Akincano Marc Weber (Switzerland) is a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist. He learned to sit still in the early eighties as a Zen practitioner and later joined monastic life in Ajahn Chah’s tradition where he studied and practiced for 20 years in the Forest monasteries of Thailand and Europe. He has studied Pali and scriptures, holds a a degree in Buddhist psychotherapy and lives with his wife in Cologne, Germany from where he teaches Dhamma and meditation internationally.
Teaching is essentially translation. It means ferrying an authentic contemplative tradition across choppy waters into our psychological and cultural realities, losing neither the vision nor the truth of what we know to be our immediate experience.
Upādāna in different Buddhist Teachings:
– Clinging as fuel for renewed becoming (punabbhava)
– Clinging in the 5 aggregates (khandha)
– Clinging in Dependent Arising (paṭiccasamuppadā)
– Clinging as four specific forms:
(i) kāmūpādāna – clinging to and identification with sensuality (“Seeking” experiences)
(ii) diṭṭhūpādāna – clinging to and identification with views (“Being right, being competent“)
(iii) sīlavaṭūpādāna – clinging to and identification with virtue, practices and ritual (“Having the
right technique“)
(iv) attavādūpādāna – clinging to and identification with doctrines of a self / Self (“Being
someone”)
How wonderful you are in your being!
I delight that you are here!
I take joy in your good fortune!
May your happiness continue and increase!
(From a Sinhalese Ms of the 19th century. Monks' and nuns‘ practice upon receiving alms).
Relationship of different instructions to each other. Many spices, but we don't cook with all of them at once.
Orientation: how to find out and recognize what's going in your mind. (Using the satipaṭṭhāna map)
Relationship: a) getting reliably in touch with and b) learning to relate skillfully to the states.
Shifting attention away from habits.
Mindfulness does not mean 'no discernment' – it is quite capable on discerning what is wholesome and unwholesome.
The interplay of three functions of the mind in helping the contemplative practice.
Appamada – an attitude of care
Sati - a relationship: mindfulness as creating presence
Sampajañña – a value context
The overstretching of the visual metaphor for mindfulness ('observe, witness, get in perspective, look at' can leave us with the (erroneaous) impression that mindfulness can only 'observe' and wait.
Let's not turn mindfulness in the John Silver's parrot on our shoulder.
The Four Immeasurables. Brahmavihāra are not mere emotions but constitute different tones of relational empathetic resonance. They constitute nothing less but our humanity.
Brahmavihāras are cultivations not just 'states'. They are more than empathy but intentntional attitudes.
The workings of not-knowing – the workings of attentional habits. Involuntary attentional patterns seem to govern much of our experience. Yet training is possible, training is needed.
Such training entails acknowledgement, attentional tasks and specificity.
Negotiating pain.
About the value of samatha – the practice of stillness – and samādhi – the state of unification brought about by samatha practice.
Terminology: Why concentration is a bad word for either samatha or samādhi. What the diffence of attention and mindfulness is.
The intrinsic value of unification, its relationship to vipassanā. Four reasons why Buddhist traditions value the practice of stilling the mind.
How do we make ourselves growth and realisation? Tracing the historical, psychological and
Two sources of valid forms of knowlege:
– Paccakkha "before the eye," i.e. 'perceptible to the senses'
'direct experience'.
– Anvaya – 'inference'
History of Sudden & Gradual. Aside of the the historical background, these terms have taken on a metaphorical meaning: the talk looks at how these metaphors chart the path of practice, their respective analogies and their images, their framing of the probleme and their respective values and drawbacks. – May these metaphors ultimately have their bases in the differeing mind functions of samādhi (gradual) and sati (sudden)? The speaker, despite little canonical evidence, thinks so.
Hedonic tone (vedanā) as a feature of human experience is the major factor in governing involuntary attention – vedanā rules much of our attention. The reflections unpack the role of feeling tone on attention, intention and the cultivation of mindfulness. Learning to cultivate attention beyond gratification and avoidance and to uncouple attention from pleasant or unpleasant feeling tone.
Kafka and the girl with a lost doll.
Satipaṭṭhāna and Suttas in general – a little history.
Satipaṭṭhāna as a cartography of human expericence: the 'raw materials' to establish mindfulness in. (This is not the satipaṭṭhāna as exercise but their use as a map of the somatic, hedonic, affective and discursive aspects of mind.) This orientation helps greatly with the actual practice of satipatthana exercises outline elsewhere.
The challenge of attending and being mindful. Mindfulness (sati) and Attention (manasikāra) are different things. Attention comes in two forms: voluntary and involuntary attention.
Body as a construct. On touch (phassa) and touching and being touched (phusati). Differing senses create a different relationship - 'seeing', 'hearing' and 'touching' as analogies for attending to something create a different kind of relationship to ourselves. The visual is overdetermined, often at the expense of touch. Feeling the body as an experience of touch rather than being 'observed'.'.
