We can bear witness to each others’ suffering by recognizing genuine spiritual friends or kalyānamitta who share our values and our desire for awakening. Spiritual friends can help us identify our individual pitfalls and support our letting go of these obstacles. It is a joy to share the Dhamma together.
Mind can be useful, but keep it in its place, the world of abstractions. It doesn’t do well in the living organic world. Meet the inconclusive impossibilities of life with heart’s fundamental quality to open and include.
A review of the key teachings – how to practice with body, heart and mind in a way that leads to liberation. Firming up faith, restraining from unskillful habits, exerting the mind in skillful investigations, enjoyment and contentment of the mind.
The development of insight comes from feeling experience as it arises. Detachment, dispassion and relinquishment enable the allowing of phenomena, witnessing of change, and letting go of making it personal. We’re able to be truly present and in touch with what’s happening.
How can we avoid the pitfalls that Mara sets for us on the path? Develop Sati (mindfulness) to act as a gatekeeper that can recognize the earliest signs of delusion, ill will, and greed. At the same time, cultivate paññā, wisdom and sharp discernment to protect against unskillful speech, conduct, and intention or thought. These foundational practices will be both refuge and rescue from the snares of Mara!
The beginning of insight is knowing what’s helpful and not, recognizing causes and conditions. We learn to meet difficult thoughts and feelings in skillful ways. Calming the body, using gentle and receptive gestures, we learn to listen to and soothe the crazy mind. One starts to see that negative experiences are not the problem but the sense of self that identifies with all of it.
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.
