Event

Nāma-rūpa and viññāṇa, “name-&-form and awareness,” is a brief formula that expresses the Buddha’s understanding of our fabricated world. To be caught in nāma-rūpa is to be caught in greed, hatred and ignorance. To experience the cessation of nāma-rūpa is to attain nibbāna. The classical system of vipassanā ñāṇa (insight knowledge) that makes up the way of insight begins with the discernment of nāma-rūpa. Mahāsi Sayādaw’s system of meditation practice is designed to take the practitioner to this discernment as soon as possible.

Beginning with Dōgen’s invitation to forget the self and be actualised by the myriad things, this talk explores conditionality and dependent arising as lived experience rather than theory. Thus, when the self is no longer standing at the centre of conceptuality and ideas, the world of direct experience reveals itself as relational, changing, impermanent and fluid — In this way the practitioner can see directly what conditions dukkha, what allows the heart-mind to open, and how freedom becomes possible because nothing is fixed.