Bhikkhu Bodhi discusses the Five Spiritual Faculties, the ascending factors that lead toward enlightment and the Four Brahma Viharas, the descending factors that lead toward engagement in the world.

Following the dharma talk, Kim Behan, Executive Director of Buddhist Global Relief, gives a presentation on the founding, goals, and projects of the organization. Buddhist Global Relief is a Buddhist organization dedicated to providing relief from poverty and hunger among impoverished communities worldwide. Read Bhikkhu Bodhi's provocative essay that led to the founding of BGR: “A Challenge to Buddhists”

Mind (citta) as the Buddha’s focus of investigation. As both the cause of suffering and the means to its cessation The Buddha points to two states or tendencies of mind Akusala - unwholesome, unskillful Kusala - wholesome, skillful, beneficial Suffering follows the unwholesome mind, Happiness follows the wholesome mind like a shadow that never departs. Our task, step by step, is to train the mind and supplant the unwholesome state with the wholesome states. Greed, hatred and Delusion are the root causes for the unwholesome mind. We must cultivate the factors that are the cause for the wholesome mind at three levels. Coarse - Actions, bodily or verbal. We use the five precepts to prevent unwholesome tendencies at this level. Obsessive, compulsive patterns - Thoughts, emotions. We use meditation, deep samadhi directed to an object, to see the arising of these tendencies and still the mind. Underlying tendencies, attachments - the remaining defilements We use wisdom, insight, to investigate the body and mind and see their impermanence and stop the clinging to a false self to uproot these final tendencies. This is liberation.

MN152

MN148.02

MN148.01

MN24

MN1.05