In this talk, from the 2010 Open Your Heart in Paradise retreat, Sharon discusses the four virtues, known within the Buddhist tradition as the Brahma Viharas, as well as the meditation practices designed to cultivate them. These qualities, of loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, are said to form our, ‘best home’, and serve as a simple but powerful guideline with which we can practice. The qualities are outlined in detail, with a particular emphasis on loving-kindness. Sharon leads a guided meditation to close the talk.

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Within Buddhism, Faith is not held as a commodity, but is actually experienced as a journey that we embark upon. It becomes necessary to explore and investigate the insight surrounding this extraordinary sense of presence and connectedness. There is a natural evolution that occurs which involves a personal validation of, and eventual merging with, the process itself. We learn to abide in and flow with Faith, no longer seeing it as separate from ourselves. The practice of loving kindness is a powerful method for cultivating this environment of discovery. When we train our attention to be inclusive toward all of life’s happenings, we quickly see the interconnected nature of our lives, and our limited perspective shifts to encompass the greater whole.

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Taken from the 2010 Open Your Heart in Paradise retreat, Sharon relates the act of meditation to an alchemical process in which we convert the conceptual into the felt presence of direct experience. The array of what we might encounter in meditation is broad, but we welcome it all. Meditation is a skills training in learning to gather energy. Our attention is brought into focus and we begin to connect the fragments of our lives. When we tap into our ‘inner abundance’, our experience changes and we naturally settle into a more compassionate state of awareness.

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In this talk, Sharon touches on the concept of the Buddha as a human being, who had real questions, much like our own. What he discovered was found through the power of his own awareness, and through his teachings we too can uncover our own innate compassion. Retreat provides a rare opportunity to break from the fragmented nature of day-to-day, and allows us to settle back into the truths of our own lives. Through the process of concentration we begin to piece together the energy required for self-actualizing our own capacity toward freedom.

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