Course Details:

19 March 2024

26 March 2024

Throughout our lives, we each experience a dizzying array of emotions, states of mind, and patterns of felt experience. These bring great joy and meaningfulness into our lives, but also bring challenges, difficulty, and obstacles that prevent us moving forward.

In a 3-part series of talks we will explore how meditation can be used to shift the experience of emotions and mind states. There will be a discussion of what it might look like to find a better relationship with emotional life, how the teaching of the Buddha on the Four Noble Truths can guide this exploration, and the importance of choosing an appropriate way of working to allow the practice to progress. The intention is to take steps towards a sense of confidence and capability when working with the full range of human emotion.

These sessions will involve guided meditation, explanation of the topic, and Q+A. There will be practices related to calm abiding, insight meditation, metta, and compassion.

This talks will be held in-person at the Library only. Please register if you wish to attend.

Talk 1: The Freedom of the Body 12/3/2024
This talk will explore the foundations of emotions and mind states, how to work with papañca (the proliferation of mental content), and how staying at sense contact and working with the body as the first foundation of mindfulness can be incredibly helpful with finding ease and balance.

Talk 2: Looking Through Lenses 19/3/2024
Here we will look at the ways of relating to emotions and how they are viewed. We will practice techniques that open space for the richness and complexity of experience, cultivate kindness and compassion, and explore tools to discern and question the experiences of emotions and mind states.

Talk 3: Emptiness and Views 26/3/2024
In the final talk of this series, we will explore how insight and wisdom can be cultivated from the experience of personality, emotions, mind states, and the sense of self. This will look at applying the Buddha’s teaching of the three characteristics of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self as a way to open up an understanding of emptiness and the freedom this provides.

Note: These talks will explore a series of topics around this theme. Each talk will stand alone; you don’t need to have attended previous talks.

Teacher profile

Kynan Tan is a meditation teacher who takes a collaborative approach to helping students achieve their meditation goals. He came to meditation after struggles with stress, anxiety, and depression and found the practice to be transformative. He believes that meditation has enormous potential for creating positive change and opening up new ways of relating to our experience.

Kynan draws upon a number of different modern and traditional techniques of contemplative and introspective practice. He is a longtime practitioner of the stages of samatha-vipassana (as presented in the book The Mind Illuminated), Rob Burbea’s insight meditation techniques, nondual awareness, and brahmavihara practices (metta, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity).

Kynan studies meditation with Dr. Tucker Peck, who teaches the Pragmatic Dharma Club at the San Francisco Dharma Collective. Kynan has sat a number of retreats, including a month-long solo retreat in 2021.

All Sessions are by Donation (Dana) to the Buddhist Library. All donations to the Buddhist Library of $2 and over are tax deductible.

Dana is the traditional practice of generosity, the extending of one’s goodwill, which is fundamental to Buddhism and other spiritual traditions. The dana you give is shared equally with the teacher and the Buddhist Library. This helps to maintain the Library and supports the teacher so that they may offer more teachings on the Dhamma in the future. It is up to each person to determine the amount of dana they’d like to offer. We understand that this is a difficult time financially for many, and people will give what they can. An appropriate dana can’t be prescribed but requires sensitivity to its intent and to the individual’s own situation, as well as awareness of the cost of organising events and supporting teachers who spread the Dhamma.