Kate Munding is co-guiding teacher of IMCB. She has been practicing since 2002 and has done numerous 1-2 month intensive practice periods. Kate is currently in Spirit Rock's Teacher Training program. Kate has also trained approximately 2,000 educators, therapists, and parents in mindful awareness techniques and philosophy in the U.S. and abroad.
She is founder of The Heart-Mind Education Project, a consulting business focused on mindfulness in education.
This talk explores some questions of an "open heart." Can we bring both into our awareness the question, "is it possible to open further?" Where it is a stretch to feel compassionate and unguarded, is forgiveness needed, is self-care and healing needed? Do we always recognize the easy-open freedom of a heart that is fully available and unhindered? Do we take those states and the people connected to those states for granted?
An appropriate topic for this time of year. Many subthemes fall under this theme, such as how to be mindful of abundance and scarcity, feeling connected with others, and the nourishment of renunciation.
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.
The tenderness practice instructions during the meditation is a form of metta and compassion practice. It's one that helps ease the nervous system, hold difficulty and stress with care, and cultivates a kind attitude towards our mindfulness practice.
This week will conclude my series on the Three Truths of Existence, aka The Three Characteristics. So far we've explored the truth of impermanence and what it would be like to fully live from the understanding that all of nature, including us, is in constant flux. The last time I was there, we explored the second truth, not-self. We unpacked it's meaning and talked about how it fits with this spiritual path, as well as how it can inspire us in our day-to-day.
This week we'll continue the conversation by including the third truth, the truth of suffering. This will be a pointing out teaching to better understand how we feed our cycles of stress, unsatisfactoriness, and unhappiness. We'll also look at how we can untangle and even uproot the habits and patterns in our mind that support such unhappy living and nurture a more wise and peaceful way of being.
I will continue talking about the three truths of existence, aka The Three Characteristics. Last week we explored the truth of impermanence and what it would be like to fully live from the understanding that all of nature, including us, in constant flux.
This week I'll be talking about the second truth, not-self. This is a concept in Buddhism that is often miss-understood as no-self giving an impression of nihilism. We unpack the truth of not-self, how it fits with this spiritual path, and how it can inspire us in our day-to-day.
The talk is centered around how to bring wisdom to the truth of impermanence. Anicca (impermanence) is a cornerstone truth of existence and one that we all encounter over and over. How we relate to this truth can make the difference between experiencing this natural law with confusion and aversion or living a life with a heart and mind that is at peace. We'll explore how this truth influences our emotional, physical, and relational lives. We'll also take a look at how miss-understanding this truth can be used as a spiritual bypass and hinder our spiritual development.
In preparation for this weekend, the climate emergency, our response to it as Buddhists and as human beings has been on my mind. I will give the talk related to these themes as well as on how we can change our relationship with nature through our practice to better connect with the reality we and our planet are facing. I know James just gave a talk last week on climate change, but I'm guessing this will offer a different approach and voice to this ongoing exploration.
