Legend has it that 2500 years ago, a prince in northern India, Siddhartha, was sheltered in his palace from seeing the suffering of life until he was an adult. When he finally began leaving the palace he saw, on successive trips, an aging person, a sick person, a corpse, and a spiritual seeker. These novel sights showcased the three biggest difficulties of life and their solution – spiritual awakening. Siddhartha took up the call and thereafter devoted his life to enlightenment. After becoming the Buddha, or awakened one, he taught, rather brilliantly, that the greatest challenges of life are actually the greatest blessings because they lead us to the spiritual life. In Buddhism, these four elements – aging, illness, death and enlightenment – are called the heavenly messengers.
HM 1: Aging – Inconvenient Truth or Spiritual Gateway?
Daylong Retreat, Boulder, October 28, 2017AUDIO
Since aging is as unstoppable as the tides, the only sensible option is to improve our attitude about it. We can do so by realizing aging is part of the same flow that miraculously birthed us and miraculously maintains us in every beat of our heart. Buddhism converts the poison of aging into medicine, using it to catalyze a sense of spiritual urgency and helping us to let go again and again. And when we let go, we are truly happy.
HM 2: Mindfulness Medication for Pain Relief
Daylong Retreat, Boulder, December 2, 2017AUDIO
The meditative path allows us to see the positive in pain, such as it helps us avoid injury or is a motivator to look more deeply for spiritual happiness. As we work with pain mindfully, we see that the suffering around it is optional. Mindfulness lessens pain by cutting the physical tension associated with the resistance in the mind. We can work with pain mindfully with a balance of turning towards it and skillfully turning away from it.
HM 3: Death as a Spiritual Teacher
Daylong Retreat, Boulder, January 13, 2018AUDIO
The brilliance of the Buddhist path is that it takes the biggest challenge of life, mortality, and turns it into a blessing, a catalyst for our spiritual path. Reflecting daily on mortality gladdens the heart as you realize the preciousness of life. Seeing the moment-to-moment impermanence of our experience leads to letting go and prepares us for the ultimate impermanence of dying.
HM 4: The Path of Unshakeable Happiness
Daylong Retreat, Boulder, March 3, 2018 AUDIO
Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha sat under a tree and solved your problem. He solved his problem. He solved the human problem – that we only know how to be happy if we are having a pleasant experience. The Buddhist meditative path is one of learning how to be happy no matter what. The essence of the path is to replace reactivity to our experience with mindfulness of it, which leads to true freedom of heart.