Episodes
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How can I manage my life in such as a way that I feel comfortable and settled in the experiences that I am engaging in? Part of the answer is looking at taking care of yourself, being realistic and maintaining a balance at every level. Many people feel overwhelmed because they bring too much into their life – it is crowded out and there is no spaciousness. Rather than looking at how can I cope with this, look at how can I create more space?
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The Buddha talked about beings that are volitional (driven by personal will) or functional (performing their function seamlessly in an awakened state). The transition from adolescence to adulthood is when we find out who we actually are by performing our function and not thinking we are special. A skilful human being moves like a stick through water and does not leave much of a trace. There are countless ways of being of service and performing our function.
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Missing episodes?
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The experience is what has a transformative effect in meditation. Seeing something we have not seen before can create a paradigm shift which helps us transform our suffering. Peak experiences are not the cessation of suffering. The real testament is the refinement of character which means you are not afflicted by what happens to you.
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The Buddha was not interested in teaching the momentary cessation of suffering but finding a pathway to cut off at the root the habit of bringing ourselves to suffering. When he was a prince twenty-five centuries ago, he came to the conclusion that there is no happiness to be found in the pursuit of pleasure alone. After he renounced his worldly life and went forth, he also found that practicing austerity practices alone does not cut off the causes of suffering. When he became enlightened, he came to see the absolute truth of the conditioned process of life beyond the appearance of things.
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We may not have recognised it but somewhere inside us is a longing for a sense of deep connection to what we are part of. We try to do meet this through ideas but this is not the same as being totally present. We need to turn up fully to our experience rather than get lost in thinking about it all and meditation is a process of gradually bringing to an end our sense of separation.
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With more mindfulness, you can see what you are bringing to this moment from the past. When you witness this without a sense of self, you see things much for how they really are rather than what you think they are. We can bring a more objective perspective and open the door to some of the charge we are carrying.
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The goal of meditation is to free ourselves from suffering of the affliction we experience in our life. To see clearly what life is, we have to polish the lens that we look through. Understanding comes from insight rather than studying or intellectual reflection. The eightfold noble path leads to liberation through insight. As soon as you see what this is, you free yourself. The liberation is in the seeing. In order to see, we have to pay wise attention
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What did the Buddha say was the cause of suffering? You might think that attachment is the cause of our suffering, but attachment itself is caused by ignorance. If we saw what life truly is, we would not suffer. Our ignorance is the illusion of self. When we are absorbed in what we are doing, our sense of self fades. The arising of the sense of me in the middle of my experience is what creates the sense of separation.
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You don’t know what you are going to get in life – good luck or bad luck, who knows? Sometimes life goes your way and sometimes it does not. It does not matter what you get, it matters how you meet each experience with a clear mind. Burgs goes onto to discuss karma and consciousness and asks what do you know to be true? The views we cling to are highly predictable on account of the way our mind works and our conditioning. The “wisdom of the idiot” acknowledges that we know nothing and are open to life as it is – rather than rigidly clinging to our views.
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Sometimes the conditions are not present for us to be flourishing and we are either struggling or coping. The maturing of our insight ensures we can make more skilful life decisions, so that our expectations are realistic and in tune with the karmic forces that are underpinning our lives. There will be times when we are supported karmically, and times when we are challenged. If you get a sense of what is going on in the background, you can time your decisions appropriately, and act when the energy is right.
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What causes disturbances in our meditation once we have established serenity and are not throwing any more pebbles into the pond of our mind? It’s our old stock of unwholesome mental states which shake our heart base. This happens because our field of perception opens and negative mental states reveal themselves which are below the threshold of our normal awareness. We know these mental states are just below the surface but usually distract ourselves from feeling them - maintaining a more limited level of consciousness.
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Are you looking to learn to meditate or realise the path out of suffering? Your welfare in the here and now is dependent on the accumulation of merit in the past. If you are practicing to enhance your welfare for now and in the future, this is realised through virtue and how you conduct yourself. The Buddha taught the path of the causal cessation of suffering which might not be everyone’s aspirations. Whatever your aspirations, it is clear that we need to change significantly the way we live our lives and take full accountability for our choices.
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Following on from the last episode, Burgs explores the themes of vitality, karma and stress. The quality of your mind has a very significant impact on the quality of your life – much more so than what you eat, for example. When you are meditating, it is the attitude you bring to it which can bring the most coherence and transformation. When its not going well, rather than worrying, it is an opportunity to find a strength of character that you would not normally bring to the things that you do.
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What is the mechanism by which the state of our mind impacts our health? There are four causes for the arising of material states; temperature, nutriment, consciousness and karma / action energy. It is the subtle materiality (consciousness and karma) which allows life to be expressed through us in all its extraordinary ways. In meditation, we can refine our karma and what prompts us to act. In doing so, we refine the quality of the way we function. By developing our physical and mental constitution, we can develop our capacity to take on challenges without being destabilised.
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We have tendency in a materialistic culture to take the Dharma into our mind at an intellectual level but we have to put the Buddha’s teachings into the context of the deeply spiritual culture within which he taught. There was an inherent sense of being connected to something sacred in his day and this was woven into the architecture of people’s minds. Through practice, we recognise that this is a profoundly conscious universe and we are all deeply connected to each other. Meditation helps us to connect to the sacred nature of life beyond an intellectual understanding.
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Happiness arises when you chose to accept yourself to be what you are without any judgement. It’s important to find a sense of loving kindness for yourself. This is what will help you to let go. It is a loving surrender, free from aversion, and finding forgiveness for yourself and others. On the path, love and insight need to mature in equal measure; generating a wholesome quality to our mind.
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There is a current of vital force running through you. Vitality is partly generated from the volition or desire that we bring to our actions. There is also the vitality of our spirit – the current of life that is driving you which is not personal. When you shut down, you choke the spirit that makes your feel alive. To be fully, powerfully alive is to reclaim every aspect of yourself with full consciousness and authenticity, so that the current of life is pouring through you. This podcast directly follows the last episode (no.37 – Reclaim Your Consciousness).
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Your soul is something that is inherent in you and is deeply conditioned by everything you have experienced. It feels like something that is fundamentally “me” which we can break down and dismantle. We might experience a fractured or broken part of our soul which we are disconnected from. The way to fill that hole is to be with the experiences in the past that we were unwilling to be with. This is the doorway to our awakening and the route to reclaiming our consciousness.
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The 10 paramis are qualities of our character identified by the Buddha that act as wholesome support to our mind on the path out of suffering. Once these qualities come to perfection in us, we make very swift progress. Burgs explores each one of the paramis: generosity, virtue, truthfulness, renunciation, patience, vitality / energy, determination, lovingkindness, wisdom and equanimity. By refining these qualities without judgement, we are polishing the lens we look at life through so it is less distorted.
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The Dharma is a transmission of an experience of reality which frees us from suffering. It is about the transformation of our hearts, not our ideas. A devotional attitude helps us to get beyond ourselves and our limiting ideas of who we think we are. When we surmount our pride, our heart opens and we can come into resonance with a higher consciousness.
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