Mindfulness practice is a confrontation with what is true in each moment--we examine the ways we defend against painful experience so that we can open to the richness of being alive.

The Core curriculum for life: How to Live, How to Die, How to deal with pain, aging, illness, death & seperation.

Judgement is a painful excruciating state of mind that creates feelings of alienation and separation. This talk explores some of the ways that we experience as well as how to work with it.

Is your meditation directed toward learning about who you are? What areas do you shy away from paying attention to yourself? Where are you self-protected? Do you feel the pain associated with those areas? Become increasingly aware of one of those areas and see what difference bare attention (caring attention) makes to that pain. Offer that area metta to ease the pain of looking. The pain will ease in direct proportion to your understanding of it, and understanding is achieved through direct observation.

We often compare where we are now to some ideal state and get caught in the painful habit of rejecting our experience. How do we transform this habit in order to come into connection with the truth of the way things are.

Notice how frequently you second-guess your generosity. You may have the desire to be generous but you let it pass without acting. This week act upon any impulse to be generous: if you have the thought to give something to someone, do not delay or second-guess the impulse. Give. Each time you open the Internet this week begin by going to thehungersite.com and offer a free donation to all the similar sites listed on that web page. Say metta phrases to each disadvantaged group as you make the offering. May all being have sufficient food; may all beings be free of breast cancer.... Feel the pain associated with each category of people and wish them well. Explore the relationship between feeling pain for another and generosity. Does the pain motivate you to move towards or away from giving? Notice your meditative posture and see if the chest and shoulders are fully open when you sit. How does your posture affect your mind? As you move through the day notice your posture when you feel selfish or irritable. Notice it when you feel generous and confident. When you feel selfish and closed down to generosity adjust your posture to a more open stance and see if that has any effect on your state of mind.

As long as we are resideing and clinging to the realm of "I","ME","MINE", and other, we are residing somewhere next door to reality & it creates great suffering. We can look into the mirror of the dhamma and see the painful contraction that accompanies"ME"&"MINE"&"THEIR'S" and let go & come to know the truth of interconnectedness & the reality of no separate, no solid, no static "self", and take the great relief & ease in this truth.

Valuing the transformative power of opening to pain, suffering and aversion as a path to complete liberation and compassion.