Sometimes our shyness or concern about what others think keeps us from expressing our gifts and making as meaningful a contribution as we can. In seeing through the constructed sense of self—the understanding of Anatta—those thoughts lose their power and don’t get in the way of expressing our true nature.

In past weeks I've been pulling inspiration from the Satipatthana Sutta, the foundational teachings on mindfulness. I've been linking them to some of it's underpinning truths of change, impermanence, suffering, and freedom from it. I'd like to continue on this thread for tomorrow's talk and bring in the third foundation, the foundation of the mind.. We'll explore how, when we aren't lost in it, the mind is a fascinating subject for our attention. When we understand our mind more fully, we can more fully understand who we are. We'll use this theme to understand better the truth of self and not-self.

mindfulness of the body and how it helps us understand and navigate change

Experience equanimity through song

I [recently] spoke about how sharing our pain by connecting with another helps us hold and process our grief. This week I want to look at the importance of "Connection through Community" and how we can create more community in our lives.

The True Promise of Mindfulness

Whether the climate crisis, some other social issue or personal loss, sharing our pain by connecting with another helps us hold and process our grief. By opening the heart we can transform our feeling of isolation into one of shared humanity. This talk ends with a guided experiential dyad exercise adapting Joanna Macy’s "Learning to See Each Other" meditation from Coming Back to Life.

Greta Thunberg’s fearless willingness to speak the truth has inspired millions of youth to follow her lead resulting in the hugely successful September 20th Worldwide Climate Strike. Thunberg calls being on the autism spectrum her “superpower” because she doesn’t care what others think of her and only cares about telling the truth. Can we be like her, let go of our self-consciousness, not hold back and speak and act with honesty and courage?

A talk about how our benefactors impact us, wisdom and love they pass on from their benefactors and how we transmit those beautiful qualities to others who pas it on as well. No one "owns" those qualities. Rather we are part of a lineage of goodness.