The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths – the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering , the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering – not as a philosophy, but as practices that we can use here and now to understand why we suffer and how to find release. Using this template to gain insight into our lives can bring a radical shift to the way we relate to our experience.

Non-Greed, Non-Hatred and Non-Delusion were taught by the Buddha as the three roots of happiness. Stating each in a positive way they are 1) Letting go/Generosity, 2) Loving-Kindness and ClarityWisdom. Every moment that we're mindful we're cultivating these qualities. This talk explores both the moment-to-moment as well as the relational aspects of these three qualities.

Using every moment and all of life as our teacher. An overview of the 3 characteristics of existence.

The flow of experience that we experience as component parts of a sense of self, and how that is always appearing, changing, and disappearing.

Big Mind/Big Sky Meditation Practice

There are two larger categories of meditation: samatha meditations and vipassana meditations. Samatha meditations are intended to calm, unify, balance and develop strengths of the heart, and vipassana meditations lead toward insight into our patterns of suffering, confusion, clarity and freedom. The samatha meditations can develop to the point where we are fully absorbed into our meditation subject. This talk describes this process.

Partly in honor of the recently deceased poet, Mary Oliver, we use her poem, "the Journey", as a reference point for understanding the nature of the spiritual journey. Two other reference points are the life of the Buddha, and then the experiences of our own lives. After an exploration of the very nature of the journey, and how a journey may take years, or two weeks, or an hour, we explore seven stages of the spiritual journey, starting with taking life for granted, being caught up in habitual and conditioned mind and behavior, and ending with some degree of awakening and then re-entering the "ordinary" world, often bringing gifts from the journey. In between is the heart of the journey. [The talk ends at 1.06.23.]