Identity and Healthy Relationship with the World (Link #668)

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la reflects on identity and how to have a healthy relationship with the world as a Dharma practitioner. An understanding of the Four Noble Truths illuminates how sentient beings try to build a world that suits their preferences, and how this leads to suffering. The bodhisattva path provides a way beyond suffering based on reducing our neurotic attachment to self and developing a strong basis to navigate and fully engage the world in a healthy manner. This requires working with one's identity with the skillful means of the Dharma, especially in the midst of the identity crisis of modernity and all of its challenges. A tree needs strong roots and then branches out into the world and the elements.