In the Buddha’s teachings, there are five areas of practice that lead to happiness: sense pleasures (for lay people), wholesome actions (or merit), concentration, insight and awakening. Each of these offers a more complete and reliable happiness than the one before it. The talk outlines the ways each of these areas contributes to our happiness.
The ability to let go of the past and to forgive depends on how we hold ourselves with others. This talk explores how we affect others and how we can move to a greater connection.
We are conditioned to live in stories that obscure the vastness, goodness and mystery of what we are. This talk explores the ways we construct a limited self-identity and the pathways to realizing and living from a fullness of our Being.
Worlds of experience within which we dwell as a variety of 'selfs' are discussed in light of Buddhist teachings and contemporary cognitive perspectives. Insight into the suffering and non-self nature of unwholesome mind-states transforms our relationship to those worlds.
Feelings are the first conditioned reference we offer the moment. Through our feelings we are prepared to turn away, ignore, or grasp the experience at hand. Feelings set up our attitudes, personal story, and character to carry us forward in a predisposed way.
