This nine-month course is an opportunity to enter the Four Noble Truths as an embodied path of practice and reflection. We will use meditation, contemplation, and the experience of everyday life to understand how the Buddha’s first teaching continues to reveal the whole of the path.
We often relate to suffering as something to escape, fix, or overcome, and we imagine awakening as a state that exists somewhere beyond our actual lives. The Four Noble Truths are a path to awakening, but these truths invite a very different understanding. They show us that dukkha itself has something to teach us, that craving and clinging can be known directly, that moments of release are available in the midst of ordinary experience, and that the path is an ongoing cultivation of a more harmonious way of being.
In this program, we will learn how the Four Noble Truths can help us cultivate resilience. Samādhi will be practiced as the gathering and steadying of the mind, allowing us to rest more deeply in presence and become intimate with the felt sense of experience. Insight will be practiced as the clear seeing that reveals how suffering arises, how it is sustained, and how it ceases when the conditions that feed it are understood and released. We will explore how samādhi supports each truth by giving the mind enough stability to stay with what is difficult, and how insight supports each truth by showing us the changing, conditioned, and selfless nature of experience.
Program Format: The course will include a 3-hour monthly class (dhamma talk, Q&A, and short breakout sessions), monthly homework, guided Nine Bodies meditations utilizing Phillip Moffitt’s Naturally Arising Practice Method, and contemplation prompts. Practitioners will be asked to meet with practice partner(s) at least once a month. Practitioners are encouraged to register with a friend or sangha who will be their practice partner(s). The monthly homework will consist of various media to encourage connecting with the Four Noble Truths as a householder, and having a practice partner to explore this would be helpful.
Participant Expectations:
- Attend each monthly session
- Complete the monthly contemplation homework
- Complete reading assignments and watch videos each month
- Meet with practice partner(s) at least once a month