We’re conditioned to make a self out of sense consciousness, but everything simply arises out of causes and conditions. We practice with right view and deep attention to meet what arises directly, see it as phenomena arising and changing.
To harvest the real riches of the journey, seek refuge and protection in wisdom; and gain profound peace and happiness through the practice of loving-kindness, compassion and forgiveness. These qualities of reconciliation uphold virtue, concord, care and respect so that we can befriend what is noble and realize the truth for ourselves. Even in the darkest hour, remember what you love, awaken the highest from within you, and light the path to freedom.
We use a meditation theme like mindfulness of breathing to bring about the factors of awakening. These factors are not things we can do, they come about under the right conditions. Tend to the heart and body energies, bringing them together to hold your ground against the hinderances and make way for the factors of awakening.
As we begin our meditation, establish a reference that helps us to be with rather than be in. Be the ‘knower of the worlds’, aware of the danger and getting stuck. Body can be that reference, it gives a sense of here-ness. Widen awareness and be choosy with attention.
Breathing gets conditioned by how we live our lives – energy can be mottled and unbalanced. It is a signifier of the heart. We can take time during retreat to take samādhi as a way of life, unifying body, heart and mind to bring into fruition the factors of awakening.
We make contact with external phenomena, and the impressions and meanings resonate through the heart and mind. Make skillful contact – pick up that which is worthy, that which lifts the heart.
Meditation is a time to crystalize the training, to deeply take in and feel the teachings. In these pause moments we take heed, look deeply into the heart, come to know the experience of what stirs it up – clinging, aversion, becoming. We begin to prefer relinquishment, finding it a freer more livable options.
When we are stressed, our way of relating to each other is ego to ego. This talk explores the understandings and practices that enable us to embody "nameste": Honoring the sacred that lives through all beings.
When we remember to empty out all the distraction, all the movement, all the roughness of life, nameless, formless, without identity - we touch the shore of truth as waves touch the shores of the ocean, reaching our true home in the fullness of this moment exactly as it is.
Citta is the heart and feeling aspect of our experience. It can determine what is for our welfare, but becomes tangled and obscured by proliferation. Use deep attention to cut through the proliferations. Come out of the world of differentiation to just here now.
