The sense of self as personality view is a construct of mind that arises and poises like any other phenomena - and we can explore it with intent rather than fear it.
This talk continues the exploration of how the practice cultivates happiness and joy. Five wholesome states that support true well-being are investigated including practices that help us access them.
We sometimes think that if we are experiencing aversion in our practice, that insight must be out of reach. Yet the Buddha teaches us that the path unfolds through understanding suffering. When we bring mindfulness to aversion itself, the understanding that develops can be very freeing.
The talk explores how the sense of self is created through the links in dependent origination. “Unentangled knowing” describes how a meditator can be in a state of full awareness of things coming and going at the sense doors without being caught in them.
The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths – the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering , the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering – not as a philosophy, but as practices that we can use here and now to understand why we suffer and how to find release. Using this template to gain insight into our lives can bring a radical shift to the way we relate to our experience.
The Buddha was called The Happy One. With the emphasis on suffering, its cause and it’s end, we can forget that this path is really a path of cultivating true happiness. In this talk we look at three principles of the teaching that can be the foundation for true well-being and how it can be cultivated both on and off the cushion.
Practicing meditation, we inevitably encounter the wandering mind. Rather than considering this experience to be a "problem", if we explore this phenomenon with mindfulness, we can learn a lot about our minds.
