Dependent Origination and the Path to Freedom

Five Thursdays: April 4- May 2
7-8:30 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 Genjo 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.

Class Schedule

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

April 11: Perception, Mis-perception, Mental Formations and the mind’s reactivity

April 18: Further links in the chain: how we get hooked and how we can unhook

April 25: The Chain of Dependent Origination and how it illustrates the Four Noble Truths

May 2: The Liberative chain spiraling toward wisdom, insight, compassion and freedom

Drop in to one, some or all five 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.