In a dharma talk on relative and ultimate reality, JoAnna Hardy discusses how to hold the complexity of life.

This lecture was recorded at the Insight Meditation Retreat for 18–32 Year Olds and originally published by Dharmaseed.

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In this episode, JoAnna Hardy offers a talk on:

• How and why we keep returning to our suffering
• Dominant paradigms and what is out of our control
• The way that the Buddhist experience introduces us to ultimate reality
• Relative reality and what is happening on the ground
• How we are all invited to be free via the Four Noble Truths
• The ways we struggle with trying to control other people
• Anatta, identity, and the way we hold onto our self-hood
• How we show up in the world through our speech, actions, and thoughts
• The Eightfold Path as the things we can control
• Paying attention to who we spend our time with

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher’s council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs. Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

“I’ve really worked on this practice of looking at a person; I’m not only looking at them. I’m looking at probably thousands of people who stand behind them, who have created them, who have created their way of thinking, their way of being. Every teacher, every friend, every person they come into contact with creates this being that is in front of us.” – JoAnna Hardy

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