New Year’s Retreat – Aspirations & Photos

January 3, 2025

• My personal aspiration is to accept and love my mother
• Practice, practice, practice! With new tools learned, diligence, and faith. And be aware of my growth along the path :)…
• To attend more KCC events in person.
• Making vast aspirations for a long personal retreat, continued interest in, and time for practice!
• Cultivate depths of Faith and compassion
• My aspiration is to be more present for everyone I interact with, listening with an unguarded heart.
• I wish to benefit others more.
• Act from an understanding of Impermanence and compassion
• To ensure the full and effective functioning of KCC’s urban container for the sangha’s dharma practice and work.
• To expand and also become more regular in my daily dharma practice, particularly in the realm of Buddhist ethics and service.
• Bring joy, ease and smiles to people around me and to myself.
• To tap into the sources of true happiness by cultivating boundless maitri (loving kindness) through 1) increased daily practice and retreat time 2) working on precepts for kind, ethical speech and 3) increasing maitri in the world (including for myself).
• I aspire to shed fear and awkwardness for the purpose of connecting deeply and authentically with people for their benefit and mine. I aspire to believe I can do this.
• To bring as much peace and joy to the hearts and minds of those who suffer as possible
• To “step into the boat” – see page 35 of Ken McLeod’s book Reflections on Silver River; Tokme Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. (Kathy Gillis)
• 💥I want to keep my compassion in gear all the time instead of only once in a while. (Teri Rowe)
• To nurture and be nurtured. Incorporate joy whenever possible.
• Stabilize awareness of ordinary mind for the benefit of all beings
• To let mindfulness seep into my way of being in the everyday, and to view afflictive emotions with compassion.
• To better know the parts of myself that have been forgotten, so that I may be of benefit to all beings. May it be a year of discovery and astonishment.
• Three times a day I will orient toward putting others first.
• I aspire to deepen refuge in the three jewels, to be more disciplined, and to wake up in the world for the benefit of all beings.
• I want to change my habits of being lazy about practicing meditation and music. I need to be stronger about acting on my aspirations to become able to benefit beings.
• Lean into the study, contemplation and experiential exploration of non-referential interdependence, the union of the two bodhicittas. And be a little bit nicer human being, more attentive to the immediate presence of all I meet.
• May I radiate love, compassion, joy, and equanimity to all beings filling the expanse of space and may this alleviate their suffering.
• Bob: Bloom where I am planted. Change my old fearful/rejecting stories that I tell myself. Radiate joy and kindness, moment by moment!
• To live more in the bodhisattva way both personally and collectively
• May our intentions to bring forth what is good in the world and good in ourselves manifest. May my practice be fruitful.
• May I be present. May I be kind. May all circumstances, good, bad and indifferent, arise as friends on the path.
• I aspire to at least 21 days of retreat this year, and to achieve direct realization of the nature of mind. I also aspire to be less wasteful and indulgent when using bulk tea.
• To take better care of my body and mind.
• To develop more acceptance and patience with others and towards my own limitations.
• I wish for total liberation from ignorance for every single dependently arisen being. So let’s live like that NOW. 🙏♥️Zopa
• I aspire that we each open to and realize our Buddha Nature and together help grow a loving, compassionate, just peace within and without.
• May we all constantly be reminded to look inward for true happiness to gove real help to all beings to awaken to true happiness .
• I aspire for my daily practices to be consistent and consistently with a clean and focussed mind
• An ultra short throw projector for KCC. So there no longer is a projector in the front row.
• To continue to work toward the benefit of others.
• One of my personal aspirations is to find ways to organize and lengthen my personal practice on a daily basis outside of study and online practice.
• Befriend anxiety
• Expanding the sense of kinship to all beings, all things, none excepted.
• To end the suffering I cause beings that I know and beings that I don’t.
• To BE love instead of seeking love.
• May I and all beings have good health.
• My aspiration is to come to a more heart-centered approach to life with breathing space allowing a movement towards joy every day.