Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene IV | Online Wednesday-Morning

The Buddha famously said, "I teach dukkha [suffering or reactivity or a sense of unsatisfactoriness] and the cessation of dukkha.” We explore this core teaching as it is expressed in the Four Noble Truths and the teachings of the Two Arrows and Dependent Origination, including ways that it can be confusing. We suggest ways to understand and implement this teaching both in formal meditation and in everyday life. (See document 328 below, on "Four Meanings of Dukkha, and Contact to Grasping in the Dependent Origination Model.")

A video version of this talk is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nOOcmfBqU

The theme of this Sunday talk, the Four Noble truths. Buddhist traditions may vary in many ways, but the one common teaching in each one is this one. Is there a wellbeing that is not relative to situations? That remains unchanged. This was the Buddha's realisation. And the core of the teaching above. It allows one to take responsibility for ones discontent.To really understand how things work.

Q& A session given after Sunday talk on 06 Sep 26

For many, wishing well and extending metta to others can come relatively naturally. The hard part is not sending out love, but letting it in. This is one of the most supportive practices for counteracting self-judgment and developing kindness and metta for ourselves. This talk will explore this topic and practice together.

The theme of this Sunday talk: Right effort, cultivating the skillful, and abandoning the unskillful. Luang Por reflects on right effort, and effort as a skill, rather than wholesome and un-wholesome, as it is sometimes referred to. Everything that arises, is natural, even a "murderous impulse". But whether we follow and cultivate it, is what is important. When the skillful is cultivated, we experience benefit for ourselves, and others, when the unskillful is followed and cultivated, it leads to harm, for ourselves and others. The practice of right effort then, lies, in first recognising fully, and discerning what is arising, and secondly, knowing how to follow the skillful, and abandon the unskillful.