More and more, the teaching practice takes me into the community where I engage directly with students. My focus right now is on bringing the continuity of the Dharma into the market place. Although retreating is an important form for self-knowledge, I find myself less interested in the immediate results of a retreat and more interested in helping students investigate their relationship to the ups and downs of their everyday life.
Nature, death and spontaneous freedom continually interweave themselves into my teaching. From the forest of Thailand, where I spent several years, I bring a deep awareness of the healing quality of nature into my teachings. Relaxing into our true nature allows us to realize what it means to be a human being. It is here we find a resting point, a counterbalance to the speed and turbulence of our culture.
My work in hospice brings a sense of urgency into my teaching. Working with the theme of death and dying reveals the here and now of life to us, how important it is to open to each loss, change and transition that marks our path. Life is precious. We need to awaken without hesitation.
Many of us crave to be more calm and centered. We know that life has more to offer than this fleeting material world. For each of us, the Dharma offers an immediacy of freedom for which we do not have to strive or wait. In practice, we can learn to relax deeply into the moment and rediscover spontaneous freedom.
Opening awareness beyond the mine involves three phrases. Phase 1 is self-controlled awareness, phase 2 is self-examining awareness, and phase 3 is freeing awareness from self
How the nothing of feelings becomes the something of objects and further exploration of the third and fourth foundations.
Plus a guided meditation on the third foundation
These two ancient sutras fuse seamlessly together/explore how the body (form) becomes formless when we don't infuse the body with knowledge or remembrance
During our practice phase of development, we learn to adapt and change. During the abiding phase, we are out of the paradigm of adaption into surrender.
The Buddha seems to be suggesting to advance ourselves as little as possible in the Third Foundation. When we see what is arising minimally as "just this," we are essentially taking ourselves out of that seeing.
The principles of the Four Noble Truths, we are all familiar with, but the application of the principles lie within the integrated understanding of the Four Foundations.
