One thing we know for sure is that life never stops moving. Change is the only certainty. Hear Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat speak on the subject of death, dying and what's next.  Our Transient Lives, Public Talk According to Buddhist philosophy and experience, death is a temporary end to a temporary process. In other words, death isn’t an end: it's a process. According to the ancient and classic Buddhist text the Abhidhamma (the Buddhist version of quantum physics), rebirth is instantaneous. How so? Because the nature of consciousness is to flow, like a stream. What we call “incarnation,” however, takes time. Like anything, the shaping or forming of consciousness needs time to coalesce. Buddhist philosophy and experience also describes the process that happens as we die. This form we know as our body dissolves, and we enter an in-between realm, called the bardo. It’s from here that the stream flows on and a new form emerges. The process of the streaming, and how form dissolves and reforms is driven by karma.This talk will describe the process of dissolution, the experiences one can expect along the way and the process of rebirth. You might ask, how do we know this? For experienced meditators, the rise and fall of phenomena, its appearing and disappearing during meditation goes through this same process. It is happening for all of us all the time, but normally we can’t perceive it because it is very, very subtle. Meditation allows us to get to know the […]

Does it feel like the world is screwed up right now? The only antidote is to maintain some perspective, which is only truly possible if we have moment-to-moment clarity. The thing is, life is repetitious––we do things over and over again, often in the same habitual way––and so we’re mostly acting unconsciously. This makes us subject to these outside influences, and to the negative states which arise from our own unconscious responses to what’s going on around and within us. By liberating these unconscious patterns, we liberate ourselves from this neurotic repetition. We make way for more wholesome actions and thoughts so we become a manifestation of compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity in the world.Getting 20/20 Vision In Insight meditation: We look again and again at the arisings within the mind in order to uncover the patterns within. Our minds and bodies are our most precise tools as well as our laboratories. We cultivate mindfulness and awareness, with the ultimate aim of final liberation of the mind from greed, hatred and delusion. When we purify our minds and bodies of these defilements, our original pure nature––spiritual awakening itself––is what remains. Through this bare insight or direct observation, we perceive our own physical and mental processes as impermanent, subject to suffering, and without an inherent independent self. This results in profound amounts of freedom in our lives. These classes are for you if you find modern life can be overwhelming and you wish to increase the sense of clarity in […]

How do we finding peace in a F*#@ed up World? And how do we make the world better?To find more inner and outer peace, it’s vital to properly align our worldly engagements, transforming our daily activities into a spiritual practice. Find out more at this public talk at the LA Conscious Life Expo.