This talk encourages us to explore the gratification, danger and escape in our personal experience of clinging; with the intention to understand rather than to judge. Meeting our experience with mindfulness/wisdom is the practice of non-clinging.

Faith is one of the Five Spiritual faculties. This talk explores the elements of faith, sources of our faith and the ingredients we bring to deepen our trust and faith in the Dharma.

The first two links of dependent origination say that ignorance gives rise to volitional formations or impulses. The talk describes succesive layers of obscurations that form from ignorance, to a belief in self, to afflictive emotions, to unskillful actions. The path undoes these layers by focusing, in order, on virtue, mediation, and wisdom, finally penetrating to nibbana.

Based on the concept that mindfulness cultivates insights which lead to wisdom to manifest as compassion that is experienced as joy, this talk is about 1) the joy of awakened physical awareness, 2) the joy of psychological clarity, 3) the joy of knowing universal truth, 4) the joy of service and 5) the joy of realizing the basic goodness of human beings.

Emptiness and compassion are like two sides of the same coin -- they support and balance one another. How can we open to the beauty and suffering in this world; and how can we respond with wise intention?

This has the Metta Sutta as the basic text; but includes a discussion of the Paramitas and the resolve I made with Sharon Salzberg years ago to spend our time "when we are old" in "sitting around praying for people".