This 1.5 hour class will explore how subtle joy shows up in our lives and in our practice. We will explore how to cultivate this subtle joy as a sustainable driver on the path to freedom and liberation.
The enlightened Vipassana teacher Nani Dipa Ma once said that at a certain point love and wisdom become one. We don't have to be highly realized beings to explore and directly feel this truth. In our time together, we will review how the 3 characteristics of experience - change, not self and suffering - merge with love through reflection and practices of loving kindness as well as compassion. We will also consider the freedom that this understanding and felt sense imparts.
The Buddha provided the wanderer Bahiya with a profoundly direct and brief model that dislodged his familiar sense of self. Upon hearing this teaching, Bahiya instantly and fully realized the fundamentally awake, free nature of reality. Could we directly experience a hint of what Bahiya did? Could we open a thread in our practice that leads in this direction? We will explore this and more in this half-day retreat.
