An overview and introduction to the practice of Loving Kindness, and some of the ways it works to bring healing and joy, true nourishment and inner resource, and ultimately transforms the very way we see life.
Holding ourselves with a compassionate, forgiving heart is the gateway to healing, and to intimacy with our world. This talk explores our deep conditioning to be at war with ourselves, and the insights and elements of forgiving that can carry us home to loving presence.
As we explore the body from this sutta, we realize the inevitability of loss and begin to see death everywhere. Death takes us through various stages of realization, altering our life and changing it forever. We learn to live consciously with all beginnings and endings.
The 4 Wise Efforts and the simile of the correct way for tuning a stringed instrument are used to explore this very important mental factor. Examples are given for how Wise Effort manifests in formal practice as well as in daily life. The simile of how the Buddha crossed the flood is also covered in this talk.
If we investigate, we will find that much suffering arises out of mistrust--of ourselves, others and life. This talk explores the genesis of the great challenges of doubt and mistrust, and the pathway to trusting the goodness that is our essence.
In the context of wise speech practice, we continue to explore being aware of feelings and needs and introduce skillful ways to identify "how things are" through "observations."
The right views of the four stages of the Eightfold Path development support practices to purify speech and behavior, the mind and understanding, resulting in happiness of harmony, happiness of tranquility and happiness of peace.
We have allowed our planet to be run by an elite, which is not at all connected to what happens on the ground. This alienation needs to come to an end.
We have each disconnected our mind from the ensemble of our being, and allowed it to be run by our ego. Unless we reconnect, we will continue to live mindlessly.
When we see the world through the veil of our ego, our love flows in distorted and confused ways. Through mindfulness and metta and insight we can begin to understand these conditioned patterns and transform them into love and connection.
For many of us, the most apparent junctures of spiritual transformation are spurred on by challenging life situations. This talk looks at how our conscious aspiration for awakening, and our practice of mindful presence, can help us find peace, compassion and freedom when difficulties arise.
Learning how to work skillfully with the pleasant experiences that arise from the development of metta and concentration is an important part of supporting the deepening of these practices.
This joyful talk illuminates the practice of resting in present moment awareness. His experience being studied in an FMRI is also recounted, with the results of recent academic studies on meditation practice.
This joyful talk illuminates the practice of resting in present moment awareness. His experience being studied in an FMRI is also recounted, with the results of recent academic studies on meditation practice.
The practice of metta is powerful and challenging because it works on so many levels - the personal, the relative and the transcendent. Opening to all these levels and being willing to work with whatever arises makes this practice deeply transformative.
After a review of last time, of the importance of speech practice and the ethical guidelines for wise speech, we explore two ways of cultivating mindfulness in our speech, concluding with an exercise to cultivate inner and outer attention at the same time.
Emotion Management Techniques (EMT) are various mindful and skillful ways of transforming difficult emotions into opportunities for awakening.
Through full understanding of the emotions and their true nature, we begin to open our heart and respond to the emotions with compassion and wisdom and thereby experience greater happiness and freedom.
