Yuka Nakamura has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1993 in the Theravada, Dzogchen and Zen traditions, and has been trained as a teacher by Fred von Allmen. Living in Switzerland, she teaches meditation and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
The Buddha called the noble eightfold path the middle way. The middle way stands for a basic principle that can be applied to many areas of our life. Our relationship to sense pleasures, energy, emotions, social responsibilities and hope vs. fear. It means not getting caught in dualities or polarities, not fixating on any extreme, but finding creative ways to deal with the complexities and ambiguities of human life.
Right or wise intention is the second path factor in the noble eightfold path and it comprises the three qualities of renunciation, non-ill will and non-cruelty. They are wholesome qualities that lead to our own welfare and the welfare of others. The talk discusses the discourse MN 19 in which the Buddha describes how he came to this understanding and how they can be cultivated.
The transformation of our heartmind, citta, depends on the patient, gradual cultivation of wholesome qualities. The Buddha distinguished three areas of cultivation - the area of ethical living, the development of the mind and the cultivation of wisdom.
Citta, the heartmind, lies at the center of our Dharma practice. Understanding how the state of the citta determines our happiness or unhappiness, we are motivated to take good care of it and cultivate it. This process begins with bringing mindfulness and interest to our mindstates.
Dharma Talk: Dancing Between Self and Not Self. One of the discoveries that can open up to us is the discovery that there is not just one, true self, but the arising of many different selves at different times, depending on context, depending on mindstates. We understand the relational and dependent nature of self. This is the middle way between the views of eternalism and annihilationism.
