Akincano Marc Weber (Switzerland) is a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist. He learned to sit still in the early eighties as a Zen practitioner and later joined monastic life in Ajahn Chah’s tradition where he studied and practiced for 20 years in the Forest monasteries of Thailand and Europe. He has studied Pali and scriptures, holds a a degree in Buddhist psychotherapy and lives with his wife in Cologne, Germany from where he teaches Dhamma and meditation internationally.
Teaching is essentially translation. It means ferrying an authentic contemplative tradition across choppy waters into our psychological and cultural realities, losing neither the vision nor the truth of what we know to be our immediate experience.
Upādāna in different Buddhist Teachings:
– Clinging as fuel for renewed becoming (punabbhava)
– Clinging in the 5 aggregates (khandha)
– Clinging in Dependent Arising (paṭiccasamuppadā)
– Clinging as four specific forms:
(i) kāmūpādāna – clinging to and identification with sensuality (“Seeking” experiences)
(ii) diṭṭhūpādāna – clinging to and identification with views (“Being right, being competent“)
(iii) sīlavaṭūpādāna – clinging to and identification with virtue, practices and ritual (“Having the
right technique“)
(iv) attavādūpādāna – clinging to and identification with doctrines of a self / Self (“Being
someone”)
How wonderful you are in your being!
I delight that you are here!
I take joy in your good fortune!
May your happiness continue and increase!
(From a Sinhalese Ms of the 19th century. Monks' and nuns‘ practice upon receiving alms).
Relationship of different instructions to each other. Many spices, but we don't cook with all of them at once.
Orientation: how to find out and recognize what's going in your mind. (Using the satipaṭṭhāna map)
Relationship: a) getting reliably in touch with and b) learning to relate skillfully to the states.
Shifting attention away from habits.
Mindfulness does not mean 'no discernment' – it is quite capable on discerning what is wholesome and unwholesome.
The interplay of three functions of the mind in helping the contemplative practice.
Appamada – an attitude of care
Sati - a relationship: mindfulness as creating presence
Sampajañña – a value context
The Four Immeasurables. Brahmavihāra are not mere emotions but constitute different tones of relational empathetic resonance. They constitute nothing less but our humanity.
Brahmavihāras are cultivations not just 'states'. They are more than empathy but intentntional attitudes.
The workings of not-knowing – the workings of attentional habits. Involuntary attentional patterns seem to govern much of our experience. Yet training is possible, training is needed.
Such training entails acknowledgement, attentional tasks and specificity.
Negotiating pain.
About the value of samatha – the practice of stillness – and samādhi – the state of unification brought about by samatha practice.
Terminology: Why concentration is a bad word for either samatha or samādhi. What the diffence of attention and mindfulness is.
The intrinsic value of unification, its relationship to vipassanā. Four reasons why Buddhist traditions value the practice of stilling the mind.
