What I most love in my teaching practice is seeing students become dedicated to their own liberation. As their spiritual practice matures, people light up from within when they begin to understand that personal freedom is possible. This commitment to freedom on the part of the student inspires me to find ways to express my deepest understanding and enthusiasm for liberation.
The mindfulness teachings of the Buddha are among the more direct, practical meditation techiques that we can cultivate. My focus is on sharing these practices in an accessable, down-to-earth way. How can we disengage from our habits of responding to the world through veils of confusion, greed, and hatred?
Mindfulness practice helps us recognize when we are responding to the world from the mental and emotional habits that obscure our true home, our radiant nature, which manifests as compassion and love. The Buddha's teachings show us that we are not isolated individuals who need to live defensive lives. Rather, we can learn to trust and live from our full potential as compassionate members of a connected planet.
The understanding of emptiness manifests in our experience as the intention of compassion. One way that compassion develops is through meeting our own physical and mental suffering with kind awareness.
Seclusion or viveka – of body and mind can be an important supportive condition for clear seeing. The hermit, for example, is found in many spiritual traditions.
Thought is often related to as a “problem” in meditation. It is much more useful to include thought as an object of awareness: once we understand the nature of thought, it loses it power over us.
Self-judgment is a common and at times almost crippling, mental state. This talk explores some of the conditions that may give rise to this habit of mind.
The Buddha famously stated that he taught one thing, dukka and its end. The heart-mind of non clinging is one way to describe the end of dukkha. One way of looking at the commonality of purpose in the various skillful means of our path is that they are rooted in the mind of non-clinging.
Viriya is a quality of mind that is an essential aspect of our path; frequently mentioned by the Buddha. Often translated as “effort” we can easily confuse this quality with one of striving or “efforting” which leads to suffering. Viriya: patient courage supports mindfulness and wisdom.
The Buddha said that we continue to live in hostility, with confusion, because we hold onto preferences. Mindfulness practice helps us recognize and trust that awareness has no preferences
When the heart/mind is free from the narrowness of self-clinging, the natural response to beings and the world is that of metta/karuna: friendliness & compassion
