own. And then I'll do a body scan. So just bring us into our body with more awareness. Not only of our body, but us being here in the moment with our senses and with other beings. So just settling down on your cushion or your mouth to reach your bench. Just filling your connection to the earth below you. And just let your body wake up and feel the support you're receiving from the earth. So you can just let everything go. Your weight. That's anything that you might be hanging onto. So just know that we're in a space of comfort and content just being here in the moment connecting with those that are beside you trying to be behind you sharing this wonderful environment space for meditation. Going deeper within yourself so just dropping that seed of awareness, mindfulness deep inside your being. As you do that, your breath is there so just connect with your breathing just simply aware of your breath as it enters and leaves your body just breathing in and breathing out connecting more with your body. Meditation and awareness is about opening and expanding yourself so the level of concentration is here in the moment with awareness. So you're going deep within yourself concentrating with an upright posture awake but relaxed and still just simply breathing in and breathing out aware of our senses helping us to be in the moment with awareness so we have a sense of seeing with our eyes closed it's almost like we have a mind's eye so we can visualize in a sense of seeing sense of hearing, find your traffic you might even hear the person next to us breathing so just a sense of hearing helping us to stay in the moment with awareness by opening our sense of hearing a sense of smell so we feel the ear pass through our nose we know this is where we have a sense of smell a sense of taste you might feel the moisture in your mouth and just remember the place to hold your mouth is with your teeth apart your lips together and your tongue is just resting on the roof of your mouth your jaw just relaxes so our sense of touch our whole body has a sense of touch just of where of how you're connected to the bench and cushion perhaps your hands are touching each other and you might even feel your clothes against your skin now let's bring all of our awareness to our hands just let your hands relax and be still we accomplish a lot of duties so we can just let them rest and be at ease breathing in and breathing out with a sense of awareness of your body, your senses and your surroundings you can use that breath like a wave of relaxation so as we breathe in we bring in that wave of relaxation through our entire body all the way down to our toes and as we breathe out we bring that wave of relaxation starting in our toes and going all the way up through our body out the crown of our head so take a moment using your breath as a wave of relaxation spreading through your entire body bringing our awareness to our feet all the way down to the soles of our feet and it feels almost like you're breathing into your feet as you bring awareness to your feet and start moving out through your ankles with awareness through your lower legs, your calves, your shins and through your knees and then we're going to do a period of mindfulness of breathing and that will be done in four stages and I'll lead you through those four stages our focus of attention is always on our breath we're training our mind to be aware of what's going on in the moment so that we're not being pulled off in other directions so we're actually using our breath to stay in the moment with awareness so in the first stage we breathe in and breathe out count one breathe in and breathe out count two we breathe in and breathe out count three so every time you exhale you place a count from one to ten so that's the first stage in the second stage we switch the counting from the out breath to the in breath so now we count one breathe in and breathe out count two breathe in and breathe out all the way up to ten so when you lose the focus of your attention on your breath and you don't know which count you just left off with you just simply just come back to one and then in the third stage what we do is we just drop the counting so there's no reason to count now because we've really developed some awareness to our breath so now we can really focus on it more deeply with a sense of concentration not a hard concentration but an expansive open concentration so that you're really aware of your breath being in your body and then in the fourth stage we find that area where the air becomes breath so where do you feel the breath as it enters your body usually it's right inside of your nose maybe at the top of your lip so any place where you can feel the air coming in as breath and the same as the breath comes out so where is the point in your body that you can first feel the breath and then where does it leave your body where do you feel the breath as it comes out of your body so again remembering even though we're focusing perhaps on the inside of our nose more that we need to follow that whole breath as it comes in and as it leaves our body so the mindfulness of breathing in the first stage of the mindfulness of breathing we count our out breaths from one to ten so breathe in, breathe out, count one breathe in, breathe out, count two all the way up to ten observing your natural flow as you breathe in and breathe out following the breath and following the out breath all the way to the end just noticing the background there's this counting that goes along with your breath so in the forefront is your breath helps you to stay with your breath there's the count when thoughts come passing through our minds just notice that there's the thought then we just simply come back to the focus of our attention the focus of our attention is on our breath moving into breathing out moving into the second stage the mindfulness of breathing we switch the counting from our out breath to our in breath now we count one breathe in and breathe out count two breathe in and breathe out all the way up to ten to the body that was sense of awareness our breath was there for us moving out the focus of attention is soft and open concentration is a concentration that's not hard it's a soft concentration where expansion comes from within and goes to the outside moving into the third stage the mindfulness of breathing in this stage our focus of attention is on our breath and we drop the counting bringing awareness to our in breath and our out breath simply observing the natural flow in the fourth stage the mindfulness of breathing again our focus of attention is on our breath in this stage we find where air becomes breath and breath becomes air so where do you first feel the breath as it enters and leaves your body our focus of attention is on our whole breath and our concentration is on the area that the breath enters and leaves our body where do you feel your breath where do we first feel the sensation of the breath usually it's passing through the inside of our nostril and where do we feel the breath upon leaving a body so it's the point when air becomes breath and it's the point where breath becomes air so you might notice in this fourth stage that our attention is kind of refined to the area of our nose or our throat or maybe even the top of our lip but we want to remember to expand that concentration and awareness so that we follow our whole breath our whole breath enters our body and our whole breath leaves our body so remembering the focus of our attention is on our whole breath in the moment with awareness in our bodies and to help us we find where the breath enters and leaves our body again our mind will do what it's good at and that's thinking and we may see it as a distraction but we simply become aware of our mind thinking and then we just bring it gently back to the focus of our attention we're training the mind we're training the mind to become aware of the moment so our moment is now focusing on our breath just to reflect on the meditation reflecting on how you're doing your body your feelings your emotions how you're responding to your attention mindful of something May the merit gained in my acting class go to the alleviation of the suffering of all beings modern personality throughout my existences my possessions and my merit in all three ways I give up without regard to myself for the benefit of all beings justice to your earth and other elements are serviceable in many ways to the infinite member of beings inhabiting limitless space so may I become that which maintains all beings situated throughout space so long as all are part of the team to peace