Drawing on the four foundations of mindfulness and the Four Noble Truths, we explore the difference between the inevitable difficulties of human experience and the suffering that arises through grasping and resistance. By noticing feeling tone, reactivity, and the embodied qualities of tightness and ease, we can begin to recognize moments of release and cultivate a wiser relationship with experience. Readings from The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi by Susan Moon; Remembering How I Got Here in the First Place by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer; The Second Music by Annie Lighthart.

The theme of this Sunday talk, the Four Noble truths. Buddhist traditions may vary in many ways, but the one common teaching in each one is this one. Is there a wellbeing that is not relative to situations? That remains unchanged. This was the Buddha's realisation. And the core of the teaching above. It allows one to take responsibility for ones discontent.To really understand how things work.

The Buddha famously said, "I teach dukkha [suffering or reactivity or a sense of unsatisfactoriness] and the cessation of dukkha.” We explore this core teaching as it is expressed in the Four Noble Truths and the teachings of the Two Arrows and Dependent Origination, including ways that it can be confusing. We suggest ways to understand and implement this teaching both in formal meditation and in everyday life. (See document 328 below, on "Four Meanings of Dukkha, and Contact to Grasping in the Dependent Origination Model.")

In the Simile of the Cloth sutta, the Buddha describes liberation as going beyond mere "purity" to an inner freedom from mental limitation.

This talk focuses on the first three noble truths exploring what suffering is, how is comes about and how it can be released.