Online: The Four Best Ways to Live Your Life
with Bodhipaksa
Sunday, December 11th, 2022 | 10:00am – 2:00pm ET
Join Bodhipaksa for this Sunday workshop to explore four meditation practices for developing love.
Collectively these four meditations are called the Brahma-Viharas, often translated as “divine abodes,” although this term could be more meaningfully rendered as the “four best ways to live your life.”
Even if you’re familiar with these practices, you’ll likely find Bodhipaksa’s approach fresh and illuminating.
The four practices are:
Kindness: Bodhipakṣa advocates this simple word as a translation of metta/maitri — favoring it over the usual “lovingkindness” because it’s grounded, embodied, and familiar.
Compassion: This is where we turn the mind toward suffering. We’ll be exploring how crucial it is that we learn to offer compassion to ourselves, so that our compassion for others can be more genuine.
Appreciation: If we truly love beings we want them to be the best possible versions of themselves, and to do that we have to train ourselves to see and encourage what’s best in them.
Looking Deeper: There are always going to be times when love fails – for example when there are people we have trouble cultivating love for. In those circumstances we need to look deeper in order to find ways around our reactive tendencies. This is what this final practice (upekkha/upeksha — literally “looking closely”) is fundamentally about.
As we engage with these four forms of meditation we’ll learn important lessons about the difference between liking ourselves and being kind to ourselves, and being nice to others and having genuine compassion for them. We’ll also learn the crucial importance of developing self-empathy before cultivating love for ourselves or for others.
And hopefully we’ll come to understand why, because of the peace, joy, and sense of meaning these practices bring, why they’re the four best ways of living our lives.
Registration:
Please register at the highest level that your generosity offers.
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Registration Fees include Teacher Support
New York Insight Meditation Center has streamlined the registration fee levels. Members of our Circle of Friends are eligible to receive 20% off of the Sustaining Rate via a code provided in the email confirming membership, which you can enter after clicking the Sustaining Level registration.
*Benefactor Level: Supports NYI’s ability to offer the Subsidized Base.
**Sustaining Level: This level reflects the actual costs to support this program. Circle of Friends members eligible for 20% discount with code. Click here to join.
***Subsidized Base: Made possible by the generosity of Benefactor Level above and other donations to ensure participation by those requiring financial assistance.
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Teacher(s)
Bodhipaksa
Bodhipaksa is a teacher of meditation and Buddhism, known for his accessible and down-to-earth approach to practice. Born in Scotland, he now lives in New Hampshire and has two children. He’s the author of several books, including “Wildmind: A Step-By-Step Guide to Meditation,” “Living as a River,” “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha,” and “This Difficult Thing of Being Human.” He is also the author of many guided meditation CDs and audiobooks, and is the founder of Wildmind (www.wildmind.org), a prominent online meditation center.