Is it selfish to wish yourself free from pain? https://share.descript.com/view/QbHp2rz6xuV

Begin by cultivating a sense of delight in the qualities of the freedoms and riches: Seeing its many wonderful qualities, I rejoice and delight in this human life. Next contemplate the impermanence nature of phenomena: Like waves in the ocean, all things are impermanent. I will accept whatever happens and make it my friend. Contemplate the interdependence of causes and conditions: When causes and conditions come together, the result is sure to follow, so I will do my best to help others and engage in positive deeds. Contemplate the dreamlike quality of the suffering of Samsara: The suffering of beings is mainly produced by the mind. I must free myself from my self-created bonds.

Click the image below to see the video message: https://share.descript.com/view/YQUpfRabq7B Hello. Just a quick note to you lovely members of the Mindsprings community. I am going away next week to Barcelona with Daniel for his 40th birthday. And I will be back the following week. So that is the 28th so we'll start, live sessions again on this Monday, the 28th. And on the 31st, we're going to start a new cycle of Buddhist teaching: We're looking at the four immeasurables, which will be at the later time of 8:00 AM UK time. So we're doing this seasonal switch. So slightly later on a Thursday morning. So the Monday session and that Thursday session, the morning sessions are both at 8:00 AM UK time. Slightly complicated, I think because the clocks go back. So if you're in a different time zone, you need to just be mindful of that. And also to let you know that, Let's just check the date. we're starting our book club. Looking at Mingyur Rinpoche's wonderful "In Love With the World" on the 6th of November. So this is in just in a few weeks time, and that's free, if you're a Baobab member, so many of you have that. Do come along. It's I think it's seven o'clock on Wednesday evenings for, I think we're taking six weeks up until Christmas. So I will send out an email and that'd be a page with some reading instructions for that. coming in the next few days. Anyway, just thought, I'd say hello. And, let you know, what's coming up in the next few weeks. And I hope you're very well. I've got a little bit of a cold, I think I might have had COVID actually, cause I can't smell anything. . Curious. Never had that before. But I hope you're well and healthy. And, enjoying the fall slash spring. If you're in Australia.

I've been puzzling with Wix about the problem of people not getting email confirmations for the bookings. Most people do get them, but a few don't. If you don't, it's fine: you can find the Zoom link in your Mindsprings account. Click the box below to see the walk-through... https://share.descript.com/view/MoJpb75RJfm Log on to your account on your computer then click My Bookings this will show everything you have coming up. Click on the one you want to attend and then on Zoom details. This will take you to the meeting. Or you can click the symbol to the right to copy it for later. The same thing pertains to the app. Click the My Profile button on the bottom right and then on bookings. Remember: • you do need to book each session individually to get the details. Each session has its own Zoom code. • you will need a valid Baobab subscription. (You can also check, cancel and control your subscriptions in your Mindsprings settings, as above.) The system gets confused if you have multiple subscriptions running. • Please check your spam box. You might get personal emails from @mind-springs.org but your server might be sniffy about automated emails from the same domain. So if possible 'whitelist' @mind-springs.org in your mail server settings.

https://share.descript.com/view/aPR2UMIBJDc The first teaching session of the 'new term' - September 2024 - and I was comparing Beingfulness, the practice we usually explore on a Monday, with the Abhidharma course my teacher Mingyur Rinpoche is teaching at the moment.

We had a good discussion in our last Thursday morning session before my trip to Nepal, which also brought to a close the cycle of teaching on vipassana-shamata: https://share.descript.com/view/vgJFxv1eSdV

Teri asked a question on Monday which chimed with my thinking about what meditation permits. Worth a listen: https://share.descript.com/view/U65ycpFJlj1

I wasn't able to record our session which I led from a service station on the A12 near Colchester last night. But we did have a good discussion about grief prompted by a question from Margaret. I re-recorded an audio version of my answer below: https://share.descript.com/view/LJeRsVFOlgo

This is an excerpt from our Thursday teaching, emphasising the Buddhist emphasis on recognising how we fundamentally misperceive reality. First, we only partially perceive and then we hazily generalise by conceptualizing. https://share.descript.com/view/Za1S2xSEBL2

We had a lovely session of shamata practice this morning and I read this quote from Trungpa’s The Path of Individual Liberation p 232 If you don't have a good relationship with yourself, you cannot understand the dharma, and your body and mind will not be properly coordinated. The practice of meditation helps you to coordinate your body and your mind. You realize that your mind can be directed to a particular effort, that your mind works. Through shamatha you are able to raise your mind to an adult level. Your mind does not jump all over the place whenever you try to do something. In this samsaric world, most of you have grown up physically, but psychologically you are very young. You can't concentrate. You can't eat even one good meal properly because your mind is constantly jumping all over the place. The basic message of shamatha practice is that your mind could be as adult as your body.

I don't know if you've noticed but I've added a search bar at the top of the Mindsprings main site. I'm hoping it will make it super easy to find what you're looking for as the site gets bigger. Please try it out and give me any feedback! 😀