This talk explores the Naturally Arising Practice Method (see dharmaground.org/teachings), which emphasizes softening into direct experience rather than forcing the mind. By establishing supportive conditions and maintaining curiosity, participants can learn to ground themselves in their own capacity for knowing, allowing insight and clarity to unfold more effortlessly.

We begin by focusing on a fundamental perspective for our practice: How our practice moves from underlying ignorance to wisdom. We look at both the traditional understanding of such ignorance and how contemporary psychological and social perspectives help us to identify further dimensions of ignorance, including our initially unconscious social conditioning. We start by considering how the Buddha related both to caste and to women's roles in the sangha. We then look at the nature of social conditioning, including how this is related to "in-groups" and "out-groups," along with "implicit bias," and ways that our practice can help us see more clearly and ultimately transform our social conditioning.

Principles and clear practices for wise mindfulness with emotions. An alternative to "RAIN" is "RAFT": recognize, allow, feel, tease apart (and trust).

As mindfulness practice unfolds, our experience of dukkha (suffering, dis-ease) naturally shifts and changes. Compassion morphs to meet it. This talk explores five faces of compassion that are cultivated through our mindfulness practice: patience, capacity, humility, spaciousness, and not-self.