This talk provides a review of how the previous descriptions of concepts and practices support the wholesome integration of one’s personality, creating the conditions suitable for a progression of insights leading towards the liberation of the mind–Awakening. Here are the notes prepared for this talk: SELF STATE INTEGRATION AND LIBERATION
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This talk is intended to support the ability to integrate what was learned about the process of Awakening to daily life experience. Here are the notes prepared for this talk: AWAKENING AT HOME
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In following a long-established tradition, this meeting is dedicated to providing those who attended the recent one-week residential retreat to review their experience during the retreat. After such an event, it is difficult to be able to express the insights gained during such an immersive experience without the support of those who were at the event or have previously been on a retreat. Such a review helps to integrate the insights more fully into daily life, while also providing inspiration for those listening.
The focus of next week’s talk, which occurs on Thanksgiving Eve, provides an opportunity to express gratitude for the benefits that meditation practice provides for the quality of one’s life.
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This talk reviews a system developed over several centuries after the life of the Buddha that describes various levels of conscious awareness that can be experienced during the process of Awakening. The Progressions of Insight, as they are often called, begin with developing an ethically integrated lifestyle and the cultivation of the basic skills of mindfulness, investigation and Right Effort. As the development of the process matures, insights of an increasingly subtle and profound nature are experienced that validate the Buddhist foundational concepts of impermanence (anicca), the distress and confusion that results from craving and clinging (dukkha), and the absence of an enduring and autonomous self (anatta). The final goal of this progression is direct experience of Nirvana (the ultimately unconditioned state of mind).
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: STAGES OF AWAKENING
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This talk reviews the remaining two of the Seven Awakening Factors, Concentration/Unification and Equanimity/Balance. The first three factors, Mindfulness, Investigation of Mental Phenomena and Energy/Effort/Persistence (In the form of Right Effort), monitor and regulate the other factors. The next two factors, Joy/Enthusiastic Engagement and Tranquility, provide appropriate interactions between emotions–the manifestation of mental energy without emotional turbulence. Concentration/Unification is reviewed to reflect the traditional cultivation of jhana states, along with more contemporary practices involving developing enough stability of attention to coordinate the Awakening Factors functions. Equanimity/Balance is reviewed to clarify how the coordinated actions of the factors are balanced and not subject to either desire, aversion or ignorance.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: The Seven Awakening Factors, Part 3
The next talk will review the Progressions of Insight, a conceptual structured description of what can be recognized subjectively as the mind becomes more Awakened, leading ultimately to the experience of Nirvana.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:39 — 56.4MB)