Carry the statement, "Seek first to understand before being understood," throughout this week. How does this intention create a listening attitude? Experience the effect of listening on your heart, how it opens you to caring. How does your behavior change when you allow actions to flow from listening instead of making assumptions prior to the action? Watch how the phrase interrupts reactive and impulsive thinking. Do you see the potential for changing many of your relationships through this intention?

RESPECT FOR SUFFERING The suffering that arises in the practice is a noble truth, something worthy of respect. You can’t just push it away. If you’re going to end suffering you have to give it space, understand it, and approach it systematically. INTERCONNECTEDNESS Interconnectedness is not always pretty. It means that our bad actions can have endless repercussions, and that our happiness is dependent on a very fragile web. But by becoming more skillful in our actions we can turn the principle of interconnectedness into a good thing: a path to a happiness that’s truly independent. BEING STILL The quieter you are, the more you see. Being quiet is a form of doing, and sometimes it’s the most skillful thing you can do: You learn perspective and sensitivity, and you position yourself in the best spot to recognize insight when it arises. THE WORLD IS SWEPT AWAY Instead of trying to find our happiness in a world of change, we take that changing world and turn it toward the changeless, look for that which is unchanging right here, right now. THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS The teaching on the Three Characteristics is meant to liberate the mind from unnecessary burdens. The normal mind shadows everything that happens, but as you bring the mind to every more subtle levels of stillness and ease, you can detect ever more subtle levels of inconstancy and stress, and so naturally let them go. FIVE TALKS ON ONE CASSETTE OR CD

The direct experience of the truth of change at ever-deepening levels re-aligns our relationship with the world and enables us to let be and let go.

Through the practice of equanimity we are able to face the changing conditions of our lives with balance, spaciousness and great care.

Change is the fabric of life; its very essence. How often do we forget, ignore, or distract ourselves from this natural truth and then suffer the consequences? Clearly seeing and accepting impermanence is truly the acceptance of life.

Change is the fabric of life; it's very essence. How often do we forget, ignore or distract ourselves from this natural truth and then suffer the consequence? Clearly seeing and accepting impermanence is truly the acceptance of life.

Allowing the reality of impermanence; the play of ceaseless change, to pervade our consciousness and influence the way we live our lives.

Why do people go on intensive silent retreats? What is the process one goes through and how does it change us? This talk explores understanding how the retreat experience works?

Stories and poems that point to how seeing clearly into suffering and change can help us experience the truth of selflessness.

"may we be happy and peaceful and may we know things are just as they are."

given at the Family retreat: the acceptance of impermanence/change opens the door to liberation and the deepest compassion.

Everything arises and passes away, like the breath. How to not be frightened by this or experience "existential angst" from inevitable loss in connection is often what brings us into practice. Liberation is in the heart that is wide enough to hold joy as well as the greatest pain of loss. In managing inevitable loss, we become kinder, softer, gentler and much more careful. To liberate "fixed point of view," we stay awake and attentive, always open for new insights to our stories about ourselves and others. Views change, bodies change, relationships change, but what does not change is the capacity of the heart to respond with compassion and lovingkindness.

mind and breath mutually change from separate entities into energy and feeling.

perceptions of change dislodges the mind from object-dependence; brahma vihara extends the scope of relationship.

how mindfulness brings about a deep acceptance of the rhythms of change in our lives

totally accepting change: learning to be "neighborly" with all of our experience

Touching the happiness of accepting life as it is.

Can faith ripen from our understanding of suffering and change?

understanding the manifestations of Dukkha: change-ability, conditionability, physical and emotional pain

Embracing change with respect and kindness.