While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart. We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go. The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.

This was a talk given by Luang Mae at Songdhammakalyani Monastery in Thailand. Nicole from Switzerland asks the question about the importance of being vegetarian.

We continue to explore how we might practice metta (and other heart practices) in a way integrated with mindfulness, wisdom, and insight, building on last week's session. We begin looking at some of the ways historically and culturally that the "mind" and "reason" have been separated from emotion, dating from Plato and the Greeks, and continued in the modern world with the understanding of reason and science as separate from emotion (and the body). This has been a major part of our social and cultural conditioning, evident in how mainstream education occurs, and also linked with gender conditioning. We also examine how, dating from Buddhaghosa's text, the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification), from the 5th century, metta and compassion has been labeled as practices leading to concentration, and not as linked directly with wisdom and awakening. This has been the basis for the 20th century Burmese approaches to metta and mindfulness, which have been the main influences in the West. However, when we look to the Buddha's actual teachings, as well as later Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings, we find much more of a connection between metta, compassion, and wisdom. We can see this in a number of texts which we explore, including ones in which the heart practices are seen as leading directly to wisdom, and development in awakening. In the last part of the talk, we explore ways that we can, in our formal and informal practices, integrate metta and wisdom. The talk is followed by discussion.

We begin with about 10 minutes of settling with our mindfulness (or another) practice. This is followed by about 5 minutes of practicing metta where it flows as easily as possible, and then by a guided practice in radiating metta, extended to radiating in a boundless way. We then return to a brief way of practicing radiating metta without visualization, followed by returning to mindfulness, infused with metta.

The path of awakening into wisdom and compassion.

Reflections and Guided Meditation