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Space from sensual pleasures

Space from sensual pleasures

A talk given during Sravasti Abbey’s annual Exploring Monastic Life program in 2011.

  • How to stop living on automatic
  • Monastic life gives us the space to examine how our senses work, how our feelings arise, and how the objects of our desire are impermanent, selfless, and unsatisfactory
  • Mara and his army
  • Questions and answers
    • Going to extremes
    • Clutching to sense pleasures
    • Making a big deal of our emotions
    • Meditative stabilization
    • Is it a given that a monastic has to teach?

Venerable Thubten Chodron

Venerable Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha’s teachings in our daily lives and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners. She is well known for her warm, humorous, and lucid teachings. She was ordained as a Buddhist nun in 1977 by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan. Read her full bio.

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