Topics Include: 1). Gotama’s meeting with his first teacher Alara Kalama. 2). The introductory disciplines: The Five Precepts, the meditation posture, the control of the breath. 3). The teaching of one pointed concentration. The tendency to not see realittyas it is but through the lens of our subjective thoughts. 4). How medittion brings about a change of consciousness. 5). The jhanic meditation practices: the mundane and supra-mundane jhanas. 6). Why the Buddha could not accept his meditation experience as revealing the Absolute or Nibbana. 7). Buddha goes to Uddaka Ramaputta his second teacher to learn to attain the highest level of jhanic attainment, but is again disappointed. 8). The Buddha turns to asceticism to find Nibbana but only finds more suffering. 9). A testament to Gotama’s character in his radical sense of honesty, integrity, and persistence in his search for awakening.
6 May, 2023
49 Minutes