Episodes
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Our need for security shapes the way we live. Most of us take refuge in our own home, our possessions, our bank account and there’s nothing wrong with that. We can mostly rely on our home to keep us warm and comfortable, our car to get us where we want to go, but we can’t rely on these things for more than that.
They’re not going to offer us lasting peace and happiness. They’re not going to make us feel complete. If we put unrealistic expectations on anything, we’ll be disappointed.
This talk was offered to Insight North East in March 2024
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If you notice that you’re lost in repetitive thinking, it’s not a bad thing at all. It’s a perfect opportunity to learn and grow. The instruction is simply to recognise, without judgment, what’s happening: ‘This agitation has arisen and, like everything, it’ll pass’.
And gradually, it loses its grip.
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Missing episodes?
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We can take responsibility for our intentions and our actions. We can try to live ethically. But we can’t control everything that happens around us and neither can anyone else.
If we understand this, there’s no place for ill will, there’s no blame. The only thing that makes sense is compassion.
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We can’t change the way we are through willpower alone. But we can patiently observe our experience, knowing that our essential goodness is there, watering it, nurturing it, giving it space to grow.
This takes us much closer to our deepest intentions than willpower ever can
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The idea of ‘letting go’ comes up a lot in the Dharma. We’re taught that our suffering comes from our tendency to grasp and cling.
Letting go of suffering isn’t achieved through an act of will. It happens when we cultivate certain qualities, from which our suffering and stress start to fall away by themselves.
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Most of us get agitated many times during the course of a day. It’s part of being human.
We often respond to stress in ways that make it worse. If instead we practise reconnecting with the body and breath, we learn to release unhelpful patterns. We learn that it's possible to live with steadiness and openheartedness, no matter what happens to be going on around us.
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Most of us hide our demons, even from ourselves. Even if we're ashamed of our anger or frightened of our vulnerability, it’s always possible to work with those energies and learn to relate to them differently.
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We exist in the midst of a flow of phenomena and we’re part of that flow. Everything depends on everything else and everything contains everything else.
Seeing reality in this way, as an infinitely vast net of interconnected phenomena, is to view the world through awakened eyes.
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Anxiety affects how we perceive the world; it can take all of the joy out of life.
We can train ourselves to respond to anxiety and stress by developing the habit of mindfulness, by learning to calm ourselves, by bringing the attention to the breath & body when we’re having a small meltdown. That way, when the bigger stresses arise, we already have a set of skills we can employ.
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Mindfulness of breathing is a simple practice; there’s no need for complicated instructions. We simply return to the sensations of breathing gently and gracefully, over and over.
It’s also an incredibly powerful practice. Early Buddhist teachings describe how mindfulness of breathing can take you all the way to full awakening.
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Mindful speech is a form of spiritual practice.
The teachings on how we speak to each other are there to open a sense of enquiry. In other words, working out what’s helpful and what’s unhelpful, what causes agitation, stress and suffering, and what alleviates it.
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Everything is impermanent, everything arises and passes. Nothing can offer us lasting satisfaction. And there is no fixed, permanent thing called the self, just a number of processes constantly shifting and changing.
Understanding this on a conceptual level isn’t enough; we only liberate ourselves by observing it in our moment-to-moment experience.
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We tend to be drawn towards drama. It generates a sense of aliveness but it’s also exhausting.
Mindfulness helps us become disenchanted with our dramas and our reactivity so that we can start to make peace with ourselves.
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Early Buddhist teachings encourage us to live a life with intention and not to wander aimlessly, always reacting to our experience.
If our intentions are kind and compassionate, our actions are going to be skilful. They’ll lead us to a liberated, awakened life.
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Nothing appears out of nowhere; everything arises out of previous conditions. Everything, no matter how solid it appears to be, is simply process. This is what we call emptiness.
The point of understanding and knowing emptiness is to relieve our distress. Once we truly see emptiness, we no longer have to carry the burden of hostility and dissatisfaction around with us. Instead, we can relax and enjoy our world.
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We all carry a burden. Generosity is a practice that lightens our burden.
It helps us to understand that we’re all interconnected with each other and with the Earth. It opens the heart.
We don’t have to feel generous to incline towards generosity, we can just get on with it.
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We live in an incredible time for cross-pollination of ideas, including ideas about how to live in this world, with access to more information than ever about religious and spiritual traditions. For anyone looking for a practice, there’s no shortage of options from which to choose a path. However, at some point, if we really want to wake up, it's important to stop window shopping and to start engaging seriously with one practice.
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Mindfulness of breathing is taught as a direct and simple approach to waking up.
It’s always available to us, not just when we're practising formal meditation. It's available at the traffic lights, in the supermarket or when we’re stuck behind a computer screen.
We can practise it anywhere, anytime.
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In Buddhist teachings, fire is used as a metaphor to describe reactivity. Much of our waking life is spent burning with discontent.
Fire is also the element of transformation. When we learn to engage with this cycle of confusion and pain, we can use it as fuel for awakening.
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Entering the stream means starting to see through delusion and believing, knowing that things can be different. To enter the stream means to embrace life and change the way we live.
Life is no longer blocked; it starts to flow.
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