Community of Mindfulness New York Metro
Inspired by the Teachings and Practice of Thich Nhat Hanh
Long Live Impermanence! is the theme of our Day of Mindfulness Saturday October 15. The Day will be facilitated by Practitioners Rachel Rampil, Zack Foley, Anne Court and James Lalino--- from our Wake Up and Middle Way Sanghas.***
Our Practices during the Day include Mindful breathing, Sitting and Walking Meditation, Dharma Sharing. Total Relaxation, Singing, Eating as a mindfulness practice, and Noble Silence.
When: 10:00am-4:30pm, Saturday October 15th. Come for all or part of the Day.
Lunch is around 1:00-2:00pm [may be a little earlier or later.] Bring your own vegetarian Lunch.
Where: The Riverside Church, Room 20-T, 91 Claremont Avenue, between 120-122nd Street, one block west of Broadway.
Chairs and Cushions available. Please do not wear fragrances.
Rachel Rampil is a lay mindfulness practitioner and facilitator at Wake Up Sangha and Riverside Sangha in New York City. She is an M.S.W. candidate of Clinical Practice at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. She began her path of mindfulness three years ago with Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) practice and has since found her spiritual home in the Plum Village tradition.
James Lalino discovered the Plum Village tradition when a lay practitioner gave him a copy of one of Thay's books while traveling on a train through France. He lives on the Upper West Side and works in the film industry.
Anne Court is currently working part time in a school as a teaching assistant and taking part time grad classes in Educational Psychology. She lives with her four year old son and husband in Astoria and facilitates with Middle Way Sangha.
Zack Foley began practicing the art of mindful living with the Riverside Sangha in 2004. Sangha life inspired Zack to pursue a masters in social work. He is now a LMSW working in inpatient psychiatry at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn. Zack is also a jazz singer and an ordained member of the Order of Interbeing. His OI name is True Precious Life.
Wake Up is our Young Adult Sangha. [https://wakeupnewyork.org]
Middle Way Sangha 'grew' out of the Wake Up Sangha, as members 'aged out' of WakeUp and began a Sangha for all ages. [http://middlewaysangha.org/]
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Words of the Buddha
"The perceiving of impermanence, bhikkhus, developed and frequently practiced, removes all sensual passion, removes all passion for material existence, removes all passion for becoming, removes all ignorance, removes and abolishes all conceit of "I am."
Thich Nhat Hanh
If we look into the first Dharma Seal, impermanence, we see that it doesn’t just mean that everything changes. By looking into the nature of things, we can see that nothing remains the same for even two consecutive moments. Because nothing remains unchanged from moment to moment it therefore has no fixed identity or a permanent self. So in the teaching of impermanence we always see the lack of an unchanging self. We call this “no self,” the second Dharma Seal. It is because things are always transforming and have no self that freedom is possible.
