Love is the most basic expression of who we are, and yet it is often obscured by the trance of separation and fear. This talk explores how we habitually armor our hearts, and the training of attention that awakens us to unconditional, all inclusive love. A classic form of the metta (lovingkindness) meditation is part of the talk.
The essence of our practice is to learn ever better to respond rather than react to experience. Using the model of the "Ladder of Inference," we see how we, when reactive, move away from more direct experience-personally, inter personally and socially. We then explore practices to help us "get down."
These 5 faculties when cultivated and developed merge in the deathless. Faith, energy, concentration, mindfulness, wisdom. These are faculties we all have, but they may be poorly developed. Guidance is given for how to touch into these and strengthen them.
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.
