As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
Sitting in a field of fifty to eighty people really starts my mind sparking. Since I don't prepare my talks ahead of time, I find myself listening to what I'm saying along with everyone else. This leaves a lot of room for the Dhamma to come up. Just having eighty people listening to me is enough to engage me, stimulate me, and create a nice flow of energy. The actual process of teaching evokes ideas that even I did not realize were being held somewhere in my mind.
Different teaching situations offer their own unique value. In retreat, you are able to build a cohesive and comprehensive body of the teachings. When people are not on retreat and come for one session, it opens a different window. They are more spontaneous and I'm given the chance to contact them in ways that are closer to their "daily-life mind." This brings up surprises and interesting opportunities for me to learn even more.
I'm continually struck by how important it is to establish a foundation of morality, commitment, and a sense of personal values for the Vipassana teachings to rest upon. Personal values have to be more than ideas. They have to actually work for us, to be genuinely felt in our lives. We can't bluff our way into insight. The investigative path is an intimate experience that empowers our individuality in a way that is not egocentric. Vipassana encourages transpersonal individuality rather than ego enhancement. It allow for a spacious authenticity to replace a defended personality.
The development of wisdom is dependent on disengagement - from affliction, from fixing it, from knowing the answer and from letting go of any such activation ( sankhara). In that pure awareness, release can occur- straight through the heart.
Right view is of the dynamic interdependency of all experience - except Nibbana. When all is relative and changeable, there is the potential for change for the better, and for release.
Dhamma is the Natural and Holistic Order. To know it we need to be balanced and attuned to what were experiencing, to meet what arises with sympathy and hold it with equanimity. Mindfulness of breathing is a practice which develops this balance.
Kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity form where sympathetic awareness (anukampa, aka primal sympathy) meets the mind. These are a natural expression of an Awakened heart.
Attention and intention carry awareness to an object. They can be trained and nourished. The Ten Parami are a collection of skilful ways to do this, a way that leads to the end of kamma.
