Online: The Thinning of the Self – Exploring and Practicing Anattā (Not-Self)
with Donald Rothberg
Saturday, August 20th, 2022 | 10:00am – 5:00pm ET
The teaching of anattā (“not-self”) points to one of the three fundamental areas of liberating insight taught by the Buddha, along with the teachings on anicca (impermanence) and on dukkha (usually translated as “suffering”). Yet anattā can be very challenging and confusing for contemporary practitioners. Is there “no self” (sometimes anattā is translated as “no self”)? How do we understand our senses of individuality, identity, ancestry and ethnicity, and vocation? How do we address our own personal experiences of woundedness, trauma, and oppression? Are these all simply to be “transcended”? How is a sense of self, as the Buddha taught, in many ways important for spiritual development, and how is working with our own individual conditioning, whether psychological or social in origin, central to our liberation? How do we integrate attending to such conditioning with opening as well beyond the habitual sense of self?
In this daylong, we will explore these vital questions primarily in a practical way. Using the metaphors of “thinning the self” and working with a “thick” sense of self, we will cover three aspects of practice: (1) cultivating, in several ways, the “thinning” of the self, both in meditation and in everyday life, including working with the Five Skandhas or “aggregates” of experience (a main way that the Buddha taught anattā); (2) tracking and working with different manifestations of a “thick” sense of self, both as appearing in experience and as hidden to awareness; and (3) opening beyond a fixed sense of self, as awareness, compassion, and responsiveness deepen.
Donald Rothberg will also be giving an evening talk on Buddhist Wisdom Perspectives and the Transformation of Racism on Friday, August 19th, 2022 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm ET. Click here for more info and registration
Registration:
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Explanations of levels follow below.
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off. Please contact registration@nyimc.org if you need assistance.
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Registration Fees include Teacher Support
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Teacher(s)
Donald Rothberg, PhD
Donald Rothberg, PhD, is a member of the Teachers Council at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA, a guiding teacher for the Marin Sangha, and a regular teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, Southern Dharma Retreat Center, InsightLA, and New York Insight. He has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976 and also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice, in the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy, and in the Somatic Experiencing approach to working with trauma. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook University, he currently teaches and writes on mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation, and the application of these and other practices to transforming the judgmental mind, speech and communication, working with conflict, social service, and social action. Donald is the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World, and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers.