Three Refuges Chant and Meditation

(Part 1) This Monday Night Dharma Talk explores five foundations for spiritual practice: safety, groundedness, friendship, kindness and interest. Without these factors in place, it's difficult to engage in meditation.

By bringing our full attention to the aliveness in the body, we can open to the experience of interior space and the space that includes all sensations and sounds. This then allows us to perceive continuous space filled with the light of awareness. This meditation attunes us to these dimensions of awareness: continuous open space, heart space and full aliveness. We end with a Zen poem that invites us to rest in this living, loving awareness, and know it as home.

The Buddha famously said, “I have taught one thing and one thing only, dukkha [suffering or reactivity or a sense of unsatisfactoriness] and the cessation of dukkha.” In this daylong, we explore this core teaching as it is expressed in the Four Noble Truths and the teaching of the Two Arrows. We suggest ways to study and implement this teaching both in formal meditation and in everyday life, through practices and reflections that bring together the wisdom of seeing the roots of dukkha, the compassion and kindness that can hold our difficulties, and skillful action to transform dukkha.This talk give an orientation for the daylong.