On the second Full Moon of the month of August, Ajahn Ahimsako urges us not to feel blue in the face of apparently negative criticism. Instead, he discusses the value of spiritual friendship, and explains how this feedback, when offered with skill, can benefit both the giver and the receiver.
At the conclusion of Cittaviveka’s seven-day period of group practise, Ajahn Ahimsako relates his own experiences and reflections in working with painful, pleasant and neutral feelings. Using helpful anecdotes, he shows how the way in which we respond to these feelings can result either in suffering or in freedom.
Our ability to contemplate provides enormous potential to get perspective on the changingness of the forms that characterise experience.
The heart that realizes through hearing the Four Noble Truths opens to Right View. This results in Right Intention/Right Purpose: away from greed, cruelty and harming.
The realization experience of the Buddha’s disciples was of experience void of person, but consisting of wave-forms called the five aggregates. Liberation begins with this comprehension – and the subsequent calming and inquiry into these aggregates.