Alan Watts+Eckhart Tolle: What lies beyond the mind
(After Skool) Alan Watts (Jan. 6, 1915–Nov. 16, 1973) was a well-known British philosopher, writer, and speaker and California via Japan, best known for his interpretation of Eastern philosophy for Western audiences.
He left us more than 25 books and an audio library of about 400 talks, all of which are still in great demand.
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● YouTube: @alanwattsorg
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● Instagram: alanwattsorg
● Full lectures found at: alanwatts.org and alanwatts.com
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Eckhart Tolle is a Western spiritual teacher and bestselling author. A German-born resident of Canada best known as the author of The Power of Now and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, in 2008, The New York Times called him, "the most popular spiritual author in the United States." Oprah might have had a little more than something to do with that.
There is only one now. When?
In 2011, Tolle (pronounced /toll-lay/ and never /toll/ or /toll-lee/) was listed by Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world.
A good friend of the Dalai Lama, Tolle nevertheless does not identify with any specific religion but has been influenced by a wide range of spiritual works. Eckhart Tolle's audio comes from his podcast with Russell Brand.
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ABOUT: Visiting teacher Byron Katie, founder of The Work, has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering.
As she guides people through this simple but powerful process of inquiry she calls The Work, they find that their stressful beliefs — about themselves, life, and other people — radically shift.
Lives are changed forever based on direct experience just as Byron Katie experienced.
Byron Katie is the female Eckhart Tolle, neither being Buddhist but teaching Buddhist ideas.
In response to COVID-19, we welcome you to this 3-week class series with founding teacher Trudy Goodman. Begin or sustain YOUR meditation practice in a welcoming environment as we sit together in community. There will be a meditation with some guidance, followed by teaching and conversation. We need each other more than ever right now!
3 Thursdays, April 30th - May 14th
6:00 PM - 7:15 PM
Neurodharma:
New Science and Ancient Wisdom
for a Challenging Time
During times like this, it’s natural to feel afraid, anxious, or threatened. The brain has evolved to react quickly to threats, and it’s easy for there to be a sense of helplessness associated with problems that appear far beyond our control.
But being consumed by fear causes wear and tear on the body, which actually undermines your safety. That’s why it’s so important to look for ways to be effective and express our agency, even if it’s only through how we choose to think about things.
A Mind at Home with Itself:
A Day with Byron Katie
Join Byron Katie, for an InsightLA ONLINE fundraising event, and learn to question the thoughts that keep you from love and the radiant simplicity of the mind that abides nowhere. In this full-day workshop, Byron Katie won’t merely describe the awakened mind, she’ll support you in experiencing it for yourself. Come question your thinking and find the connectedness with yourself and others that you’ve always longed for.
Click HERE for a full list of our ONLINE offerings.
You can now add InsightLA as your preferred charity on AmazonSmile, when you shop at smile.amazon.com the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of your purchase to InsightLA!
Only a few seats left for Sharon Salzberg's daylong
Imagine a happiness that is not shaken by the conditions of the world around us: a kind of inner happiness that is open and stable, curious and wise. Sharon Salzberg offers a pathway to discover and cultivate such happiness through meditation in her NY Times bestselling book, Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation, now in its second edition with a new introduction, updated scientific research, and expanded guided meditations.
Meditation is far simpler, more fun, less esoteric, and much more relevant to the wide-ranging situations we encounter in everyday life than we might imagine. Rather than an ornate, arcane set of instructions, meditation consists of practical tools to help deepen concentration, mindfulness, and compassion. We can rely on these tools when we feel out of control of events or when we want a quality of happiness that is less fragile and dependent on shifting conditions. During this daylong retreat we will explore our notions of happiness, strength, aloneness, and possibility. We’ll practice mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation along with dialogue and discourse. Suitable for new and experienced meditators.
In addition to the day of practice, Sharon will be the guest of honor at an intimate benefit dinner for InsightLA. The dinner will be held at 6pm following the daylong at a private home in Nichols Canyon. The cost of the benefit dinner is $500.
Ms. Katie is, to us, a kind of female Eckhart Tolle, a self-styled teacher who realized something that sounds a lot like Buddhism but does not use that language. She, like Tolle, is "New Age," new thought, contemporary American spirituality and self-help.
Her "The Work" is a kind of INQUIRY that assiduously asks four questions. Pursuing these, contemplating these, trying to answer these resolves all problems. There may be more work to do, but The Work is just tackling these inquiries.
Her book is now available in paperback
"Byron Katie has rocked my world and shaken loose my mind more thoroughly than any other spiritual teacher I’ve ever encountered, living or dead."
is a 28-day residential program to offer an uninterrupted experience of The Work. Looking for a way out? Katie invites you to drop in. It's open to welcome you home. Next Session: Nov. 5 to Dec. 2, 2018
To cultivate all that is good (sila, samadhi, paññā), to abandon all that is bad (greed, hatred, delusion), this is the advice of all Awakened Ones like the historical and the future Buddha.
Too much wisdom can lead to cunning, whereas too much faith or conviction can lead to gullibility or foolishness.
Energy or "virility" (viriya, endurance, strength, persistence) must be balanced with coherence or collectedness, which because of its single-pointedness of attention is liable to slip and lead to sleep. Too much energy will lead to restlessness and worry, agitation, mental flurry.
But as for mindfulness (conscientiousness, vigilance, clarity, memory), it need not be balanced. One cannot get too much of it. It helps all of the other factors.
In fact, there are not really 37 different requisites of enlightenment. That's splitting hairs. Fourteen of the requisites are mindfulness.
Mindfulness is important to MEDITATION (absorption, zen, jhana, ch'an, concentration, coherence, mental-actualization, lit. "bringing into being") just as [skill in] meditation is important to mindfulness. They are mutually supportive.
Jack Kornfield: 12 Principles of Forgiveness
If we can't allow or accept what is, we cannot be mindful, so let's try some forgiveness first.
In a sense it is acceptance of what is, whatever it is. But if we cannot "accept," because we just can't, mindfulness is watching. Be the watcher, the awareness that is unmoved by things.
Mindfulness is awareness, attention, consciousness. It is not thinking about what is. (By thinking we are putting one degree of separation between the thing and us). It is not contemplation, recollection, remembrance (that's anussati); that's different. It is not pondering, solving, measuring, or ruminating. Abandon rumination! It is not, for once, reacting in the three ways we always react, with:
passion (grabbing and clinging)
aversion (anger, revulsion, fear, rejection), or
delusion (wrong views, confusion, boredom because we don't know how to immediately feel about something since it isn't attractive or repulsive).
Jhere's power in NOW. - I know, Eckhart.
If we cannot accept what is because it is -- as the Buddha and modern teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie (thework.com) might have us respond rather than react -- can we at least "allow" what is and simply "let it be"? Think of the Beatles.
Can we feel it, note it, tolerate it, remain aware of it without being moved to attraction, aversion, or delusion by it? That is mindfulness! In other words, that is being mindful of it. It's being cool, calm, and collected, so zen.
We are being mindful when we are conscientious and have sufficient presence of mind to remember to bring the mind back to the meditation subject, such as the breath or the focus of our coherent/concentrated attention.
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