We may feel more isolated than ever, but the truth is that we’re always captive in our sensory prisons. The aim is to liberate and open the heart so that qualities beyond sense consciousness can be realized. Key among the factors needed for liberation is kalyāṇamitta – spiritual friendship.
*Sutta reference AN9:3
The Buddha said to reflect each day on the facts of old age, sickness and death. He also said to to come to terms with the fact that everything and everyone near and dear to us will be separated from us. In these Covid-19 days our practice becomes letting go of what was and adjust to a new way of being. This practice of impermanence includes opening to loss, grief and death which is explored in this talk.
To bring forward the highest heart quality of Equanimity we need to understand all four brahma viharas (heavenly dwellings: friendliness, compassion, celebration, and balance) and how the work together in beautiful harmony.
A kindness meditation towards all appearance: seeing how experience is fabricated by seeing all phenomena as deserving of kindness and care. Starts with 7 minutes of a Guanyin chant (using the lovely words and tune offered by Caroline Jones).
How do we fabricate our experience by habitually seeing in terms of permanence and constancy? What happens in terms of 'dukkha' when we allow our sense of self and phenomena to become more ephemeral? How does our sense of time change, and how does changing that change experience?
