Against The Stream Noah Levine

Almost all of our suffering comes from selfing. The thoughts and feelings around I, me, and mine. The insight that our meditative practice leads to is understanding that it's not that personal. There's not really a self here to be so attached to. Not a permanent, solid, separate I, me, or mine. So I'm going to talk about that tonight and I'll give some meditation instructions around that.

Dependent origination is a core popular Buddhist teaching that is about how the process, this of life and death and reincarnation work. There's the process of birth, death, life and why we suffer. Why we're not just born in a happy, peaceful life, but why life is difficult.

I was thinking of riffing a little bit on Memorial Day, where I mostly just want to talk shit about nationalism and the kind of ignorance of our culture. I think Memorial Day is about death. It's about memorializing, remembering dead soldiers. I'm gonna definitely go beyond the sort of nationalist, soldier, army, death or human death and impermanence. I'm going to talk a little bit about war tonight since that's what this sort of American holiday really is about.

Tonight I’m going to talk about the aspect of our practice of Buddhism that is about creating a positive change in the world: service, generosity, engagement.

How are you using your life’s energy to create change? What compassionate actions are you taking? How are you helping others? What kind of service are you involved in?

There's a question about how do we ideally practice intimacy, sexuality, romance in the Dharma. Where there's all this emphasis on non attachment. How do we have love and non attachment?

How do we have sex and not cling is the topic tonight. We're going to talk about sex tonight, and I'll share some Buddhist perspectives.

Tonight we're going to talk about appreciation, appreciative joy, empathy, attunement and gratitude. May you be successful at freeing yourself from suffering. May you be successful at finding true happiness, true well being Not just material and sensual pleasures, but may you have some real healing, some real awakening. May your path lead to freedom. This is a practice of having that sort of attitude and encouragement and training our heart to feel it.