05-01-2014

Dear Tenzin,You asked my sister if I could write you. So here I am. I have a good memory of our trip and thank you for sharing a little bit of your Tibetan background with my sister and me. Earlier I was thinking about last summer when we were in Ladakh. You guided us through the Himalaya mountains and it seemed you always knew what to do. But I am almost sure that you must have had some doubts then about how far to walk, when to rest, if someone could follow the rest of the group. At the moment that I write this letter, I am following a 5-day Retreat course for European mindfulness teachers. At this retreat we are in silence most of the time. It is a good experience to get more self-awareness. I become aware a lot of feelings that I am having. I came here feeling impatient and irritated about things I have no control over. At this retreat I met my impatience when I had to wait for the people who were to late, or were in the way. Then I became angry with myself and sad for being so impatient. Me as a mindfulness teacher should do better. This morning we talked about it and I learned, again, for maybe the 100th time, that the best way to handle it is to stay with it, breathe with it and accept my impatience with no judgement. This really created some space in my head and body, to be more compassioned with such feelings. The sitting on the cushion now feels less hard then yesterday and I have a little smile on my face. There was also a Mindfulness teacher here called Edel Maex from Belgium. He is a psychiatrist and he teaches Mindfulness and Zen Buddhism. From him I learned the value of kindness and compassion. You can hear him in English on this link http://vimeo.com/21520565 A thing I learned at this retreat and really want to teach my students, is that there are no “Shoulds”. We have to replace the “how is should be” with “ how it is”. So they will be more at peace with themselves. I also learned the value of going on a retreat again and practise meditation. And when I am going to teach my next courses, I will try to go in with an open heart, open mind and no judgement. I wish you a lot of happiness and kindness around you. With Kind regards Evelien