The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises.
How we relate to change and loss is directly connected to how fully we live and love. This talk looks at the classic ways we avoid opening to the realness of loss, and how our sorrows and grief can become a portal to awakening our heart and spirit.
We live in a human context with its mixture of bright and discordant energies. Our individual internal contexts are no different. We cultivate to potentize Dhamma factors for our own benefit and the benefit of the world. Grounding in wholesome qualities and steadiness of body, we find a raft in this very flooded swampy saṁsāra from which we can meet and review the flood of emotions and impulses.
In this guided meditation, Shaila Catherine leads you through the first step of Anapanasati, also known as mindfulness with breathing. This first step is a great way to settle yourself during a meditation session, or out in the world.
This talk explores the freedom that comes from letting go of our attachments to ideas. As the 3rd Zen Patriarch of China said, "Do not search for the truth. Only cease to cherish opinions." What benefit can there be when we truly let go of thinking we know how things really are?
