Join (Rev.) Andrew Blake for this powerful study series to strengthen your meditation practice and integrate the profound impacts of mindfulness with your daily life.
Practicing Dharma is a path of discovering wisdom and compassion or transformative actions. To get there, we sit and meditate weekly together.
Meditation practice is built on a foundation of skillful methods of insight and feeds the development of compassion to meet suffering and transform our life into meaning and joy.
Format for the series: Class begins at 7 pm on Tuesdays with a dharma talk, followed by a sitting practice, a walking meditation, then a contemplation based on each week’s theme, and ends with a discussion and council practice, where we share from the heart and our experiences. We end at 9 pm. This class is suitable for any practice level and best suited for those wishing to deepen their Buddhist-informed practices and understanding.
See the description of the upcoming series below:
Becoming your True Nature
During our next series, and we can discuss this further as a group, you can continue meeting and practicing in my absence. Let’s see what the sangha says. In this next series, I’d like to explore two aspects of our practice that have been arising out of our recent studies and will flow out of fall retreat. What is your True Nature? and out of this asks the question, What is the nature of Mind that perceives your True Nature?
In Buddhism your True Nature or Buddhanature is who we actually are. But, in a play on words, I also want us to stay connected with Nature’s true relationship with us from which we are born into this earthly world. In this way, we can touch the numinous realms of the Buddha’s true nature of reality, as well as see our true (and broken) relationship with Nature that has been fragmented amidst a materialistic worldview. Indigenous and other spiritual traditions point to our interdependence with the natural world and that the more this relationship is damaged by our self-orientation, we lose species and the safety of our home planet. Our connection with both the outer holoverse and the inner universe is also reflected in teachings called, the Great Perfection. It is a state of awareness that is wide enough to hold all perspectives and realities, including the ever expanding kaleidoscope of our mind, alongside the ever contracting realities of the earth in her healing and suffering.
Just to let you know, this series is aimed at supporting current meditation practitioners. If you are new to meditation, please don’t hesitate to contact us before registration.
Tuesday Evenings
**Please note there is a gap between October 24th and November 20th due to Andrew’s travels.
October 3, 10, 17, 24 and November 21, 28, December 5, 12
7 – 9 pm EDT
Via Zoom
Registration Fee: $250*
*The dharma, as a spiritual gift, is not a commodity bought and sold. Our registration fees go to support Rev. Andrew and the work at Sarana Institute. If the suggested fee is challenging, pay an amount that works within your finances. Everyone is welcome in our sangha, and finances must never be a reason not to join us.
Series Teacher: (Rev.) Andrew Blake, Buddhist Chaplain, Psychotherapist and Co-Founder of Sarana Institute
Andrew is the Director of Program Development at Sarana Institute and along with his wife, Angie, is a co-founder. In 2010, Andrew was ordained as Buddhist Chaplain by Roshi Joan Halifax, a leader in the fields of compassion, caregiving and end-of-life. His thesis, Mindful Listening at End-of-Life, was recently published and explores the roles of mindfulness, empathy and compassion, from both neuroscience and Buddhist psychology perspectives, as skills to prevent caregiver “empathy fatigue.”
A teacher and educator of mindfulness meditation, Buddhism, End-of-Life caregiving, and his Mindful Listening work, Andrew has created training and curriculums at University of Toronto through the Applied Mindfulness Mediation Program, at Sick Kids Hospital through The Mindfulness Project, at Hincks Dellcrest Centre, as well as numerous conferences, hospitals, hospices and organizations involved in service, healthcare, end-of-life care, volunteer caregiving. In addition to his teaching, he guides individual and families at end of life and serves as an officiant at memorials and funerals. www.andrewblake.ca