As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
Sitting in a field of fifty to eighty people really starts my mind sparking. Since I don't prepare my talks ahead of time, I find myself listening to what I'm saying along with everyone else. This leaves a lot of room for the Dhamma to come up. Just having eighty people listening to me is enough to engage me, stimulate me, and create a nice flow of energy. The actual process of teaching evokes ideas that even I did not realize were being held somewhere in my mind.
Different teaching situations offer their own unique value. In retreat, you are able to build a cohesive and comprehensive body of the teachings. When people are not on retreat and come for one session, it opens a different window. They are more spontaneous and I'm given the chance to contact them in ways that are closer to their "daily-life mind." This brings up surprises and interesting opportunities for me to learn even more.
I'm continually struck by how important it is to establish a foundation of morality, commitment, and a sense of personal values for the Vipassana teachings to rest upon. Personal values have to be more than ideas. They have to actually work for us, to be genuinely felt in our lives. We can't bluff our way into insight. The investigative path is an intimate experience that empowers our individuality in a way that is not egocentric. Vipassana encourages transpersonal individuality rather than ego enhancement. It allow for a spacious authenticity to replace a defended personality.
The standing posture provides a simple process whereby energies can be balanced, soothed and steadied. Opening channels of the body so breathing can flow through, an open energy – light, spacious, repelling obstruction – becomes available.
It’s very helpful to start the day with resolution: What can I say no to? What can I say yes to? Using the precepts as a frame, generate boundaries that will moderate energies and help you remain firm and grounded in the face of the floods.
Help with hard-wired anger; how to think about ground, space and rhythm in a non-conceptual way; citta seems like a toddler; how to disengage from deep patterns of negativity; how to respond to boredom; is it recommended to thoroughly achieve samatha before moving on to vipassana; how to respond to deep pain in the heart; question about impermanence.
Beginning with deep appropriate attention (yoniso manasikāra), attend to where your strengths and values are. Let them grow and be fully felt with awareness. This resources the heart so you can stand your ground in the face of the floods.
Standing meditation compels full body awareness – one gets the sense that the body is intelligent. Once establishing a suitable stance and posture, give attention to how breathing feels in the body. Then, ‘What’s important now?’
Beginning with a review of the terms mind, heart, body, consciousness, attention and awareness, this guided meditation takes us through their workings. Wise deep attention (yoniso manasikāra) keeps bringing us back to what’s important now.
The floods of sense consciousness and delusion take us away from a place where we might feel stable, assured, comfortable. We experience a loss of autonomy and receptivity. We can use the quality of wise deep attention (yoniso manasikāra) to turn attention to the source of our actions and our being. The roots are found in the domain of body and mind.
A shift in energy affords an opportunity to reform in accordance with Dhamma rather than personal history. The power of love is an energy we can be formed in, and the more widely it’s shared out, the richer and grander we become.
Advice for young people experiencing panic attacks, lack of motivation, depression; how to locate tension and contraction in the body; feeling restless about others’ difficulties and wanting to share Dhamma; working with disconnects in society; working with external sounds in meditation; how to get more steadiness in meditation when body is so uncomfortable.
We use embodiment as a holding frame to bring heart and mind together. Energy is the meeting point. Recollect your faith – why you do this practice – to uplift and fortify energy. This provides some ballast from being knocked around by the world.
