These talks build on one another and work well as a series. Dharma practice is an invitation, and training, in meeting experience spaciously and graciously. These reflections unpack what that means, pointing to the inherently spacious nature of awareness, and the free heart’s capacity to hold experience tenderly.
These talks build on one another and work well as a series. This talk looks at the inherently knowing nature of mind. Martin looks at the way we get stuck in knowledge, or knowing about, and generate anxiety and a sense of deficiency about not knowing. He invites us beyond conventional knowing into non-conceptual awareness, and the direct knowing of whatever is happening.
These talks build on one another and work well as a series. In this talk Martin explores the capacity to inhabit experience, to be with experience from the inside; to abide in the midst of what is happening. The talk uses the storm that is raging outside the hall as an example of sitting steadily in the midst of turbulence, and all that swirls around our attention.
Martin looks at these Curiosity qualities as both inherent qualities of awareness, and qualities we can support and cultivate in each moment, whether in meditation or daily activity, in silence or in communication.
This talk looks at expanding fields of presence, exploring the composites of experience (khanda) through inhabiting the 'body-field', the 'citta-field' and a whole, or all-inclusive field of experience.
Martin explores the meaning of dharma as Nature. What would it be like to meet all our experience as natural? To let in all that arises so as to meet and explore the whole of experience. And what of the drama that we generate? Maybe, the more we can make room for our inner dramas, the less hold they might have over us.
Assertiveness, self assertion, free from vs. free in, mindfulness of vs. mindfulness in.
Entering into presence - asserting desire, free from desire or tracking desire. Embodied wisdom as cellular wisdom.
the assertive (sense of) self, new york style; mindfulness in/into instead of mindfulness of; seeing along with, tracking desire, experience etc.; meetiing across rigidity of views; not From somebody To nobody but From somebody To anybody, multibody
This talk looks at different freedoms - social, worldly and spiritual, and explores Buddhas 3-fold training of Conduct, Meditation and Wisdom as a path of freeness.
In this talk, Maritn disambiguates various terms of meditative awareness in both English and Pali, helping to refine the way we meet and explore experience: Consciousness, Awareness, Presence, Attention, Vinnana, Sampajanna, Sati, Yonisomanisikara, Samadhi, Vitaka, Vichara, Viveka.
Martin explores the various ways we attempt to control our experience and the psychology behind our controlling tendencies, and points to how dharma practice can both lead to wise restraint, and to the liberation of relinquishing control over our lives.
Buddhas teachings use the image of a stream in two different senses: Going against the stream of our habits and reactivity, and entering the stream of awakened practice and understanding. Martin uses this talk to explore and connect the two, and to point to the way life streams through awareness.
Martin answers questions from students on the closing night of the retreat. Subjects covered include Martins own relationship to dharma practice, questions about integration, exploring Buddhist teachings and working with various obstacles.
Meditation instruction for attending to the fluidity of experience, for tracking the naturally unfolding nature of phenomena in body, heart, mind and world.
These morning meditation instructions explore the expanding of attention, to including the various elements of emotional experience and mental states that colour consciousness.
Martin explores resources for wellbeing, noting the importance of being nourished and uplifted by our practice, in order for it to be sustainable. He looks at the nature of happiness and our relationship to pleasure; the practice of opening up to joy, and points to ways in which dharma practice is fulfilling and freeing.
Martin explores the layers of Basic Dukkha, Reactive Dukkha and Judgemental Dukkha; exploring how they show up in different areas of our experience and pointing to different ways of meeting, exploring and healing our relationship with painful experience.
Some advice on working with physical and postural discomfort, as well as with meditative discomfort, the heat and tensions that show up when we meditate, as we process the unwinding of various somatized patterns and emotional residue.
