More and more, the teaching practice takes me into the community where I engage directly with students. My focus right now is on bringing the continuity of the Dharma into the market place. Although retreating is an important form for self-knowledge, I find myself less interested in the immediate results of a retreat and more interested in helping students investigate their relationship to the ups and downs of their everyday life.
Nature, death and spontaneous freedom continually interweave themselves into my teaching. From the forest of Thailand, where I spent several years, I bring a deep awareness of the healing quality of nature into my teachings. Relaxing into our true nature allows us to realize what it means to be a human being. It is here we find a resting point, a counterbalance to the speed and turbulence of our culture.
My work in hospice brings a sense of urgency into my teaching. Working with the theme of death and dying reveals the here and now of life to us, how important it is to open to each loss, change and transition that marks our path. Life is precious. We need to awaken without hesitation.
Many of us crave to be more calm and centered. We know that life has more to offer than this fleeting material world. For each of us, the Dharma offers an immediacy of freedom for which we do not have to strive or wait. In practice, we can learn to relax deeply into the moment and rediscover spontaneous freedom.
The body is a residing stranger to most of us. We think we know what it is, but we have not given ourselves to it thoroughly so that it reveals its secrets.
Mindfulness is at the heart of the Buddha's teaching, but few people understand how it evolves from the simple practice of being mindful into a mature, full-embodied awareness.
It is important to learn the meditation technique, but to adhere too strictly to the form of the practice can mask self-doubt. Risking doing it wrong begins the "art" of practice, and insight develops within the art of quiet observation free from the pressure of failure.
Guiding the application of the teaching from the sense of self and not the true principle of selflessness is the single greatest mistake made in Buddhist practice and distorts all the revelations.
Let the application of the teaching be informed by the root principle of selflessness and each mindful exercise manifest that selflessness through bare attention and total acceptance.
The Satipatthana Sutta is the application of the Buddha's teaching. After the view has been offered and an intention has been aroused, it answers the question, "What do I do now?"
The Satipatthana sutta is the fundamental teaching by the Buddha, revered by all Buddhist traditions, on the application of mindfulness. Mindulness is the the basic teaching that connects the isolated individual to his/her internal and external environments. Through a steady integration of mindfulness our unconscious tendencies become conscious, and we discover a preexisting awareness and interconnectedness to life that changes everything. The four applications of mindfulness (body, feelings, mind, and mind objects), as well as the underlying principles behind it, are explored thoroughly through talks, discussions, dyads, and homework.
There are a number of ways to incline the mind toward the discovery of equanimity. Each perception of equanimity has a training explored in this discourse.
