This talk explores the various insights that arise as one meditates outdoors; including insight into impermanence, interconnectedness, selflessness, and love.

Impermanence

“What is it that allows us to open our hearts to every moment of our life? It’s the remembrance that it’s passing and it’s precious.” Our true refuge is reality – only by opening to “things as they are” do we find true peace and freedom. This talk explores impermanence – a key feature of reality. We look at our habits of resisting change – including loss and death, the practices that awaken and open us, and the gifts of letting go into the ever-changing river of experience.

We come on retreat from our busy lives where we can easily relapse into old unworthy mental habits, hoping that here, at last, we can put them to sleep. They too are impermanent. Reflect on their impermanence using these chants for the funeral of our ego and the death of our ignorance. Once their corpse is seen and placed in a coffin, it’s possible to sustain open compassionate awareness wherever we are.

An introduction to A Map of Awareness from the Thai Forest Tradition: Sati-Mindfulness-Mahi Sati (Great Mindfulness), Sati Panna (Mindfulness Wisdom), Panna-Vimutti (Wisdom which leads to release). Includes teachings on how to approach teachings and practices of awareness, how to use the Three Characteristics, (impermanence, unsatisfactotoriness, not self) to decrease and release activity of the Defilements (greed, hatred and delusion) and a fun experiential exercise based on a teaching from Ajahn Chah about letting go. For more information about these teachings, visit Heather's website and look up Talks, Retreat Schedule and ongoing trainings on MahaSati.

The power of steady awareness allows the true nature of experience to reveal itself.

How we can go from our conventional understanding, that everything changes - to a vision of impermanence - that radically transforms our lives.