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.
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.
The mobility of walking helps soothe feelings of tension and aggression. The loose and the strong aspects as you walk create a feedback loop to circulate energy. A comfortable collectedness of energy can result.
How does release come about; working with regret/results of unskillful actions; how to sense into spine and other internal body parts; how to hold good heartedness towards seemingly evil behaviors; wanting to meet aggression with aggression; working with drowsiness; waning interest in events around me.
After setting up the posture, allow the breathing. Let it educate your mindfulness. Step out of the anatomy of body and into the energy body. Steadily wiping out the visual impression, just feel what you feel.
Liberation is expressed as both liberation of citta and liberation of wisdom. As the heart is soothed and relaxed, the roots of behavior can be penetrated, distractions and defilements discarded. The result is a heart tone which is serene and comfortable with all that arises.
Where things fall apart is where the connections break, when we spin off into our distracted thinking and proliferating thoughts. Spend time lingering in the heart sense, staying connected and present with that. Stay with the body in daily activities, taking regular pause moments.
