Awareness is crucial to Insight, but a Dharma perspective is even more important. Without 'Right View' informing what we're aware of, we run the risk of reinforcing 'wrong views'. Wrong views are naturally present in the unenlightened state, but we can train ourselves to become aware of those ideas and distortions through learning to watch our minds. Mind watching reveals how we are relating to whatever is happening in experience, whether it be a thought, an emotion, or an arising through one of our senses.
We can relate to experience with acceptance, interest, and impartiality. Or we can resist and proliferate around what is happening, seeing a painful state grow before our eyes, feeling that we are seemingly powerless to stop it. All our dukkha; our dis-ease, dissatisfaction and disappointment come from this resistance.
We can see Right View as a 'curative' perspective. It helps us see how we cling and how through that clinging we create our own suffering. Mindfulness and Right View give us tools to relate to ourselves in ways that don't create further suffering for ourselves or others. We have freedom from fixed views and wise attentiveness in the palm of our hands.
There will be talks and led meditations, using the framework of the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's primary teaching on Mindfulness. We’ll relate the sutta to the aspects of Spiritual Death and Spiritual Receptivity in our Mandala of Practice.
We will meditate using all 4 postures (walking, sitting, standing and lying down). The emphasis is on continuity of awareness outside of formal practice times. You will receive encouragement to stay present to whatever is happening, and whatever is needed, in any moment. This is a receptive and flexible approach to awareness with kindness as an implicit thread running through it, and understanding and wisdom, a potential in every moment.
What to expect
The sessions will be a mix of meditation, Dharma input, practice, interaction and inquiry.
First daily session (2 hrs): USA PST 2:00 am | México CST 3:00 am | USA EST 5:00 am | IE & UK BST 10:00 am | Europe CEST 11:00 am | India IST 2:30 pm | Australia AEST 7:00 pm | New Zealand NZST 9:00 pm
Second daily session (1.5 hrs): USA PST 8:00 am | México CST 9:00 am | USA EST 11:00 am | IE & UK BST 4:00 pm | Europe CEST 5:00 pm | India IST 8:30 pm | Australia AEST 1:00 am (next day) | New Zealand NZST 3:00 am (next day)
Third daily session (1 hr): USA PST 11:30 am | México CST 12:30 pm | USA EST 2:30 pm | IE & UK BST 7:30 pm | Europe CEST 8:30 pm | India IST 12:00 midn (next day) | Australia AEST 4:30 am (next day) | New Zealand NZST 6:30 am (next day)
Attend any or all conversations in Zoom.
This event will be recorded and may be published online for others to access. Only the leader's video will be used except where users consent to appear spotlighted in a public conversation. Private conversations in breakout rooms will not be recorded.
