Against The Stream

Fear and the antidotes to fear.

Hatred never ceases by more hatred, by love alone does hatred cease.

The beautiful, simple teaching of the Buddha.

The only way to end hatred is by forgiving; meeting the past pains with compassion, love and forgiveness.

So much – so much easier said than done of course.

Meditation on our own death can liberate us from complacency and motivate our practice.

All of these things that can masquerade as non-attachment, but they're not really non-attachment. They’re a kind of avoidance, or suppression; an ignoring.

The non-attachment that we're going for, is one that is fully engaged and connected with all of the pain and all of the joy…Even just saying this, I pause because I feel most of us would say, “Oh yeah, that's really painful so I'd like to not be attached to that ‘painful’ thing. But wait a minute…I have to let go of the joy too? I don't want to let go of the pleasant stuff. I want to hold on to that. I want to cling to those moments of joy and passion. I want to continue to be passionate.”

There is a Pali word that is often translated as an encouragement to be dispassionate. I ******* hate that. Dispassionate? It sounds like disengaged, like avoidance or something, but it's not what is meant. What is meant by that description “dispassionate” is being connected without clinging.

This is so counter to our instinctual drives, to our survival instincts. Mindfulness is the intervention.

This is so counter to our instinctual drives, to our survival instincts. Mindfulness is the intervention. There's no certainty. There's no safety. There's no reliable external refuge. Whenever I say this I think of that title of Alan Watts book (which I still haven't read but I've been quoting it for decades because I like the title), “The Wisdom of Insecurity”.

Sometimes the most difficult person to forgive is ourselves! This session is dedicated to the practice of self-forgiveness.

Turning Toward Our Pain With Compassion Is The Antidote To Suffering

One of the greatest dilemmas of my own Buddhist practice, is that on one hand it's so clear and obvious that we cannot trust our own minds.

I hope you know that.

I hope that is totally ******* clear to you.

So much so that the Buddha refers to people who don't meditate as “untrained worldlings”. “Untrained” means you haven't trained your mind to see clearly. The Buddha referred to this untrained mind as being like a, “wild monkey / the monkey mind”. A mind that's swinging to the future, the past, judging, comparing and resenting. These are all of the habits and tendencies of the untrained mind: An untrustworthy source of information.

On the other hand, the Dharma, Buddhism, teaches that you have to learn to trust your mind; You are fully responsible for your own happiness. And, you have to come to a place where you know for yourself what is true and what is not true. What of your thoughts are trustworthy and what your thoughts are delusional? But of course, the problem with delusion is that when we're in it, we don't know it; by definition we are stuck in a confused mind-state and we believe it.

So, we have this dilemma.

There's all of this Buddhist teaching saying, “You will wake up. You will see clearly. You will learn how to respond wisely.” So much so the Buddha said, “Don't believe me. I don't want you to have faith in me. I don't want you to believe what I have to say. I want you to know the Dhamma - the truth - for yourself. I'm offering you these Four Noble Truths, this Eightfold Path, this practice of mindfulness, renunciation, refuge in the sangha. I'm offering you this practical, applicable path so that you can know – for yourself – what is true, and what is the path that leads to the end of suffering. What is the truth of suffering? What is the cause of suffering? And the end of suffering."

In this dilemma, you can't really trust the untrained mind but ultimately, you're going to have to train your mind so much that it becomes trustworthy. I don’t know about you, but when I started meditating, I pretty much believed everything that I thought. Is that true for you?

The 7th factor of awakening is Equanimity. This is the ability to respond to life rather than react. The less reactive we are, the happier we will be!

Seeing Through Suffering and Understanding the Aspects of Freedom

Where is this I?

What part of me is clingy, needy, afraid, angry, judgmental, inflated, deflated?

Where is this self?

The Buddha asks us to unpack what's really going on here.

If you want to wake up, you have to see clearly reality. We are not born seeing reality.

We’re born in a self-centered delusion, and this mind that creates a self.

And the more you meditate and start to unpack it and turn towards what's going on here, inquire, investigate. Who am I? What am I? What part of my experience is self?

The Truth of Suffering and It’s End