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.
The talk explores action and its results. It also looks at how karma and not-self are a mutually necessary way to understand personality and the path of practice leading to the end of karma.
Metta is a powerful tool in the journey of awakening. The practice makes the heart more responsive and also offers purification, concentration, connection to all of life, and happiness.
When we let go of our habitual strategies of greed and aversion, we discover in meditation a spaciousness that can be unsettling at first. As we explore the openness, we find our refuge in an awareness that is the very nature of the mind.
Why the Buddha compared the physical world to an empty mass of form. Understanding why the five aggregates are empty and void of essence. Based on a sutta in the Samyntta Mikaya: "Form is like a lump of foam, and consiousness like a magic show."
The Eightfold Path is a comprehensive guide to the Dharma practice in the workplace in such areas as the difficult person, the eight worldly concerns and mental stability.
