Lesson 1 of Paticca Samuppada

This is a fundamental and yet most profound Buddhist teaching that shows how we create our experience and how in each moment we free or imprison ourselves. It is the basis of Buddhist psychology, and it shows how the Four Noble Truths actually work. It offers the conceptual basis for our practice and for the dharma, and the way we understand and meet both samsara and Nirvana.

It is the authentic meaningful answer to the perennial questions about reality that keep arising, for example: What is creation? How and why do I experience such a strong and dominant sense of self? How does the conditioning process work, and how can I discover the unconditioned? How can I understand birth and death, and at the same time the timeless and deathless? What is the process by which I suffer and what is the process by which I am liberated? What is consciousness?

In this course we will explore the stages within our moments of experience by which the mind is imprisoned or freed. In particular we will focus on the creation of form or constructions in the mind and memory (sankhara), in the creation and operation of consciousness, in the process of attachment to things and to our ‘self’. We will look closely, through a microscope, at how we can develop a wisdom that gets us off the wheel to a place of deep silence and inner peace and freedom.