We long for inner space and peace, yet we also defend against it, compulsively filling the open space of consciousness with the endless mental proliferation that gives us our sense of self and world. In this talk Martin explores the 3 major expressions of this inner momentum, showing us ways to recognise, understand, and let go of our demands, defences and distractions, and allowing instead the genuine, wide open spaciousness of our nature.
This talk looks at the way we respond to life when consciousness is not caught in obsessions or reactivity. Martin explores 4 specifically different dimensions of love (Brahma Viharas) and invokes their commonality in dissolving our sense of separateness; beckoning us into an exquisite intimacy with life.
This talk looks at the inevitability in language of either reifying or negating existence; "It (self) exists" or "it doesn't exist", and how either view is problematic, inviting us in the living immediacy of life, to discover the middle way beyond existing or not-existing.
Martin explores how our various views condition our experience, and keep us locked into viewing and reacting to life in all too familiar ways. We look at the way our views limit our experience of who we are, and how investigating those views can lead us into a more ambiguous, and more liberated sense of our participation in life.
Martin explores the mechanism of wanting, the felt sense of different types of desire, and 3 ways of contemplating wanting in order to understand it more fully, and to free our relationship with desire.
Anupadana, meaning non-clinging (often translated as letting go), is the very essence of Dharma practice. This introductory talk looks at the specifics of cultivating a non-clinging attitude with respect our physical, emotional, and mental experience.
However we describe our practice, we are longing for happiness and ease. This talk explores how we get in our own way with that, pursuing ideas of happiness while missing something fundamental about our very existence which can bring us back into the freedom of being which beckons us. Like the Sufi poet Hafiz says, "Ever since Happiness first heard your name, it has been running through the streets crying out to you."
