An invitation to use adversaries to enhance our practice. This is the path to compassion. This talk invites us to use what is difficult in our lives to enhance our practice. Compassion awakens within us through opening our hearts to the challenging and painful. Approaching obstacles with a receptive attitude, we can enter into life with more courage and strength, and a deeper sense of connection
Pain and loss are inevitable occurrences in our lives, but the self-torture that often follows--the "second arrow" we habitually shoot at ourselves--is entirely avoidable.
Our lives are always touched by the changing conditions of gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and pain, success and failure. How the meditator finds refuge in not clinging.
Week I - General Introduction
Mindfulness of the body and concentration on the breath adding mindfulness of sensation while encouraging opening to pleasure and pain.
"May I, may you, may all beings be free from suffering." The Buddha's teachings and practices of cultivating a deep, expansive tenderness of heart, grounded in immeasurable impartiality--the heart of compassion--which transforms the way we relate to ourselves and to others. With the great strength and trust in our ability to bear witness to and face suffering, we are able to offer appropriate help in relationship to the pain, the anguish and the confusion of all beings, ourselves included.
