Week Four Homework: 1. Daily meditation: 20-30 minutes. 2. Notice your “top three hits” (the thought patterns that are most recurrent). Do they preoccupy you or distract you from the present moment? 3. What helps you connect or reconnect to the present moment?

Guided forgiveness practice beginning with ourselves- forgiveness towards our body, our mind, and our heart- then opening to include forgiveness for past actions, including extending and asking forgiveness.

Amma Thanasanti began meditating in 1979 under the guidance of Jack Engler, Ajahn Chah, and Dipa Ma. She spent 28 years as a Buddhist nun, including 20 years in Ajahn Chah monasteries, and has taught internationally since 1996. She is the founder of Awakening Truth (awakeningtruth.org) and developed the Integrated Meditation Program (IMP), an attachment-repair pathway for meditators. Her work integrates classical Buddhist training with contemporary psychology and trauma-informed practice, helping practitioners discern where meditation supports awakening—and where relational wounds and trauma require direct healing. This integration allows the stillness, clarity, and goodness from meditation to become more natural and sustainable. SHINE is a practice Amma developed as a counterpart to the RAIN method by Michelle McDonald and Tara Brach. While RAIN helps us meet difficulty, SHINE supports cultivating positive states—training the nervous system to recognize, sustain, and deepen what's good.The acronym stands for Sense, Hold, Inquire, Nourish, and Enhance. Integrated into the broader Integrated Meditation Program (IMP), SHINE addresses a gap many practitioners experience: we become skilled at observing suffering but less adept at stabilizing ease, joy, and goodness when they arise. In this session, we'll practice SHINE together and explore how cultivating these states helps stillness, clarity, and goodness become more natural and sustainable in daily life.

We will explore how the Buddha’s teachings map onto the challenges that many face navigating this arena of life. Concrete practices and suggestions will be offered.

Pain is a given and suffering is optional. Mindfulness of unpleasant feelings, such as pain, can transform pain into fertile soil for wisdom and for freedom from suffering to arise.

The recording starts with Ajahn describing the word cultivation and his suggestions as to how one can cultivate the most direct animate experience we have? Q1 06:53 Why do you make the distinction between the heart and the body? Can you elucidate the qualities of the heart please? Q2 13:06 I've read that the refuge is an awakening to reality because the unconditioned is reality. How do we awaken to the unconditioned? Is it not unformed and unoriginated? 24:38 Q3 how to answer the angel question what is the meaning of life? What do you believe our purpose is as human beings? 27:48 Q4 I detach when confronted by emotions avoid, suppress, don't discuss. What do you recommend to facilitate reconnection and healing. A related question: There's been a lot of mention of dissociated or dispassionate reactions. Is not a big risk of becoming detached and disassociated from life? 34:53 Q5 How can I manage equanimity when in the midst of raw grief, pain etc I'm left rudderless at sea. 40:52 Q6 You mentioned parami satta. Can you review them please?

Mindfulness of feelings plays a crucial role in our daily life and practice. The arising of feelings is beyond our control but mindfulness of them can make a difference between being in bondage and being free from suffering.

The cultivation of metta for a dear person seems easy. However, one must watch out for the ‘hidden’ defilements of either attachment & lust or worry & grief. Hand out as many Metta Candies as possible.