Discusses mindfulness and understanding of hindrances as doorways to freedom

Dharma Talk

Why does anger cause us so much misery? As long as we feed it, anger insidiously undermines our spiritual work. Mindful and aware, we learn to refrain from feeding that angry dog and we loosen its foothold within the mind. By the power of loving-kindness and compassion, we disarm anger's toxicity and restore peace. These are the supreme medicines that will guide us through the wilderness of anger.

Viriya is a quality of mind that is an essential aspect of our path; frequently mentioned by the Buddha. Often translated as “effort” we can easily confuse this quality with one of striving or “efforting” which leads to suffering. Viriya: patient courage supports mindfulness and wisdom.

Ways to use mindfulness to help with depression.

The Buddha said that we continue to live in hostility, with confusion, because we hold onto preferences. Mindfulness practice helps us recognize and trust that awareness has no preferences

How to work with the three fundamental attitudes or habitual tendencies of mind that obscure our ability to be present and how the mindfulness ultimately reveals and liberates these forces so we can abide more in the peace of our true nature.

Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt parts of our experience- our unlived life. This rejected energy is stored in our bodies and prevents us from living wakefully and wholeheartedly. By bringing a courageous, mindful presence to bodily sensations our energies untangle and flow freely. Rather than a frightened resisting "self" we rediscover our full aliveness, connectedness and luminosity of Being.

When we shine the light of mindful awareness into present experience, the path is illuminated and wisdom is born.

Unlike the three Western monotheistic religions, Buddhism is not a religion of the book. Rather, Buddhism is based on the Buddha’s enlightened experience. More specifically, among other things, the Buddha was an early scientist. He said that if you reproduce his experiment by cultivating the Eightfold Path, your can replicate the same enlightenment result in yourself. There is no need for any beliefs, cosmology, dogma or creed. Indeed, all sentient beings are endowed by the luminous Buddha nature. The Buddha merely serves as a mirror for us to see our own enlightened nature. However, this means that we need to have the wisdom to see our true nature as it really is. This wisdom is described as the “right view” in the first step of the Eightfold Path. The problem is how can we see things as they really are when our attention is so scattered and our view is so obscured by poisons such as greed, hatred, delusion, pride and jealousy? The answer is through mindful awareness. Indeed, mindful awareness is something that we can learn even the first time we meditate. Eventually, we can reach a state of effortless awareness. This clear seeing allows our mindfulness to create some space between the stimulus and our response. Instead of knee-jerk, blind response, our mind has more time to choose a more skillful, intelligent response, thus, leading to more freedom and proactivity.