The doorway of vedana (feeling tone).

Wherever we go the mind does not remain happy - unless we fully awaken. How can we end the restless tides and remain inwardly stable, content within ourselves like the well-hewn wheel that stood still when it stopped rolling and did not fall down? Purifying our bodily acts, speech, and mind in the Buddha's gradual training, we go beyond the eight worldly winds, coming to cessation, to the Deathless.

Radical love sees and cherishes the sacred that lives through all beings. In this talk, we’ll look at the barrier to loving the life that is right here—what we call self—and how we can call on the light and warmth of awareness to awaken that love.

This guided practice emphasizes bringing a gentle and kind attention to our bodies, and then including all experience with a receptive presence. We close by identifying a part of our being that is asking for a healing attention, and offering loving presence to ourself and then to others.

Q&A portion begins at 30m. Community questions were not recorded but Mark's responses were.

We start with a brief review of the three previous talks on deepening practice during the pandemic (and other crises), including clarifying three broad areas of practice: Formal meditation practice, daily life practice, and work, service, and/or activism as practice. In this session, we explore the foundations of Wise Speech as practice, mentioning three foundations. The first two include (1) the ethical guidelines given by the Buddha regarding skillful speech, and (2) developing presence and mindfulness during speech (including listening). We focus most of the time on the third foundation of cultivating empathic connection with another, clarifying the difference between empathy and compassion, giving some of the findings of studies in neuroscience about empathy, and examining what blocks empathy. We then work with a simple (yet powerful) empathy practice of tuning into (1) emotions, and (2) what matters, and move into a period of discussion.