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.
One transformative insight that arises from practice is the way you develop and store up goodness is by sharing it. The untrained mind thinks it’s by storing it up. Guidance is provided generate qualities of heart and extend them across a wide span.
Working with past traumas; relationship between meditation and right livelihood; clarification around embodied presence; please elaborate on contracted and anxious modes; sequence of the 4 elements – earth, air, fire, water; recollecting teachers and use of Buddho in meditation; clarify the meaning of purification or cleaning of citta.
Guidance for establishing a suitable posture and attitude for meditation. Sustain attention on breathing – a moving sign is easier to stay with than a static sign. Use it along with supportive heart energy to help blocked places to unfreeze and dissolve.
The energy we use to think about things and get things done is conditioned – it can put us in conflict when we want to be comfortable and kind but keep getting caught up in irritation and defeat. This energy can be purified. Change the mental approach and repel distractions. Beautiful qualities arise on their own.
After establishing a firm and comfortable posture, expand awareness across each dimension of the body. The details become less, the whole body becomes a unity in harmony. In this state hindrances and discomforts have much less possibility to occur.
Hindrances take us away from ground. Groundedness is an absolute requirement for skillful cultivation. Standing posture gives access to feet touching the ground to create a firm and steady foundation.
Meditation is about penetrating the roots of mental behavior. The primary doing is to settle and clear distracting influences so the mind becomes unified in purpose. A happy, firm mind leaves less traction for hindrances to take hold.
Dukkha is a natural part of our experience. When internalized it manifests as constricting and disjointed somatic states. When met from a clear and settled center, our responses can be guided by harmony and wisdom.
With a heartful attitude, set aside what is not necessary and make a continued deliberate practice around your Dhamma aspirations. Tuning into embodiment with interest and sensitivity, we can locate the missing piece, where harmonization of the mental and somatic domains occurs.
It’s natural for us to step out of our daily scenarios from time to time and take a break from suffering. Ask: “What’s most important now?” Find the hidden grooves that move towards destinations that don’t exist – permanence, sustained agreeable feeling, being in control – and establish ground in embodied awareness instead.
