Awakening is the profound aim of the spiritual life. Awakening is not described as a mystical goal, we wake up to the four noble truths. We look squarely at the world and recognize that we cannot fix it, and through this clarity we realize the end of suffering. Enlightenment does not imply a separation from life, instead, it brings us to face the reality of lived experiences without resistance. Profound realization brings a deep equanimity and peace into every encounter; it is defined as the ending of greed, hatred, and delusion. Awakening is known through the result—the end of defilements, craving, and ignorance. This talk teases out the meaning of several difficult "D" words: disenchantment, dispassion, detachment. These terms do not imply an aversive response to experience, instead they play a vital role in the process of awakening. The talk explores profound spiritual experiences. It considers the danger of arrogance and conceit arising, clinging to, and corrupting enlightenment experiences. It discusses how to express, describe, and speak about our spiritual awakenings without identification.

Dependent Origination is the way the Buddha understood the arising of individuated forms in the world. The question D.O. attempts to answer is how the world and the sense-of-self come into existence. That is, what are the causal conditions of separation? Why do we see the world as we see it? The first two talks in this series are overviews of the sequential unfolding of D.O. and the remaining talks examine each of the twelve individual link within this chain. Conditioned causality is the fact that many conditions conspire to allow a single internal or external event to arise. Western thought usually focuses on a single cause, but with increased insight we see that causal factors are limitless. No one person or one event "made us angry," the whole universe was the reason that anger arose.

Our human heart has a great capacity to deepen in kindness and understanding - and we can learn to trust this even in the face of danger and suffering

How true and false refuge does and does not give us protection from the dangers we are seeking shelter from.

Right attitude, dangers of sensual desire. How to note during walking meditation.

27 of 43 from Luang Por Sumedho - CD: Talks from Thailand (2008-2014)

This collection of talks given at Insight Meditation South Bay discusses the nature of emotions. Topics include how to work with shame, dread, fear and anger.

Meditation can reveal the dynamic process of emotional life. In this talk, Shaila Catherine explores relationships between mind and body, between thoughts and emotions, and between present moment experience and concepts. Emotions are not avoided in meditation, instead we engage in a balanced and wise investigation of emotions and see their changing, impermanent, and empty nature. Transformative insight into impermanence may come through understanding the functioning of mental states, without worry about difficult emotions such as anger, grief, or fear. We will learn to respond, act, and speak with wisdom as we learn to open to the full range of emotional life.

We can at times feel our hearts closed or hardened into a sense of distance, or disconnection from life. As we feel deeply into our experience, we can learn to meet our pain, fear, anger and reactivity, with acceptance, kindness, and courage. In this journey, our heart naturally begins to soften, revealing its natural sensitivity and the profoundly connected openness of our life.

How does suffering manifest in attachment to views? This talk explores right view and addresses the danger of attaching to a position, philosophy, belief, or opinion. Primary sources are the teachings from the Middle Length discourses numbers 72 and 74. Recognizing the dangers of attachment and clinging to beliefs and opinions, we directly investigate what can be known in the mind and body. This is a pragmatic path of mindful awareness that results in actions that are immediately liberating.