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.
Sense consciousness is the simple knowing of a phenomenon at one of the six sense doors. Awareness is the broad field that includes all six types of sense consciousness. Awareness can be freeing when we see that it's empty.
The Buddha talked about tranquility and insight as, two primary developments in meditation practice. The two might have slightly different styles of practice, but each benefits the other.
Karma means action from a volition. This talk explores karma as a reliable path to happiness. It also includes the results of action and the relationship of karma to not-self.
The sequential development of the factors of enlightenment beginning with mindfulness, leading to the arousing factors, then to the pacifying factors. Keeping a special eye on mindfulness, energy, and concentration to keep the factors balanced.
Mahasi Sayadaw taught this style of meditation in which any object that arises in our experience can be the momentary focus of mindfulness, including breath, sensations, sounds, emotions, thoughts, and so on.
Concentration as a unification of mind brings stability of attention and is the foundation for liberating insight. Benefits of Samatha and vipassana. What blocks concentration and how to develop it in the retreat setting.
