Experiencing Emptiness in Everyday Life

Experiencing Emptiness in Everyday Life
Date: February 25, 2012
Location:
Nalandabodhi New York
324 West 23rd, 2A

Schedule

9:30 a.m to 5:00 p.m.
Lunch will be ordered in. Please plan on an additional $10 for lunch or feel free to bring your own lunch.

Price

Suggested donation: $60.00 for the day
We appreciate it greatly when we receive your donations, which help us maintain our center. But it's also important to us for you to experience this innovative program. If you can't offer the full suggested donation, please ask Andrew for details on our sliding scale.

For More Info and to Enroll

Visit the Nalandabodhi New York Info page for this class.

Questions?

Please direct any questions about the program to Tomas Sander.

Class Description

In Buddhism, realizing the emptiness (shunyata) of the self and of all things is one of the keys to ending one's suffering. Even though emptiness is of paramount importance, it is often challenging to find ways to investigate, experience, and realize emptiness in day-to-day life. The student is often left with the question,

How do I apply the transformational insights of the emptiness teachings to those everyday situations that I really care about?

This all-day course from Greg Goode and Tomas Sander will offer practical examples, tools and meditations that can be used to address the issues that may arise on a daily basis. Besides traditional Eastern sources, the course will also utilize insights from Western philosophy and psychology, as they can be particularly helpful for today's students. Students are encouraged to bring examples from their own lives to the class to serve as examples.

For instance,

An aversive life event happens, such as a dear friend losing her job. Empathizing with her, you are deeply unsettled. You wonder: “What does this really mean? For her life? For life in general?” Understanding the emptiness of meaning can help resolve this unsettling feeling.
You receive an insult or suffer some sort of social persecution. What is the basis for this insult? Realizing its empty, open nature can start to bring peace.
You notice that you do not look like the photographs of models in ads and commercials. These images seem portrayed with such certainty! Understanding the emptiness of beauty and representation can help prevent you from feeling perhaps marginalized.
You witness a fender-bender and are asked to give eyewitness testimony. You overhear the testimony of others standing right next to you. You may say to yourself, “Their accounts differ so much from mine!” Understanding the emptiness of perception and memory can help this make sense. This understanding can also easily be applied to other areas where people “see” things in strikingly different ways.
When you recognize the open texture of your ideas about yourself, especially any limiting assumptions you may have, you experience a freeing openness. In this openness, you may feel an artistic inspiration to paint and create yourself anew.
You feel a creative impulse to do something very different in your life, but you are not sure about pursuing it. You wonder, “Would that really be me? Would it be OK?” How can understanding the insubstantiality of the self give you the confidence and energy to pursue this new direction?

The class will be highly interactive, experiential and fun, taught with lecture, meditation, group discussion, audio, video, photography, and art.

As an attendee, you can expect:

To learn more about emptiness;
To experience a variety of practical emptiness meditations;
To take away tools and techniques that allow you to explore everyday life in emptiness meditation.

The class has no prerequisites and is open to Buddhist and non-Buddhist students alike.