Looking at balance in mediation through the prism of appropriate vision and appropriate concentration.

During this daylong we will work with the habits that bind us and stop our potential for wisdom and compassion from manifesting fully. We will use the meditative tools found in the Vipassana and Zen traditions, like watching the breath, listening and questioning, to see how we can engage creatively with our habits and transform them into positive functions.

During this daylong we will work with the habits that bind us and stop our potential for wisdom and compassion from manifesting fully. We will use the meditative tools found in the Vipassana and Zen traditions, like watching the breath, listening and questioning, to see how we can engage creatively with our habits and transform them into positive functions.

Looking at the three trainings of ethics, meditation and wisdom and their application in daily life with the help of ethics and compassion.

What should we rely on when practising? An exploration of the four reliances found in Zen texts. Also looking at the actualisation of experiential wisdom in daily life.

Meditation is not an idea of getting to a mystical state but of helping us to release. It is not an exotic practice but it is more like eating, brushing our teeth - it is a way to nourish ourselves and to open and finally to let go. It is a lifelong journey where we learn to let go and stop grasping as we become aware of our life in each moment, accept each moment as it is. Meditation can help us to be more in the world, by being here and now we can be skillful and respond to whatever happens in the present. We develop clarity, we see the changing nature of things. When we are engulfed by feelings we can step back and say ‘how long will this last?’ We do not have to feed the feelings, we just need to be with them and watch them as they change. We can bring creative awareness to everything that we do and use it to be fully where we are, to be in our relationships in our life.

Explanation of de-grasping wisdom and compassion and meditative experience.

Explaining the four great efforts in connection to practice and daily life including tools of awareness and the three characteristics.

An exploration of the three trainings and reflection on cultivation and effect.

This talk also includes Stephen Batchelor

Looking at the eight worldly winds and exploring how meditation can help us to creatively engage with people we know and love.

Looking at the different roles teachers have in the Buddhist tradition and exploring the four reliances, which help us understand and walk on the meditative path.

Looking at pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling tones and exploring the emotional habits of fear and anger in the context of awareness meditation.

A step by step presentation of awareness meditations on breath, sensations, sounds etc and how they can become tools that can help us in our daily life.

This is the opening talk for a retreat that aims to integrate the practice of meditation with the ideas and doctrines that support and illuminate such practice. This talk also includes Stephen Batchelor.

What is it that we dedicate and aspire to when we enter the path of practice? An exploration of compassion, afflictions, learning and awakening.

Looking at the three different levels of habits - intense, habitual and light - and exploring the mental patterns.

Awakening as a process of degrasping instead of being the production of a state of enlightenment that cannot be eaten in salad. The suggestion that the path consists of sudden awakening followed by gradual practices

How can meditation help us break free of our mental, emotional, physical habits?

Grasping and non-grasping in connection to self, people, things, views - how grasping makes us exaggerate and proliferate and how creative engagement can help our creative potential manifest and develop.

Meditation as a life-long journey, as potential, as training, as cultivation of concentration and inquiry, which helps us develop creative awareness.

Looking at the symbols of awakening representing selflessness, showing the importance of love in our spiritual lives, and exploring compassionate activities.

Looking at the three different levels of habits - intense, habitual and light - and exploring mental patterns.

This talk also includes Stephen Batchelor

A description of the stages on the meditative path.

Looking at how we built positive or negative selfing and how meditation helps us to develop non-grasping love and from that actively manifest compassion.

Awakening is an exploration of mystical states and insights; a presentation of the four stages of awakening and their relevance to our practice and daily life.

This talk explores meditation as a cultivation of the four great efforts. These efforts inspire us to be more conscious of the inner and outer conditions that underpin our experience and to creatively engage with these conditions.