Dharma Teachings

From a Buddhist perspective, the two doorways to greater peace and well being come through our relationship to the changing nature of all conditioned experience, and our relationship to our selves and identities in the face of all that is changing. Many of us are smart enough to intellectually understand the universal nature of impermanence, and to the complete emptiness and interconnection underlying the felt experience of our selves. Yet to live into the highest possible happiness we need to awaken to total alignment with these truths.

‍

Dharma Teachings

Dharma teachings and practices establish this alignment within the fundamental truths of impermanence, interconnection, emptiness, and karma. By perfecting our understanding of ethical actions, self awareness, and dispelling our core confusions, we live our way into an unbroken experience of contentment.

‍

Confusion and Suffering

Misunderstanding the nature of reality, we often a) resist the reality of impermanence and b) try to control and solidify the experience of ourselves, and from these two strategies we generate our own suffering, stress and dissatisfaction with life. This is the most fundamental truth in the Buddha's teachings: out of our own confusion we generate a tremendous amount of suffering to our lives. This greatest cause of this suffering is within our own hearts and minds, not from the outside.

‍

The Training

‍Since we generate our own suffering, we are therefore completely empowered to liberate ourselves from these patterns. To untangle our confusion we need to dedicate ourselves to non-harming actions, stability of heart, and complete clarity of mind. These are the three traditional trainings in Buddhist spirituality: Ethics, Equanimity, and Liberating Insight.

‍

Compassionate Freedom

For our freedom to be complete we need to be compassionate towards all living beings, and for our compassion to effective it needs to arise out of a sense of freedom. When we feel free without recognizing interconnection, we are still imprisoned in the delusion of a separate self; and when we have compassion arising without a sense of freedom we get tangled in the web of connection. Our deepest liberation tastes like a perfect combination of compassion and freedom.

‍

What I Offer‍

Through classes, workshops and retreats I offer guidance in the five precepts and dana to develop ethical action; mindfulness meditation and the four brahma viharas to develop equanimity and compassion; and vipassana meditation to develop liberating wisdom.

In support of these trainings I also offer the practice of somatic experiencing (SE) and mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) integrated within the Dharma teachings to help clear physical and psychological pain and numbness often impeding spiritual progress.