When we understand our experience in terms of the five aggregates, we see without the unnecessary overlay of self. This way of understanding is liberating.

Vedana, or the feeling tone of pleasant, unpleasant or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant that arises with each contact, was considered important enough by the Buddha to be a foundation of mindfulness, one of the five aggregates, and central to the teaching on dependent origination. It is also at the heart of the Dart Sutta in the Samyutta Nikaya, where the Buddha talks about the two common responses to suffering: to bemoan and lament the fact that suffering is happening, but often to try to avoid the unpleasant by chasing after the pleasant. This talk looks at all of these different teachings to help us understand the importance of bringing mindfulness to vedana in our practice and in our lives.

Oneself, benefactor, dear friend and neutral person

The Buddha pointed to seven meditative factors that when developed lead to liberation. This talk explains how the factors are developed, beginning with mindfulness and continuing through the arousing factors and the pacifying factors.

In the third foundation of mindfulness, the Buddha instructs us to bring awareness and clear seeing to the contents of mind. In a nonjudgmental way, we are invited to be aware of whether the mind is affected by lust, ill will or delusion, and also when the mind is not affected by the states. Included in this practice are various experiences of concentration, expansion and contraction in the mind. The section ends by including awareness of the liberated mind, even if this is only a temporary experience. The thrust of this section is to notice the wholesome and the unwholesome qualities of the mind, and by that very noticing increase the wholesome and decrease the unwholesome.

Ignorance is the first link in the chain of dependent origination. The talk explores how formations are conditioned by ignorance to create three levels of obscuration, and how the path of sila, samadhi, and pañña works through them to touch enlightenment.

Hiri and Ottappa: A deep respect for oneself and others to practice the precepts of non-harming

The Satipatthana Sutta (usually translated as the Foundations of Mindfulness) offers a complete description of the practice of mindfulness, beginning with the direct awareness of the breath and the body, progressing through mindfulness of vedana or feeling tone, to the more subtle object of the Third Foundation, mindfulness of mind states. The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness represents the culmination of this series of practices, and can be seen as a direct pointing, again and again, to the possibility of freedom through direct awareness of where we get caught, and how to turn the mind towards liberation. This talk is an overview of the practices of the Fourth Foundation, which can be seen as both the last in the sequence of practices, and as a progression in itself. It also covers how the Fourth Foundation can be skillfully interwoven into our practice of the other foundations.

The cultivation of mind/heart through the practices of samatha (concentration) and vipassana (insight) meditations

The importance of developing wholesome uplifting states of mind through sympathetic joy, concentration, insight and gratitude.