Over the years of teaching, I've found a growing need for profound lovingkindness and compassion--a transformation of the heart--to underlie the insights and understandings that come out of the practice. An opening of the mind needs to be supported by compassion from the heart if the practice is to be integrated, fulfilled, and lived in our lives.
The value of mindfulness practice is discovered in the freedom we find through awareness. Without awareness, we repeat the patterns of fear and conditioning that keep us entangled individually and collectively. Without awareness, we suffer. With awareness, we can see the contractions of the mind, how the mind gets caught and how we can learn to let go. With awareness we can reawaken to the purity of joy and freedom that is fundamental to our true nature.
As a Dharma teacher, I simply remind others how it is possible to live in this world and find freedom. I listen to practitioners and try to remind them that it is truly possible to be free.
This talk was given on the theme of compassion in honor of Veterans' Day.
Compassion is the natural relationship of the heart to sorrow -- the
movement of the heart in sympathy with other beings and with one's self.
Relating to life with compassion allows us to move through this world of
birth and death, of joy and sorrow with wisdom and grace.
How to recognize, embody and enjoy the fruits of spiritual life. How to allow joy, trust, steadiness, wisdom, well being and compassion to blossom in our body and heart. How to enjoy them and let them fill our life.
Seeking the sacred. The possibility of awakening exists in every moment. We all can sense our potential for bringing compassion to present world conflict. Stories of India and questions about the Middle East.
How do we work with the energies that are touched in us by the terrorist attacks and all the upheaval in society and the world since then? This talk is an offering of teachings from the Buddhist tradition intended to support us in addressing the current situation wisely within ourselves.
