The Foundations of Freedom: The Hinayana Five-Course-Series
This course is a five-course-series that provides a thorough exploration of the Hinayana path drawing on teachings from prominent teachers and classic sources. The emphasis is on cultivating maitri or friendliness to oneself, and on the Shambhala teachings of basic goodness, gentleness and bravery – allowing us to meet the modern human condition with warriorship and dignity.
Foundations of Freedom: Parts I – V
The Hinayana, Course I – The First Noble Truth: Meeting Suffering with Maitri
This course offers an exploration of the nature of suffering from the perspective of the Four Marks of Existence: Impermanence, Suffering, Selflessness and Peace – and how we can meet suffering with maitri, or unconditional friendliness. The teachers will also guide students in the exploration and practice of Mindfulness of Body, the first of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
In his earliest teachings, the Buddha taught that the suffering of samsaric existence is the first noble truth. Such suffering is changing and impermanent, and arises from infinite causes and conditions. It feels intensely personal (mine), and in fact, is one of the bases we use to craft our identity (me and my problems), which is called “mistaking what has no self for a self.” This state of mind generates constant underlying fear and anxiety. When we recognize these simple truths of existence, impermanence, suffering, and the absence of a true self, we can experience the peace of nirvana.
Teachers: Susan Chapman and Fleet Maull
The Hinayana, Course II – The Second Noble Truth: The Origin of Suffering, Part I – The Five Skandas
The Four Noble Truths are used as the overall organizing principle. Instructions in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are interwoven and provide a meditative method for embracing the totality of our basically good experience—including pain and suffering.
Course II – Having recognized the truth of suffering and the confusion that is pervasive in our life, we naturally have questions. How does this state of suffering arise? Where does confusion come from? In this in-depth exploration of the Five Skandhas, we will touch these layers or constellations of experience one by one, starting from the unconditioned, innate ground of open space, and see how we fabricate our own world of projections.
Teachers: Dale Asrael and John Rockwell
The Hinayana, Course III – The Second Noble Truth: The Origin of Suffering, Part II – The The Wheel of Life, Karma, and the Twelve Nidanas
The Four Noble Truths are used as the overall organizing principle. Instructions in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are interwoven and provide a meditative method for embracing the totality of our basically good experience—including pain and suffering.
Course III – The foundational teachings of the Buddha indicate that the suffering we experience in our lives can come to cessation if we recognize, deeply and profoundly, how that suffering has arisen. This requires gentle bravery and deep contemplation, bypassing simplistic notions of how our suffering has arisen.
Teachers: Loden Nyima and Judith Simmer-Brown
The Hinayana, Course IV – The Third Noble Truth: Freedom From Suffering
The Four Noble Truths are used as the overall organizing principle. Instructions in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are interwoven and provide a meditative method for embracing the totality of our basically good experience—including pain and suffering.
Course IV – Contemplating the cessation of suffering, we first see the accessibility of the third noble truth as the gap. We are basically good. Realizing this to be true is that simple, and we are glimpsing this all the time.
Teachers: Suzann Duquette and Dan Hessey
The Hinayana, Course V – The Fourth Noble Truth: The Path of Shila, Samadhi, and Prajna
The Four Noble Truths are used as the overall organizing principle. Instructions in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are interwoven and provide a meditative method for embracing the totality of our basically good experience—including pain and suffering.
Course V – We have been studying the Buddha’s first teaching: The Four Noble Truths. After teaching that suffering is pervasive to all experience, that there is a cause to that suffering and that cessation is possible, he then taught a way forward, which we call ”The Path.” In fact, everything he taught and all of our experience as practitioners comprise “The Path.” In this course, we will examine Path from multiple perspectives of what has been taught and what is experienced by us individuals walking this path.