Grounding meditation in bodily experience. Activating qualities of awareness through the posture: Grounded - steady, upright - bright, open - receptive, relaxed - gentle.
In this final talk of the series, Martin looks at the social implications of widening our sense of identification, including not only the world but also other human beings within the field of our experience. The talk explores the suffering born of the us and them mentality and points to how the need to awaken together and take all beings into our heart.
In this talk Martin looks at the tendency to conceive in terms of objects rather than process, unpicking the way we maintain and reinforce the ego structure, and offering a vision of a more expansive and inclusive participation in life.
Continuing from the previous talk, Martin looks at the ways we imagine, maintain and reinforce our psychological sense of self. The talk explores how we live in images and descriptions of who we think we are, layered by our constant critical self evaluation, and points us beyond our psychology to a fuller and freer embodying of our life.
We are bound by our biology, and our health, longevity and death are largely out of our control. This talk explores the way our biology impacts us, including the influences of the sex drive, the survival drive and the social drive. Martin looks at how we can explore and understand our biology in such a way as to inhabit it freely.
In this talk Martin looks at the tendency to conceive in terms of objects rather than process, unpicking the way we maintain and reinforce the ego structure, and offering a vision of a more expansive and inclusive participation in life.
Martin uses this talk to examine the Buddhas description of Dharma practice as Going against the stream of Greed, Hatred and Delusion. He traces these forces in our contemporary lives in their personal, social and global dimensions, inviting us to reflect on how to make an appropriate response to the life in which we find ourselves.
This talk questions our willingness to really be in contact with our experience. Martin explores our tendency to divide ourselves from life, from others and from our own experience, and points the way back to an undivided, undefended existence. The talk also reflects on the natural boundlessness of heart that opens up as a liberated response to different types of experience.
Martin explores different personality styles of resistance and rejection, the ways anger functions and the importance of letting ourselves feel negative emotions as a way of freeing them up and letting go of our personal hard luck story. He also explores the way practice can transform anger into fearlessness as an important force against injustice, oppression and inequality.
On this summer solstice evening out under the trees at Gaia House, Martin reflects on the importance of trees in the Buddhas life, the disingenuousness of the term mindfulness and what it means to be embodied.
