The Buddha's teachings offer a pathway to discover inner peace, freedom and the compassionate heart. Through deepening our understanding of the nature of things, we can come to know what it means to awaken in the midst of our life, to be deeply connected to our experience, and yet not bound by it.
2024-12-29 (10 days)
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center
Body as a construct. On touch (phassa) and touching and being touched (phusati). Differing senses create a different relationship - 'seeing', 'hearing' and 'touching' as analogies for attending to something create a different kind of relationship to ourselves. The visual is overdetermined, often at the expense of touch. Feeling the body as an experience of touch rather than being 'observed'.'.
The challenge of attending and being mindful. Mindfulness (sati) and Attention (manasikāra) are different things. Attention comes in two forms: voluntary and involuntary attention.
Our ways of looking are shaped by our views, our patterns of attention, our emotional states, inclinations, intentions and more. Working with these factors we can participate in seeing and sensing the self, others and the world in ways that are onward leading. This talk includes extracts from a practice diary working with a difficult sankhara that was shaping and coloring the perception.
Being seen with the loving gaze of another who sees that you are perfectly in tact. Then practicing with a loved one who is suffering and whom you would like to be able to meet and love with more equanimity.
