Each of us must experience the “ten-thousand joys and ten-thousand sorrows”: the ups and downs that any life brings. In this session, we learn about the eight worldly winds: pleasure and pain; gain and loss; praise and blame, and fame and disrepute - how these are like the spokes of a wheel that is constantly turning. However, in the centre of the wheel is a hole, which is our true nature of emptiness, of not-self - another primary characteristic of existence. Not-self helps us to see that we are not a separate self, but in fact, we contain everything, and are part of something much vaster. When we touch the nature of our interdependence, we experience that which does not get blown about; which is not conditioned by fortune and misfortune. This realisation allows us to touch the freedom of non-fear.
This recording consists of a short teaching followed by a guided meditation.
The music in this recording is provided with kind permission from Joe Reilly.
Please note: in this lesson, Kaira mistakenly quotes: "I am vast, I contain multitudes", attributing these words to poet Henry Longfellow. The actual quote is: "I am large, I contain multitudes" from the poem "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman.