Through reflection on just having taught a month-long retreat and several poems, we explore a number of ways to deepen our formal meditation practice through simplicity, focus, building a strong "container", developing mindfulness and lovingkindness in relation to what happens, and increased invocation of the "wise parent" (or grandparent...aka "discipline").
The Buddha stressed the importance of "being a lamp unto ourself" and to know the truth of suffering - as a vehicle for understanding & liberating ourselves from inevitable challenges of life.
Usually we see this as a dilemma: do I look after one (me) or after the others? This is a false dilemma, resulting from the separation we have concocted between me and you, us and them.
To catch means both to physically capture and to understand. This follows from the belief that in order to understand we have to pluck items out of their context. Can we learn to do otherwise?
To integrate our practice, we need to keep applying the wisdom of our insights we gain from our sitting practice, retreats, and life experience. In this way, we come to terms with the different aspects of our personality, the aaspects we like and don't like.
Our capacity to listen deeply--to our inner life and each other--is the grounds of true understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to listening and guidelines and practices that awaken a listening heart.
Heart practices and wisdom practices can appear to speak different languages and have different aims; for example, lovingkindness wishes well whereas equanimity says, "no matter what I wish for, things are as they are." We explore how the heart and wisdom connect through exploring (1) lovingkindness, (2) equanimity, and (3) how the two inform each other and are integrated.
