I have always enjoyed working with practitioners who are continuing to deepen their practice. In the many long retreats I teach at both IMS and Spirit Rock, I feel free to pass on the deepest pointings I’ve found in the teachings of the Buddha in the Pali Canon. Those are my guiding lights in practice and understanding.
It is fun for me to take the most difficult concepts and put them into accessible language, to unwrap the mystery. So I try to find ways to explore the breadth of concepts like "emptiness" -- to see how the entire path can be explained in terms of this synonym for nibbana. One of my aims is to bring the goal of freedom into the here and now. This way practitioners get a taste of freedom, so they know what they are heading toward on their journey to liberation.
The tools of mindfulness and lovingkindness can be picked up by anyone. They are easy to understand and they bring immediate benefit to our lives. The essence of vipassana is ideally suited to western society, especially to the resonance between our psychological turn of mind and our quest for spiritual understanding.
This talk recaps some key elements in the development of Buddhism in India from the death of the Buddha through the splits that occurred in the early schools of what could be called classical or Nikaya Buddhism. It highlights some of the philosophical issues that caused the divisions.
Lovingkindness and the other brahma viharas show us the possibility of an appropriate response to the joys and sorrows of life. The practice of mudita for oneself leads to the beautiful state of gratitude.
What supports lovingkindness is the sincere caring we give in each moment as we say a metta phrase. What obstructs metta are its near and far enemies; affection with attachment and aversion such as sadness, fear, anger, or judgement.
It's very helpful to reflect on the way we experience change in the course of our human life, including our own aging and death. But even more freeing is discovering the direct insight into the momentary arising and passing of all phenomena through our practice of mindful observation.
Although humans have a bias toward falsely seeing permanence, we can develop the insight into the truth of impermanence. In the depths of meditation, we are able to discern the moment to moment dissolution of our experience at the six sense doors.
Dharma practice has two functions: First it makes us healthy, then it makes us free. The talk explores both these phases, as well as their accompanying attitudes, and explores the process of healing in relation to fear.
