We were honoured this year to be part of the offerings in the Family Area at Medicine Festival with our show for children and with parent support.
'Effortless Meditation: Transform Parent Challenges into Wisdom and Love'.
We had 12 parents join us in the Family Bell Tent, to cosy up around a guided meditation, where we got to drop deep into each of our senses, and relax as the awareness that is perceiving everything. Once we identified this pool of peace that is our own awareness, we introduced the effortless short moments meditation- relaxing for a short moment as awareness, always clear and open like the sky.
We had a conversation about different challenges in parent/educator life and how to respond with wisdom, compassion and love when these come up. One of the questions was about how to start being more wrathful when we see a child needs it, after managing to flow peacefully without raising our voice for many years. It was powerful to reflect on how wrathful speech is also a form of love, and that by relaxing deeply as awareness, we can see what is beneficial to say. When we know clearly what is needed to be said/done, then we find skilful ways to get that across.
To learn more about the Short Moments practice in daily life go to http://shortmoments.com
Storytelling for Kids - Rinpoche's Refugee Story
We set up against the natural backdrop of ferns and trees at the back of the Family Marquee as it was perfectly evocative of the natural mountain environment in which our teacher's teacher Lama Wangdor journeyed from Tibet to India.
The kids meditated and sang 'Relax for a Short Moment again and again' whenever stormy feelings appeared whilst Lama Wangdor lived in his monastery. It was easy to relax with anger, fear, jealousy, tiredness but then one day out of the blue, the biggest stormy feelings of all appeared: the war. We spoke of what is the war, and how come people do it. We explained how the neighbouring countries didn't know about relaxing with their stormy feelings and so all they knew was to act on them. We recounted the story of how Lama Wangdor decided to escape to a safe place and how he helped his own teacher Thuksey Rinpoche, who couldn't walk anymore travel over the mountains too. The kids helped Lama Wangdor - played by the little teddy bear in the photos below - remember to relax for short moments one moment at a time, one step at a time over the mountain passes, the rope bridges, the abysses! They helped find solutions and offered their help, like the two mountain people who carried Rinpoche the first part of the Journey. When the mountain people left, they helped Lama Wangdor relax with fear of the wild and made friends with a strong Yak who carried Rinpoche on the 2nd part of the journey. In the last part of the journey they cheered Wangdor as he carried Rinpoche himself one step at a time over a treacherous rope bridge.
Thank you to the families for engaging so much into the story. I know this iconic story from our lineage always stays in the mind, to remember to relax one moment at a time with all challenges of life.
You can find more stories where the heroes relax for short moments in our book store here.
They are all co-written by Ziji Rinpoche, who is the founder of the short moments teaching (http://shortmoments.com) and who is the lineage successor of Wangdor Rinpoche.