When our hopes for a better world or better personal life are dashed, we can become cynical and begin to assume that forces of greed and hatred will win out over forces of consciousness and love. How can we keep our hearts open in the face of personal and societal disappointment?
Not missing all the goodness and blessings in our life as an aid to true well being and happiness. The talk is based on the Buddha's Mangalam Sutta, which is also known as the
Discourse on Blessings
.
Bay Area musician, composer and dharma student Ben Rivers speaks about what it’s like to live with severe disability from Parkinson's and Lyme diseases. He shares about his life as we explore seeing beyond appearances, relating to someone who seems different as not so different, with their own unique gifts and challenges.
We don’t have to wait to take Bodhisattva vows to practice the Bodhisattva attitude of being there for another’s suffering. In this talk we explore principles and practices to cultivate compassion—the heart of the Bodhisattva ideal—including 1) developing a caring heart towards those we may not feel an affinity and 2) holding the pain we feel at another’s suffering with wise discernment.
In this discourse the Buddha explains how we get lost in our stories through papanca or proliferation of thought. The talk focuses on how papanca works in our lives and how we can work with it to free ourselves of confusion.
When things don’t go the way we hoped, resistance is often a natural response. A key element in our practice is how we respond to that resistance. Of course accepting things as they are is an essential part of our practice. This includes accepting the resistance. But an even more powerful practice is actually embracing the resistance so that it becomes a direct doorway to freedom.
