TALKS

 

RUDY BAUER: BECOMING AWARE OF AWARENESS

To become aware of awareness itself is to open a vast area of experience. In this dharma talk and meditation, Rudy Bauer will guide us in the fascinating practice of becoming aware of awareness. As we more fully inhabit this field of awareness, we more fully experience our own true nature -- our Buddha nature -- and experience the benefits of true peace. 

Most often people are located in the mind, wrapped up in thinking, feeling, sensation, memory, and imagination. If we can suspend the functions of our minds for just a moment -- then, instead of being with the mind’s experience of awareness, we can be with awareness itself.  In that brief moment of suspension, it is possible to glimpse that the mind is not the same as awareness.  With this tiny shift in attention, the very light of awareness itself begins to open up. We may begin to sense that awareness is a field--one that is multi-dimensional and infinite in its horizon.

Utilizing the methods of Dzogchen meditation and experiential phenomenology, Rudy Bauer teaches how to enter into the innate, immediate field of awareness.  We can integrate our mind into this awareness field and begin to think, feel and sense through the field. With practice, the field of awareness and its primordial qualities slowly become the organizer of our personality, expressing the qualities of spaciousness, energy, luminosity and compassion.

 

HUGH BYRNE: AGENTS OF PEACE

An amazing thing is happening in DC.  This July, HH the Dalai Lama will be performing the rare public initiation called The Kalachakra for World Peace. It's an 11-day spiritual conclave that revolves around the creation of a sacred sand mandala which embodies a multi-dimensional realm of being.  HH the Dalai Lama performs this incredible initiation as a way to sow the seed of enlightenment on a mass scale in order to "turn the wheel," recalibrate, and move forward to a new time.

Thousands of monks and pilgrims from all over the world will arrive in Washington, DC to be part of this very special moment.  For many, the trip is a joyous yet arduous undertaking, involving long travel as well as financial and physical hardships.  Those of us living in this area are blessed to already be here.

In the spirit of Kalachakra, Hugh Byrne will speak to us about cultivating inner peace so that we can act as agents of peace in a new and changing world. As the Buddha's teachings and practices have spread extensively in the West over recent decades, they have had a profound impact on the lives of millions.
 
Just as dharma teachings and practices have had profound impact on individual lives and interpersonal relationships, another area of tremendous opportunity and need is to bring the practices of mindfulness, compassion and wisdom more fully into engagement in the social, economic, and political challenges our world faces today.
 
This expansion of Buddhism -- engaged fully with the suffering of our world -- may be the next major turning of the wheel of the dharma as the teachings continue to impact our modern world.
 
Following his talk, a representative of the Kalachakra will speak about this special event, and discuss what it means for us and the world.

Hugh Byrne, Ph. D. has studied and practiced Buddhism in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He completed a four-year teacher training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the Insight Meditation Society led by Jack Kornfield. He is a co-founder of the Washington Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the Mindfulness Training Institute of Washington. He is a senior teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and has served on its board since 2003.  

Hugh has trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and in Somatic Experiencing, a mind/body approach to healing trauma. He has a law degree from London University and a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and has worked extensively on issues of human rights.

 

RUTH KING: EMOTIONAL WISDOM--HEALING HEART & MIND

“Ruth King has articulated the painful history, patterns and traps of a raging heart and offers the skillful means for liberation in their very midst. This is revolutionary work.”

                 -Jack Kornfield

If you haven’t spent time with Ruth King, you should!  As a facilitator, coach, consultant, and scholar of indigenous wisdom, Ruth helps provide us with a unique understanding of what it means to be emotionally wise.  With the skill of a shaman, she weaves together influences from depth psychology, mindfulness principles, neurobiology and genealogy, as she helps us enhance our own emotional awareness and moral consciousness.  One of the most profound aspects of this session will be how she helps us work with rage as a powerful healing force in our lives.

Ruth walks us through the landscape of emotions.  In this experiential presentation, she will show us how to live in a way that honors the totality of our human experience, allowing both suffering and joy on the path to becoming awake.

Emotional Wisdom is the mental development of heart and mind. It’s a quality of awareness; a presence that allows us to reflect on our lives lovingly, and leverage this knowledge to connect in ways that touch, shape, and heal the global human heart. 

One measure of Emotional Wisdom is in how consistently we manage ourselves when we are suffering. Suffering is often fed through our inattention or unawareness. When we stay close to the truth of this moment without an overlay of defense, we become more grounded and clear. We discover that we can open to the humanness of others and ourselves without fear, and that people, just like us, do unskillful things out of pain and confusion. 

We have all suffered and we are all capable of unfathomable kindness, compassion, and joy.

The work of Emotional Wisdom is an inner journey that unifies mind and heart. We are not searching outside of ourselves; we are revealing to ourselves the depth of our true nature-which will be unique to each of us. While unique, this inner work is also to be understood within the context of global oneness. 

We are not separate from what happens to and around us–we are a part of its creation through our thoughts and actions. Disturbances within our own hearts, in our relationships, our communities, our work, our land, the environment, and throughout the world are the gross result of our collective thoughts and actions. Our responsibility as global citizens is to become emotionally wise, and in so doing, balance global disorder and foster peace.

 

ROSHI ENKYO O'HARA: A THOUSAND HANDS AND EYES

There is a Zen koan that asks what does the Boddhisatva Avalokitesvara, the embodiment of compassion, do with all those hands and eyes? 

Since she began teaching 25 years ago, Roshi Enkyo has fostered the imperative of social engagement in the practice of Zen Buddhism at her center in New York City. The question of what to do with all those “hands and eyes” points us to the heart of the matter: how do we fully engage in our life, which is also the life of the world? How do our Buddhist teachings and practices lead us naturally to a life that actively engages the world around us? 

Roshi will discuss such dangers on the path as infatuation with other-worldliness, the illusion of separateness, and self-centered practice. How can we move into a more skillful understanding of the teachings? How can we be aware, courageous and wise?

First we engage the here and now; the awareness of the suffering around us, and specific remedies that we can offer such as listening, holding a hand, serving food, tutoring, offering work. Then, with the insights that arise out of this, we begin to recognize the broader social structure that brings the present suffering into being.  And we find ways to change them. 

Roshi will offer a dharma teaching, exercises and meditations as methods of inquiring into what stops us from active engagement