2020 Vision: Practices for Clarity

Sliding scale: $10-$30 per class
PLUS Dana for Teachers: Please also offer dana to the teachers at the event

Does it feel like the world is pretty screwed up right now?

The only antidote is to maintain some perspective, and this is possible if we have moment to moment clarity. The thing is, life is repetitious––we do things over and over again, often in the same habitual way––and so we’re mostly acting unconsciously. This makes us subject to these outside influences, and to the negative states which arise from our own unconscious responses to what’s going on around and within us.

By liberating these unconscious patterns, we liberate karma from this neurotic repetition. We make way for more wholesome karma, becoming a manifestation of compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity in the world.

In Insight meditation:

• we look again and again at the arisings within the mind in order to uncover the patterns within. Our minds and bodies are our most precise tools as well as our laboratories.

• we cultivate mindfulness and awareness, with the ultimate aim of final liberation of the mind from greed, hatred and delusion. When we purify our minds and bodies of these defilements, our original pure nature––awakening itself––is what remains.

• through this bare insight or direct observation, we perceive our own physical and mental processes as impermanent, subject to suffering, and without an inherent independent self.

Two evening talks - Feb 1 and 2

*Please arrive 10-15 minutes early as class will start promptly at 7pm.

These talks will cultivate the ground you’ll need for a consistent and fruitful practice of insight meditation.

Doug and Catherine are the founding teachers of Clear Sky Meditation Centre, just 3.5 hours by car from Calgary in the BC Rockies. They teach year-round and offer retreats at Clear Sky and internationally. These talks are sponsored by students of theirs at the Dharma Hub, Calgary.

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About the Teachers

Although a hermit at heart, Doug Sensei walks his talk as a proponent of a fuller awakening through community and working together. He lives with his teaching partner Catherine Pawasarat and their students in conscious community, at Clear Sky Center in BC.

With five decades of meditation practice and four decades of teaching, Achariya Doug Duncan is a master in the Vajrayana lineage. He received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 1978, and is a lineage holder in that teaching. Known for his direct, humourous and compassionate engagement with students, Doug embraces various traditions, contemporary psychology, and science, to mentor all beings to a more awakened state.

Catherine Pawasarat began her spiritual practices in earnest in her early 20s, when she struggled to make sense of personal suffering and international environmental and social justice challenges. She has trained daily with Achariya Doug Duncan since 1998 in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. Since the early 2000s Catherine has provided dharma training and taught the path of awakening to hundreds of students, together with Doug and on her own. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living (a.k.a. sustainability) and the arts. With Doug she is co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center in the BC Rockies and Planet Dharma, and a lineage holder for these teachings.

Registration

You can register for one talk or for both.

Registration for the talks involves an admin fee to help cover the costs of hosting the teachers in Calgary. There will also be a Dāna bowl at the event for offerings for the teachers.

1) Dāna for the teachers

The teachings are offered by the teachers as a form of Dāna (traditional generosity/giving) and likewise, attendees are asked to reciprocate generously to the teachers.

There will be a Dāna bowl as you enter the venue for you to give your offering by cash or check.

More information on dana here: Dāna Guidelines and Practice.

2) Financial investment

There is also an Administration Fee for the talk. This goes to help cover organiser costs of the space and for bringing the teachers to Calgary, including their transportation here and food and accommodation during their stay.

Venue Parking:

Parking available on the street.