Contemplation & Crises

The Dharma of Non-self—Anatta

A Zoom Event

Sunday 14th June 2020 

3:30 PM to 5:00 PM Bangkok

9.30 AM to 11:00 AM London (BST)

For other time zones click here

 

Times of crisis are times of change — periods when our reality shifts into a different form. How we react and respond during these times is shaped by our ability to understand and relate to them.

 

Contemplation & Crises (formerly known as Meditation for Challenging Times), is a space to meet, meditate and jointly explore the impacts of the events currently re-shaping our personal and global worlds. Using the Buddhadharma and other wisdom traditions as a guide, our focus will be to engage more deeply with what is being evoked in us and to sense into what we are being called to realize, individually and collectively.  The focus for this session is non-self or Anatta.

 

With the explosion of social media, questions relating to identity (ours and others) confront on us a daily basis. At the same time, the novel corona virus is impacting our roles in the world. Awareness of race, gender and sexual orientation is rising—leading to increased violence as well as understanding. The late Rev. Dr. Walpola Sri Rahula wrote that the self, ego or soul as a “permanent, everlasting and absolute entity… is the source of all the troubles in the world, from personal conflicts to wars between nations [and] to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.”

         

By engaging compassionately with our own processes of how we experience having a sense of “ourself” we will investigate how different forms of this self impact us and others. We will also consider whether the crises we are experiencing are inviting us to create a new concept of self—one that paradoxically includes an understanding of non-self. 

 

Registration

Please click on the Zoom link below and you will be sent an invitation and materials to consider before the event. Please join the meeting ten minutes before it is due to start and wait to be admitted. The session is free of charge.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkd-2vpz0pG9U5rJBYi7a3wBFZleYg703e

 

If you are a first time Zoomer, you will need to download the Zoom app and familiarize yourself with its features before the meeting. Here is Zoom’s own site: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200101697

 

Schedule – Bangkok Time

  • 3:20 PM    Join Zoom Meeting
  • 3:30 PM    Welcome and Introduction
  • 3:40 PM    Meditation
  • 4:00 PM    Introduction to Anatta
  • 4:10 PM    Sharing and Discussion
  • 4:55 PM    Closing remarks
  • 5:00 PM    Ends

 

Facilitation

Mary Pipes: is a writer, one of the Little Bangkok Sangha lay facilitators, and a former Buddhist-based psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer who practiced in Asia and the UK for twenty years. She is engaged in a 2.5 year Dharmapala training https://sacredmountainsangha.org/dharmapala-training/ with her teachers, Kittisaro and Thanissara which draws on both Theravadan and Mahayana traditions.

Aarti Kapoor: is the managing director for Embode https://www.embode.co Embode, an agency dedicated to human rights, corporate responsibility and organizational analysis. Aarti is an experienced group facilitator and a Buddhist practitioner influenced both by the Tibetan Mahayana philosophical path and Theravada practice.

Madeleine Recknagel: is a public speaker, behavioral change designer and founder of the Sustainable Self https://thesustainableself.org/ – a Dharma inspired initiative to encourage living in co-operation with the Earth. She worked in higher education and as a zero waste consultant in Bangkok, and continues to work on single-use waste reduction solutions in the kingdom from her new home in Barcelona.