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.
A lot of understanding can come from reflecting on the way impermanence shows itself in our lives both outwardly and inwardly, including our vulnerability to aging and death. But even more penetrating insight comes to the mind that has become still through meditation. Through this way of seeing, the truth of impermanence sinks into our bones and the wisdom of non-clinging becomes very obvious.
Understanding how karma works gives us clear guidelines to find simple human happiness or the highest happiness of liberation, which is described as the end of karma. The talk also describes how the working of karma depends on the truth of not-self (anatta).
The first two links of dependent origination say that ignorance gives rise to volitional formations, or impulses. This talk describes successive layers of obscurations that form from ignorance, to a belief in self, to afflictive emotions, to unskillful actions. The path undoes these layers by focusing, in order, on virtue, meditation, and wisdom, finally penetrating to Nibbana.
This talk looks at the question of not-self using the five aggregates as the Buddha spoke of them in his second discourse, the Characteristic of Not-Self. As we learn to see ourselves simply as an aspect of nature, both physical and mental, the burden of self lifts and life becomes much lighter.
This talk describes the two shifts needed to transform our relationship to afflictive emotions, one of attitude and one of wisdom. We come to understand an emotion by learning to see its expression in mind, in body, and in the thoughts that make up its underlying view or story.
The right attitude for meditation is one free of wanting, resistance or delusion. Then we can achieve the intelligent knowing of experience that mindfulness offers.
The right attitude for meditation is one free from greed, aversion and delusion. The talk also defines some key terms in practice: consciousness, mindfulness, awareness, and wisdom.
The four divine abidings show us a way to hold all the joys and sorrows of life. This talk focuses principally on the qualities of loving-kindness, which overcomes isolation and connects us to all of life; and gratitude, as a form of appreciative joy that leads to greater contentment and well-being.
