Dr. Stephen Fulder was born in the UK and received an M.A. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. He has devoted his life to exploring inner and outer healing and spirituality. He is an author and lecturer in herbal and natural medicine with 14 published books. He lives in an environmental village in the Galilee in Israel, which he helped to found and where he grows his own food. Stephen has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1975, is the founder and senior teacher of the Israel Insight Society, the main Vipassana/Mindfulness organization in Israel, and has been teaching retreats and courses in Buddhist practice for 15 years. He has established programs and organizations, such as ‘Middleway’, which apply these teachings to aid peace and healing in the communities in the Middle East.
There is no question more engaging, universal and mysterious than the question: ‘Who Am I?’
As soon as we move out of automatic living and start to question and explore who or what we are, we open a Pandora’s Box and our life can get dramatically more deep and interesting, and sometimes more disturbing. We find ourselves in a world of paradox, mystery, and yet unimagined freedom.
‘Who is in charge of my life?’ ‘What in me is changing and what is constant?’ ‘Which of the many voices within me can I rely on?’ ‘How can I let go of the sense of separation between me and the world?’ ‘Is my life leading me somewhere?’ Questions such as these become a journey of discovery. They help us peel off the layers of conditioning and beliefs and live more wisely, more lightly and more freely.
In the dharma, we meet ourselves as a constantly changing field of experience, not as an intellectual puzzle. We are actually more transparent than we first thought. This is an insight into anatta, non-self, and sunyata, emptiness. This removes the veil or filter through which we usually view the world, which then appears meaningful, joyful, and unlimited. In this event, we will explore these questions concerning self and world, by means of a talk, meditation, and inquiry.
