Five-Part Series: Dependent Origination and the Path to Freedom

Five Thursdays: April 4 – May 2,
7:00 – 8:30 PM
taught by Suzanne Colón

There’s an essential paradox at the heart of Buddhist practice: We must get exquisitely intimate with the moment-to-moment mind-body experience of the (small, relative) self in order to transcend it. The boat to ‘the far shore’ is built of our messy, frustrating stuff of life on this shore. The way beyond our reactivity, our back pain, our nagging inner commentary is to equanimously and compassionately embrace it. This is Alan Watts’ “backwards law” and the meaning of Dogen’s Genji Koan.

This class will begin with the teachings on the Five Aggregates and build up to an understanding of the chain of Dependent Origination – the Buddha’s map for what’s going on in human experience, how we get caught and why we suffer. We will explore the practices that intimately “study the self” and how those lead to “forgetting the self.” The chain becomes a liberative cycle of expanding wisdom and freedom.

Each week there will be a suggested home practice to deepen our experiential knowledge of the concepts. The series is designed to be sequential but anyone is welcome to attend sporadically or singly as their schedule and interests allow.

 

This class, designed for meditators with some experience, will be offered in our weekly Thursday sangha meetings on a drop-in basis. We welcome anyone in the community who’d like to explore the nuances of these intricate teachings of the Buddha’s.

 

April 4: The Five Aggregates and the Importance of Vedana (feeling tone)

April 11: How Vedana inevitably leads to having human preferences and “grasping” which – without Mindfulness, Wisdom and Equanimity – send us along the links in the chain to “clinging, becoming, and suffering.”

April 18: The Full Chain of Dependent Origination and how it illustrates the Four Noble Truths

April 25: The Liberative chain spiraling toward wisdom, insight, compassion and freedom

May 2: “The Full Choir”  How nurture, self-compassion and equanimity increase our capacity to stay in the Liberative cycle and maximize growth and the capacity for Freedom

The workshop offered on Saturday, April 6th is designed to deepen and enrich the series (or it can stand alone…) See listing below.

Drop in to one, some or all six sessions of the series. No prior registration is necessary.

Zoom connection will be available as per usual on our Thursday evenings.

This course is offered on a dana basis, meaning it is our gift to you, freely offered. We gratefully accept support and gratitude to pay the bills and keep the sangha going. (For those that want it: the suggestion donation would be  $5-15 per session)

The exception is the evening of March 22 – all funds will go to Pamela Weiss, our guest teacher.

Saturday Workshops

These three-hour workshops offer longer explorations of certain topics, with ample time for reflection, journaling and discussion. First Saturdays of the Month through the spring.

All proceeds from these workshops go to our residential retreat scholarship fund. We hope we’ll be able to support everyone who wants to join us at the BBar Ranch with Tempel Smith in October, despite higher costs.
Details on the retreat – Save The Dates!

Sample the practice:

Link: Video of Tsultrim Allione talking about and guiding a Feeding Your Demons session

(Suzanne will guide us using a transcript of this session)

Feeding Your Demons –
Bringing Wisdom and Compassion to our Inner Conflicts

Based on Tsultrim Allione’s Book and Renown Practice

Probable date: Saturday, June 22nd
9 AM – Noon

led by Suzanne Colón

This workshop will feature a guided exercise that uses imagery and inquiry to work with difficult parts of ourselves or our experience. Developed by Lama Tsultrim Allione (Tibetan nun, author and teacher), this exploratory practice of self-compassion has been shared with practitioners across Buddhist lineages, to powerful effect. In this morning workshop, Suzanne will offer the practice, along with guidance for how to use it safely and beneficially.

This a helpful exercise for anything you’re finding frustrating. Beginners may want to do the practice with a low-stakes issue to see how it’s done before bringing it to higher-stakes issues or conflicts. Following the workshop, we’ll share the link to Lama Tsultrim guiding it online so you may do it again, and as often as you wish. She offers it freely.

This workshop is designed for all levels of meditation experience. All persons, identities, sizes, genders, ages, races and abilities are very welcome.

Please bring a journal.

Prior online registration is preferred, attendance will be limited to 30 attending in person. Zoom option available.

Registration will open approx three weeks prior to the workshop date.