Acceptance

A particularly difficult human challenge involves trying to balance a desire to be there for others – both those in our personal lives and in our society in general – and a desire to offer ourselves our own self-care. When these two needs are unbalanced, we and others tend to suffer because of it, largely based on the degree of the imbalance. Gratefully, the Buddha offered us many ways that we could address these competing needs through our mindfulness meditation practice, and develop a sense of peace and ease for both self, and others. This talk explores some of his most important teachings on this topic. It includes a meditation at the end.

The Buddha was once asked "what is the most important thing for us to practice?" He answered: patience (or khanti, in Pali) and assured us that this skill or quality is something we can learn to apply to absolutely everything we struggle with in our lives - every person, situation, and even ourselves - in order to become much more peaceful, self-controlled, compassionate, and undisturbed by life itself. This talk explores his teachings about how we can do this. It includes a meditation at the end.

We all tend to seek out and hope for gain, status, praise, and pleasure, and resist or fear loss, disgrace, blame, and pain – even though all are inescapable, and visit each of us in different forms throughout our lives. And how we relate to these hopes and fears – often called the 8 Worldly Winds – often dictates how we experience our entire world. This talk explores how our meditation practice can help us to pay closer attention to these various winds so that we can learn how to better allow them to rise and pass without clinging so tightly to them, and therefore, discover more freedom and ease in our lives. It includes a meditation at the end.

Often during our meditation practice, we encounter a state known as "busy mind," which is when there's a kind of ongoing flow of anxious or repetitive mental chatter that tends to keep us locked in the realm of the past or the future, and therefore, mostly distracted from the reality of the present moment, or … the life we're actually living. This talk explores how this particular mind state is created, and how we can use our mediation practice to mindfully observe and slow down the flow of thoughts, and in turn calm both the mind and body. It includes a meditation at the end.