To care for our lives, the lives of all beings and the earth is all at the heart of what it means to be a human being. Yet, speculating about the future, and tensing up in fearful anticipation of days to come, are not skillful expressions of care and wisdom. There is a better way.
Let’s ground into the depth of timeless presence, of stillness and emptiness, in order to fully inhabit this living moment with our tender human heart. Through this practice, the next steps will reveal themselves.
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If humans are intrinsically relational creatures, how do we integrate this understanding with the Buddha’s teachings on suffering and its cessation? Relational suffering and craving? Dependent origination? In this session, we explore the power and necessity of a relational understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. We discuss and practice relational aspects of the path, including the…
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Our lives include facing things we didn’t choose, and often cannot change; such as getting ill or injured, or loosing something or someone that we love. Dharma teachings invite us to turn towards these, instead of turning away from them. What is the wisdom that is available to us when we meet our experience with…
This week’s topic is “Getting A Feel For Feeling”. As we perceive, we add a feeling (vedanā) to our experience. When we are unaware of this process and react to the projected feeling, it causes unnecessary suffering (dukkha). However, understanding this process and responding skilfully leads to one of the deepest senses of freedom available. Let’s explore this freedom through our daily meditations this week.
This week’s theme is: Resolve to Unbind the Heart
The word resolve can embody many meanings. This week we will see how much it offers on a Dharma path of awakening. It is made of re & solve: ‘re’ as in ‘really’, fully, with intensity; ’solve’ as in loosen, undo, or dissolve. Such a poetic and insightful combination: to intensely loosen.
The Buddha offered teachings and practices for a path of unbinding. A path of resolve to resolve, of dedication to undoing. For dukkha is a state of high activity and reactivity: a doing of distress. Meditations are practices of skilful and subtle activity that unbuild problematic senses of self and loosen missions of reactivity. An invitation to wake up to life, in life, for life, and there in the midst of it all to resolve: to fully unbind.
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We are deeply conditioned to blame; it’s a survival strategy. Though it can feel necessary, maybe even fruitful to part of us, blaming arises out of suffering, and leads to more suffering. The process of blame is not required but we don’t always know how to put it down. How do we let it go?
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Finding a comfortable body posture when meditating is a crucial element in our practice. We can use our bodies as a way of experiencing change and impermanence. In this session, we will be looking at ways to make our bodies comfortable for meditation – both standing (if appropriate for your body) and sitting. We will…
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The spiritual path requires our surrender – again and again. We surrender story, striving, preoccupation, and the illusion of separate self. We surrender all that is not Love. How do we remember the power of surrender alongside resistance? How do we recognize the emergent ground of Trust while navigating the unknown? How can the liminality…
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Most of us know the Buddha as a revered spiritual sage. Less is known about the person, Siddhartha Gautama, who was also a social revolutionary. In this talk, we will explore how Gautama upended the caste system in India and examine his problematic relationship to women. We’ll see how understanding the Buddha as a human…