Week Four Homework: 1. Daily meditation: 20-30 minutes. 2. Notice your “top three hits” (the thought patterns that are most recurrent). Do they preoccupy you or distract you from the present moment? 3. What helps you connect or reconnect to the present moment?

Pain is a given and suffering is optional. Mindfulness of unpleasant feelings, such as pain, can transform pain into fertile soil for wisdom and for freedom from suffering to arise.

Mindfulness of feelings plays a crucial role in our daily life and practice. The arising of feelings is beyond our control but mindfulness of them can make a difference between being in bondage and being free from suffering.

Includes chanting

Mindfulness directed equally to every experience in the style of Dipa Ma opens us to shift from happiness dependent on conditions to unconditional happiness.

Insight Santa Cruz Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation - Week Three Homework: 1. Daily meditation: 15-20 minutes. 2. Ride out an emotion. 3. Notice feelings of happiness and contentment.

One of the seven factors of awakening is investigation-of-dhammas (or phenomena), which includes an attitude of patient curiosity or keen interest. This important factor works together with strong mindfulness to help us discriminate between the wholesome and unwholesome mind states present at any given moment. The Buddha described this as one of the key qualities that led to his awakening. This talk will explore how we can better understand this factor and begin implementing it more in our practice.