Summary

Practicing samadhi—being calm and focused—and sati—being mindful and alert.

Practicing viriya—being perseverant—by trying one’s best to focus on each object and remember it.    

Materials

Poster of 10 braille letters

5 braille cards

Learning targets

Students will practice samadhi and sati by:

1. following movements, focusing attention, and calming the mind;
2. staying alert to be ready for the next card to be handed to them;
3. focusing on the objects to remember the sequence of raised bumps—which represent a letter—to work out a word at the end.

Students will practice viriya by:

4. continuing to perform one action (feeling the pattern of raised bumps on the card) until they hand it to the next person.

Activity

1. Students pass around 5 cards of braille, each representing one letter, one at a time. With their eyes closed, they feel each card of raised bumps and pass it to the next person.
2. Once the final card has been passed around the students open their eyes and look at the braille poster displaying which patterns represent each letter. They have 10 letters to look at, and the students try to figure out what 5-letter word was passed around the group.
3. End in seated meditation for three minutes.