Delight (or joy or gladness, pamojja) is the second factor that emerges as we shift away from repetitive cycles of suffering. We explore how delight manifests as delight in practice, in our integrity, the "bliss of blamelessness," and in other ways. We also look at how to cultivate delight, how delight or joy support the deepening of our practice, and what makes delight difficult to access.
Mindfulness of the body is absolutely fundamental for our practice and was for the Buddha, both a starting point and an end point. We explore (1) why mindfulness of the body is crucial both in the Buddha's teaching and especially in our highly mental culture; (2) how we practice mindfulness of breathing and mindfulness of postures and activities; and (3) how mindfulness of the body works to transform us.
We review briefly our previous practices and investigations of body practices in the last three weeks. We then focus on the body's connection with mind and heart, how we practice individually with each of them, how we explore the dynamic relationship of body, mind, heart. We end by focusing on heart practices for our bodies and those of others, and on opening to the further mysteries of bodies.
After a brief review of the first two series, we focus on body practices to develop insight into 1) impermanence, 2) suffering and the roots of suffering, and 3)constructions of self. We suggest several concrete practices to develop wisdom through awareness of bodily experience.
We review and expand the themes from last time- the importance of body practices for our times and lives, exploring our attitudes toward the body and developing basic body practices. Then we focus on mindfulness of the body, outlining several further practices and emphasizing especially how body practices help us practice more fully and critically in the flow of the daily life.
The body is the doorway to great transformation and mystery. Practicing with awareness of the body is central to grounding our practice in a highly mental culture. We explore 1) the importance of body-based practice, 2) our cultural and personal attitudes toward our bodies, and 3) a set of initial body practices.
Lovingkindness practice ultimately works because we are evoking our deep nature - of kindness and love, the "brightly shining" citta associated with lovingkindness. We explore how we can open to our radiant hearts through (1) learning to lead with our hearts, (2) cultivating concentration, (3) evoking love and working through what blocks love, and (4) touching more and more our depths.
The winter solstice in our culture sometimes is close to busy and even frenzied times, yet in most cultures has been a time of deepening, stillness, and silence, like the earth. We explore four ways to practice with the darkness of the time: 1) Through stopping and stilling our habituated minds; 2) Through opening to the unknown; 3) Trhough being with what is painful or difficult; 4) Through allowing the light and the creative to emerge from darkness
The Buddha's teaching on views and beliefs is radical, pointing to how we might investigate our attachments to and grasping after views and come to hold views much more lightly. How do we practice with views? We offer a number of further perspectives, from the Buddha and Nagarjuna, and practices to work with views.
We explore the nature of "views" (or strong beliefs or opinions) and how to practice with them by 1) grounding ourselves in some of the famous passages on views in the teachings of the Buddha, 2)identifying why and how views can be problematic and lead to suffering, and 3) offering practices this week to explore our views, whether personal, political or religious/spiritual.
