After relaxing our bodies and quieting our minds, this meditation guides us to open to the changing experience of being alive. We ask ourselves two questions: “What is Happening Inside me?” and “Can I be with this?” By learning to bring an unconditional presence and an accepting Yes to our lives, we begin to touch openheartedness and freedom.
How do we awaken our natural capacities for gratitude and generosity? This talk explores the pathways of honest presence and purposeful cultivation, and offers several reflections that guide us in contacting and expressing our love.
Through teachings, poems, stories, and reference to the science related to cultivating gratitude, we explore the nature of gratitude and how to practice it.
In the search for happiness, we generally only experience the search, marked by discomfort or desperation. Relationship is key. The instructions for ānāpānasati train us to develop a more dispassionate relationship where we learn to stand in the presence of, or witness from, the edge of experience. From here the right kind of relationship, marked by non-expectation and non-aversion, can be cultivated.
