Dolls, loss, love and the narrative cure. Kafka consoles a girl with a series of letters about a lost doll. An excursion into four different and indispensable tasks for any contemplative practitioner:
(i) Calming & stabilzing
(ii) Dis-identification and decentering
(iii) Deep Inquiry and thorough contemplative Investigation
(iv) The bigger Picture – gaining an universal perspective on the personal
Satipaṭṭhāna as map of experience.
Somatic - hedonic - affective - discursive 'raw-materials' in these four categories.
Relationship between these channels.
Citta and the particular challenges with the states of the mind as objects of practice.
Establishing a somatic vocabulary for your moods.
The ending of something as an easy connection point to citta-states.
Breakdown of types of ignorance in Buddhist teaching. Unpacking some of the terms avijjā and moha. Sketching their different use in the old texts despite their occasional synonymous use.
Excursions into conditionality.
What happens when I'm *not* mindful?
(i) Loss of fluency in our attention —
(ii) Loss of the here & now
(iii) Loss of the space: collapsing into things.
(iv) Loss of embodiment
(vI) Loss of the other
Hindrances – a glance at the list of troubles and how they manifest .
The different starting points of Buddhist and Western psychology. The Buddhas vision of freedom
Different types of troubles: soteriological hindrances (samyojana), afflictions (kilesa), inflations (āsava).
A detailed look at the 5 nivāraṇa, the five psychological obstacles to the cultivation of stillness as the basis for insight and understanding. The phenomenology of their manifestation.
This talk explores how mettā and the brahmaviharās are both means and ends on the path to liberation — the very ground that allows insight to arise, and the natural expression of the freedom that results.
