Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Practice and Prejudice: Waking up to our reality blinkers

With Martin Aylward recorded on January 6, 2019.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

Martin writes: “Do you remember that Youtube video ‘Awareness test’ from a few years ago, where you’re asked to pay attention to one thing (passes made by the team in white) and you end up completely missing something else? (check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 – it only takes 30 seconds)

We perceive reality in accordance with our existing expectations, or as Buddhist teachings call it, our conditioning. We relate to and react to the world around us as if our perceptions are trustworthy or even objective, whereas actually we are constantly making the world ‘in our own image’.

This confirmation bias (you see what you expect to see) has huge implications for us; personally and socially. In a world so polarised by divisive views, we each need to do our own work of understanding our own blind spots and assumptions. We need to learn to see ourselves, and each other, free from our assumptions.

Join me at Worldwide Insight for the first session of the year to explore these reality blinkers. We’ll look at how prejudice blinds us to the way things are. We’ll see how we can wake up; cleanse the doors of our perception; meet reality as it is, instead of how we imagine it to be; take off our blinkers and see the whole picture of life.”

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • The Harvest of Goodness

    The harvest is a beautiful and important part of life each year. A time when our good work bears fruit and people are fed. A time of thanksgiving and prayers. How do we participate in the harvest with our spiritual practice? In this Sunday Sangha session with Drs Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe Ward, we…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The Unshakeable Heart: Liberation as the Ultimate Resilience

    Is it possible to live and love freely amidst the greed, aggression and dysfunction of the world?⁠⁠Amidst so much suffering, can you nourish joy, lightness and laughter?⁠⁠When it feels as if you’re drowning, might it be that you are floating in an ocean of blessings?⁠⁠In times of political polarisation and dysfunction, broken societal modelling, a…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Visions of a free life

    Freedom is a central concern of all our lives, yet has many different manifestations, some of which run completely contrary to others. This class will explores the importance of social freedoms, inner freedom, personal and collective freedoms. We explore how different perspectives on free-ness shape how we practice; and how we understand life and our…

    Read More

  • Juha Penttilä

    Exploring Vastness of Awareness Practice

    In this session we’ll explore opening to the practices of vastness of awareness. Through listening and sensing we will open up to a sense of spaciousness and explore letting go within it.

    Read More

  • Three kinds of liberation.

    Freedom from stress. Freedom to Be. Freedom to Act. Join us as we explore with Christopher how these three freedoms give support to each other.

    Read More

  • Kittisaro

    The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings

    On a Full Moon in the early years after the Buddha’s awakening, 1250 enlightened disciples spontaneously gathered to be in the presence of the Blessed One. His succinct teachings on that occasion, known as the Ovada Patimokkha, distill the essence of the Path leading to Nibbana.

    Read More