WMC is pleased to offer an opportunity for discussion of the practice of bell inviting. This will be online, on May 10 at 7:30PM, for an hour. Please let Joann (joann.malone@gmail.com) or Nigel (twosenigel@gmail.com) know if you plan to join.
We think of bell inviting as a practice, not just a technical skill to be acquired. It's a practice that helps us come back to ourselves, helps us be centered, helps us achieve mindfulness. Inviting the bell can help find the peace in us. As Thay says, "There’s tranquility and calmness and peace and joy in us, but we have to call them so that they can manifest themselves. This tranquility, that love, that joy, that stability, sometimes we call them Buddhahood, or the nature of Buddha in us. When we invite the bell, it’s one of the means to call the joy in us, the tranquility in us, so that we can awaken the Buddha in us."
In the discussion, we will look at our home bell inviting practice, usually linked to our daily meditation. We will also discuss bell inviting for the full sangha at our weekly sangha meetings. You are welcome to join the discussion because you are interested in learning how you might deepen your home bell inviting practice. Or you might be interested in bell inviting on Sunday evenings (online or at the Vihara). Or you might simply be interested.
We are delighted that sangha members Heidi Fishpaw and Azara Turaki will also be sharing their own experience with this practice.
The session will include an exercise for everyone to practice what we discuss together: preparing ourselves, waking the bell, and inviting the bell. Each participant will do the exercise at home, muted. We encourage you to come to the discussion with your bell; if you don't currently have one, there's still time to get one before May 10! Bells are available on many websites; two examples are our friends at Parallax Press (https://www.parallax.org/product/bell-of-mindfulness/), and the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park (https://hmtrad.com/). But if you don't manage to get one in time, we suggest you could follow along with your breath.
With love
Joann and Nigel