Once a month, Peter provides an opportunity during the meeting for those participating to ask questions regarding Buddhist concepts and practices.  The questions posed during this meeting focus on the “Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse”, for example the “noting” method for cultivating insight, compared to practices that first emphasize the cultivation of high levels of concentration called jhana (jah-nah), before developing insight.  He reviews the development and integration of the Seven Awakening Factors, facilitated through whole-body meditation practice.  He also describes different approaches to cultivating and making use of concentration and the characteristics of what has been termed “big sky mind” and his way of using relaxed curiosity–letting go with every out-breath with a concentrated mind–to have a deeper understanding of sunnata (soon-yah-tah), translated as emptiness–the absence of a separate, enduring self.

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