As the Online Gatherings transition out of the July and August, when our focus was relatively practice-based, and return to consideration of our core contemplation, we’ve been reviewing our basic practice. With this review, it made sense to begin at the beginning. And so we’ve been talking about the ground and the atmosphere of our practice, of this community, and of our lives.

Basic brilliance is the ground. This living affirmation—that qualities such as clarity, tenderness, communicativeness, ease, well-being, stability, and mindfulness are alive and well in all of us—is the ground. These qualities are not the possession of one person, one tradition, or one particular practice. Instead, they are alive and well in all of us. This is the ground here.

And it’s a living affirmation in the sense that we give it a chance to breathe in our midst. We allow for the possibility that all of us, for instance, might have something insightful, something fresh, something helpful or instructive to say about meditation practice. From this, we quilt together our practice, our experience, and our understanding of meditation.

The heart bow that we do at the beginning, for example, was transported from another community. But our understanding of it as a gesture of gathering and welcome—as a way of holding the personal and the relational within the all-encompassing heart—comes out of our conversations and discussions with one another. So basic brilliance is not simply an affirmation; it is a living affirmation in our midst.

And when it is a living affirmation, it becomes the atmosphere we sit within, we rest within, that we practice in. The atmosphere of our Online Gatherings, the atmosphere of our practice, and the atmosphere of our lives are like heat waves rising out of the ground of basic brilliance.

With this living affirmation, then,—that basic brilliance is alive and well in all of us—comes a sense that stability is alive in us no matter what, that clarity is alive in us no matter what, and that tenderness, ease, and well-being are alive in us no matter what.

We begin to exist in this atmosphere. And it happens just glimpse by glimpse. We begin to exist in an atmosphere where we can actually trust ourselves a little bit, where we can have a little bit of confidence, of curiosity. A little bit of appreciation for what our lives actually are in this moment.

So, in reviewing our practice, we’ve gone back to the very beginning: the ground and the atmosphere of our practice, our community, and our lives. Basic brilliance—being alive and well in all of us—is the ground. And the trust, the confidence, the faith, the curiosity, and the appreciation that come from sitting and resting on this ground become the atmosphere that envelops us.