Against The Stream

I think a simplified way to think about equanimity is “keeping your cool”. Similar to the loving kindness teaching “being at ease” no matter what's happening, not just when life is easy, but also when life is quite difficult. Maintaining a sense of equanimity, ease, cool, well being, understanding and accepting that pain is unavoidable. That we will all experience pain in o

I'm going to talk about, and we'll meditate on, compassion tonight. Compassion is one of the qualities that is so rare for humans to have… true compassion for ourselves, for our own pain… true compassion for others, including not just our loved ones. There are certain people who are easier to have compassion for than others, but the practice is to actually have compassion for a

We just, we just did completed a 10 week series on the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness and the four foundations of mindfulness. We took two and a half months to go through that. I wanted to shift from the mindfulness based meditation instructions to heart practices. Practices around developing kindness and compassion and forgiveness and appreciation, generosity. So I think I'll s

We're at the final section of the teachings on mindfulness that I've been discussing over the last couple months. This section is about mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths. Turning our awareness towards our experience of suffering, the cause of suffering, those times where we're not suffering, the cessation, the end. Those moments throughout our lives where there's no suffering an

Mindfulness is the seventh aspect of the Buddha's eightfold path. The eight Aspects of practice that will lead to freedom from suffering. Alleviating the unnecessary levels of suffering that we experience. There are four foundations of mindfulness.

The section tonight is mindfulness of the six sense doors, mindfulness of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling bodily sensations, and mindfulness of thoughts of the mind.

The topic for tonight's aspect of the mindfulness teaching is the five aggregates or five Sconda. The five aggregates, probably the best translation, it's the five aspects of our experience that we tend to be identified with as self. The aggregates, sometimes this term sconda or aggregate, is also like a heap.

Tonight's topic is the Buddha's teachings on how to train the mind to see clearly and to to free ourselves from suffering. We're on the fourth section tonight, which I think I'm going to spend three or four weeks on this fourth section, mindfulness of the Dhammas. Dhamma translates as Dharma, as what's true. But it starts with the five hindrances. So tonight we're going to meditate

Tonight's topic is the third foundation, which is the mind, our brains, how to bring mindfulness to what your brain is doing, what kind of thoughts are arising, what kind of attitude the mind has. Whether the mind is experiencing wisdom or ignorance. For many people it's one of the things that really sets Buddhist meditation apart and mindfulness apart from a lot of other meditatio

So for a topic tonight: your relationship to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. Just thinking about these three feeling tones. Maybe there's somebody here who you know, joining us tonight, who feels like actually pleasance is quite hard to tolerate…