Meditation and Buddhist Teaching

This drop-in class is for everyone no matter whether you are completely new to meditation or experienced over many years. Everyone can benefit from listening to and meditating on Buddha’s teachings. You don’t have to commit to anything other than having an open mind.

The class will begin with laying the foundations of meditation and discussing the nature of the human experience and potential. It progresses through the basics of Buddhist thought, considering impermanence of all things, and the relationship between actions and experience, or karma. Building on this initial stage, the course will address how we can become completely free of suffering. In the third stage we will consider how to become less self-oriented and instead become loving and caring about others’ happiness and freedom, and how from this we can naturally wish to become the best we can be to really hold dear and bring benefit to everyone we meet and think about.

Throughout the course, we will address practical solutions to our everyday problems arising from desirous attachment, anger, jealousy, and particularly self-grasping ignorance; problems that prevent us from achieving the real inner peace and happiness that is our potential.

A source text is “Modern Buddhism” Part I, Sutra, available from the Center bookstore or free in digital form. Taught by Gen Kelsang Tilopa