10 Week Meditation Study Series
Compassion;
Wisdom and LovingKindness in Action
Join us for this 10 week study series and strengthen your shamatha (focused attention) practice. Lean into open presence and continue to contemplate the origins of our suffering and the possibility to transform these with (Rev.) Andrew Blake.
Buddha’s early teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path explore practices and perspectives that lead to the transformation of our suffering. Being awake and aware of what causes our suffering isn’t easy—often there is a layer of shame and denial covering our deeper pain—and it’s even harder to lovingly change old habits and patterns into healthier ones.
For this work, we need both wisdom and compassion, so that we can serve the world and manifest greater inner and outer peace. By turning towards our patterns and the world’s around us, we learn to embrace loving actions that meet the unhealthy states, like anger, fear, and ego-pride, and support us in releasing old karmas born of personal, social and ancestral conditioning.
Together as a sangha, we will explore the benefits of compassion meditations and the practice of giving and taking or tonglen, where we will visualize and give voice to how we express self-compassion and how we meet others with an open and non judgmental heart.
Dates: Oct 8- Dec 10, 2019 (Tuesdays)
Can be attended virtually by Zoom or in person
Time: 7:15-9:15 pm
*Please arrive by 7:15, our first sit begins at 7:20pm
Fee: $250
(Rev.) Andrew Blake, Co-Founder, RP
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