My focus in teaching is to provide the support that students need to turn their life to the dharma, to truth, and to find ways to come out of their pain and suffering. The retreat experience is an invaluable aid to this exploration; however, what matters more is how one integrates this under- standing into everyday life.
I care that students see through the illusory wall between formal meditation and their daily life. Then, what remains is a meditative attitude to all that occurs.
Vipassana practice helps us to become respectful and caring towards ourselves and others. This generates the conditions of mind and heart that allow us to awaken to the truth of who we are, rather than believing in our limited assumptions. As we see the impersonal nature of our own mind, we then experience a deep engagement with life that allows for a complete transformation of the heart. When we know this deeply, we can no longer unconsciously engage in actions that will lead to suffering and the ongoing destruction of our planet.
As a teacher, I am accessible and able to meet people at an intimate level. I am interested in how the language that we use can show where we are holding on. I look to the concepts about reality that people believe in as the key that unlocks the door to liberating insight. People can easily discount their experiences and forget that they hold the seeds to liberation, that the wisdom is already within them. As people speak what is in their hearts, affirmation brings about the confidence needed to take the next step, which can often seem confusing and daunting as one walks into the unknown territory of the mind.
Mindfulness encourages releasing the hold of the discursive mind, and frees the attention to drop[ into the heart and body, revealing the source of true happiness.
The five difficult mind states, classically laid out by the Buddha, that obstruct open heart and free mind, and the potential for deepening insight and wisdom.
This talk is an offering of one of the discourses from the Majjhima Nikāya (MN 140) in which the Buddha gives a disciple named Pukkusāti, who has never met the Buddha and doesn't know he's talking with him) a powerful teaching on the destruction of all suffering.
Understanding the truth of suffering, or that things are generally unsatisfactory, we can loosen our grip and open more sensitively and respectfully to how things are.
We are shifting our perception from ordinary ways of seeing and knowing in a way that is in accord with the dharma, with insight into the way things are. Looking more closely at story-making.
When the small ego self begins to let go of it's self-centered position, the mind turns to the Dharma and sees the three characteristics of existence - impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness.
In itself, consciousness is pure, but it gets covered over with difficult patterns that bring about suffering. When these patterns are seen and released, a sense of well-being and clarity ensues. Three attitudes to bring to our practice that can hep us along the path.
Without wisdom and awareness, we can climb into our stories, both painful and happy stories, and not see how we are trapped and limited by what we believe is true. Looking at a bigger picture.
This talks describes how to work with mindfulness of Dharmas-the transformation of dukkha (difficult states) to sukha (happy states) or the 7 Factors of Awakening.
Drawing from the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness immersed in the Body, we cultivate a steadying presence as we open to wiser frontiers of our heart and mind.
NO matter how much I might wish for suffering to end, it will always be an intrinsic part of our existence. Opening to this truth, awakens our heart of compassion.
Why come on retreat? As we orient to the present moment and reconnect with ourselves, we can begin to know what no longer serves us and let go. We open to a bigger picture of the way things are.
If we try to get the conditions of our life to match our expectations, we will be disappointed again & again. Understanding the Buddha's teaching on 'dukkha' helps us let go and see more clearly.
As we shift from a self-centered view to a dharma-centered view, we enter the authentic truth of our experience, and see with new eyes, even when facing difficult mind states. What can support this turning?
The Buddha invites us to open to all experience just as it is. When we open, we deepen our experience to allow both pleasure and pain and enter the stream of life without resistance or grasping.
With wise and clear intention, we invite the conditions for transforming our heart-mind. We directly attend to the prickliness of aversion and resistance and open to the way things are.
Mudita is one of the divine Abodes. The quality of the heart that feels happiness for others' good fortune. An introduction followed by a 20 minute guided meditation.
Exploring what covers over our innate goodness, including near and far enemies of loving kindness (metta), attached love and hate, and how to uncover the beautiful qualities of our hearts.
Exploring energy (viriya) as a factor of awakening, how, along with mindfulness and investigation, it drives our practice. Importance of intention and letting go.
There are ordinary people in our life that care about our well-being. This guided meditation supports us to recognise and receive their care. (Adapted from John Makransky, in Awakening Through Love)
The Buddha's teaching on the four ways of undertaking things that clear show us how to generate more happiness and less suffering for ourselves, others and the world. Once we understand, it is possible to make choices for happiness.
Exploring how we compartmentalise things, people and experiences into good and bad, and get trapped in a solid self structure. How to free ourselves of this entrapment.
