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The greatest gift is the
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Retreat Dharma Talks

Practical Emptiness: The Womb of Love and Compassion with Nikki Mirghafori, PhD and Sayadaw U Jagara

At its core, the Dharma is practical, and the teachings on emptiness (Suññatā) are no exception. Far from being bleak and nihilistic, emptiness practice liberates experience to be appreciated in richer fullness. The profound teachings on emptiness, however, often feel conceptual and illusory, or even unapproachable. This online retreat is an invitation to open to the accessible and practical teachings on emptiness, to be witnessed internally and externally, both during formal practice and in our daily lives. Seeing experience through this lens offers freedom from the prison of our limited conceptual framework, the contraction of which can lead to greed and grasping or hatred and aversion, and the whole entangled web of suffering. When all drops away, the groundless ground of love and compassion emerges.

2021-04-08 (4 days) Spirit Rock Meditation Center

  
2021-04-08 Guided Meditation: Life as A Dream 44:34
Nikki Mirghafori
In this guided meditation, we explore emptiness as a way of seeing the dreamlike nature of what we assume to be our fixed reality. "Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world: As star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."
2021-04-09 The way we start anything will determine its outcome 59:10
Sayadaw U Jagara
This principle is applied to meditation: The in-coming bread, the out-going bread.
2021-04-09 Noticing Absence, Letting Go of Self-Reference 49:18
Nikki Mirghafori
In this guided meditation, we explore voidness/emptiness through the absence of observed phenomena. Our habitual self-referential frame of reference is also invited to be seen and examined, and momentarily let go of to notice the freedom of the way of seeing free of self-ing.
2021-04-09 Evening Reflections: Appreciation as a Way to See Our Day 13:11
Nikki Mirghafori
2021-04-10 Guided Meditation: Freedom from the Clinging of Self (and Buddha's Instructions to Bahiya) 57:36
Nikki Mirghafori
2021-04-10 Emptiness: The Womb of Love and Service 30:41
Nikki Mirghafori
When we step out of our habitual ways of seeing the self and the world, clinging to constant self-interest lessens/drops away, and love and service become natural responses.
2021-04-10 Care, love and development 16:39
Sayadaw U Jagara
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