Holding ourselves with a compassionate, forgiving heart is the gateway to healing, and to intimacy with our world. This talk explores our deep conditioning to be at war with ourselves, and the insights and elements of forgiving that can carry us home to loving presence.
As we explore the body from this sutta, we realize the inevitability of loss and begin to see death everywhere. Death takes us through various stages of realization, altering our life and changing it forever. We learn to live consciously with all beginnings and endings.
The 4 Wise Efforts and the simile of the correct way for tuning a stringed instrument are used to explore this very important mental factor. Examples are given for how Wise Effort manifests in formal practice as well as in daily life. The simile of how the Buddha crossed the flood is also covered in this talk.
If we investigate, we will find that much suffering arises out of mistrust--of ourselves, others and life. This talk explores the genesis of the great challenges of doubt and mistrust, and the pathway to trusting the goodness that is our essence.
In the context of wise speech practice, we continue to explore being aware of feelings and needs and introduce skillful ways to identify "how things are" through "observations."
The right views of the four stages of the Eightfold Path development support practices to purify speech and behavior, the mind and understanding, resulting in happiness of harmony, happiness of tranquility and happiness of peace.
We have allowed our planet to be run by an elite, which is not at all connected to what happens on the ground. This alienation needs to come to an end.
We have each disconnected our mind from the ensemble of our being, and allowed it to be run by our ego. Unless we reconnect, we will continue to live mindlessly.
When we see the world through the veil of our ego, our love flows in distorted and confused ways. Through mindfulness and metta and insight we can begin to understand these conditioned patterns and transform them into love and connection.
