An introduction to a wisdom-awareness map from the Thai Forest tradition: Mindfulness - Great Mindfulness - Mindfulness-Wisdom - Wisdom which leads to Release. Includes metaphors & descriptions of maturing awareness which is able to release reactivity & access the 3 Lenses of Wisdom (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, not self). Concludes with a fun somatic exercise on holding on & letting go, based on a teaching from Ajahn Chah. For more information about these teachings, visit Heather's website & look up Talks & Retreat Schedule.
It’s natural for us to step out of our daily scenarios from time to time and take a break from suffering. Ask: “What’s most important now?” Find the hidden grooves that move towards destinations that don’t exist – permanence, sustained agreeable feeling, being in control – and establish ground in embodied awareness instead.
Forgiveness for others becomes possible when we’ve held our own being with great compassion. This short talk and guided meditation brings forth our most awake and tender presence as we ask for forgiveness, offer care to the woundedness within us, and then extend forgiveness to another who has hurt us.
It’s possible for citta to review the 5 aggregates, not be stuck in them. Practice with sustaining a quality of awareness that’s open and receptive to shifting and changing. This awareness can be applied to your world.
This talk offers an in-depth exploration of RAIN, applying the wings of mindfulness and compassion to painful domains of trance. We bring special attention to the fruit of RAIN, the realization of who we are beyond any limiting identity.
Exploring the experience of consciousness and noting what occurs – through the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. Includes 15 min standing meditation.
Distinguishing dukkha as a characteristic and dukkha as a Noble Truth. Relax – nothing is under control. Acknowledging this is the start of a reset. Rather than meeting experience with pre-formed strategies, pause, expand awareness, and meet experience without jumping to conclusions.
Opening guidance - As we settle in and incline away from sense contact, our internal experience may seem chaotic. Stability comes from a relationship to this volatile, mundane, unglamorous stuff – one that accepts what arises without rejecting, adopting or adding to it. This relationship is what generates awakened intelligence – the wisdom of “It’s like this now.”
Walking meditation can counter the conditioning of the business model. Walking with nowhere to go, broadening attention to include the whole body, to feel the fluidity and pleasure of bodily ease. [Instructions end 11:28]
From an upright, grounded posture, move from the world of sense consciousness into subjectivity of ‘being conscious’. Meet uncomfortable energies with sympathy and support. [22:43] Transition into movement: Re-enter the world of the physical body – an expression of natural intelligence, integrating it into the sense of the world from the inside out.
