The Cascade of Well-Being:
Developing the Qualities of Mind that Lead to Concentration and Liberation
5-Week Online Practice Support Group
with IMT Teacher Linda Alley-Sarnack
Sundays: Oct 11, 18, 25; Nov 1, 8
10am-12pm MT
Held online via Zoom
We know the First Noble Truth is about acknowledging the truth of suffering (dukkha) in our lives. While this acknowledgment may bring a sense of relief—that our difficulties and pain are universal and not due to personal failing—this truth might also feel heavy or negative to contemplate.
To sustain our dhamma journey over time, we need encouragement and nourishment along the way. We must endeavor to balance a sincere desire to contemplate and understand dukkha with our natural desire for happiness. The Buddha taught specific habits of mind that are exceptionally helpful because they lead to buoyancy and energy in practice.
The Buddha offered a simile for the progression of happiness that leads to concentration and liberation:
It is like when a rain cloud showers down big, fat droplets of water on a mountaintop. That water, flowing down along the slopes, fills up the mountain’s fissures, and gullies, and creeks. When those are full, they fill up the pools and ponds. The pools and ponds fill up the lakes, the lakes fill up the streams, and the streams fill up the rivers. When the rivers are full, they fill up the great ocean.
We will explore these nourishing habits and how cultivating them can create the kind of joyful momentum that sustains us in practice and in life.
This 5-Week Practice Support Group (PSG) includes guided meditation, dhamma talks, and time for inquiry. There is also an opportunity to bring the dhamma to life in your daily activities between class sessions. To that end, practice suggestions will be given at the conclusion of each session for you to explore through the week.
This PSG is suitable for practitioners of all experience levels.
SCHEDULE
All sessions will be on Zoom.
October 11, 18, 25, November 1, 8
10am -12pm MT
Please note: Arizona is on Mountain Standard Time (MT). Pacific Standard Time (PST) begins November 1st.
COST
Suggested donation: $150-50. Please offer a donation in congruence with your means. No one will be turned away for financial reasons.
REGISTRATION
Registration is required. Once you register you will receive a confirmation email within 24 hours.
MEET THE TEACHER
Linda Alley-Sarnack has been studying Buddhism since 1995 and in 2000, set the aspiration to sit silent retreat, just once in her life! In 2002, she sat her first retreat and has been a dedicated practitioner of Insight Meditation since then. She sits deep retreat every year and has dedicated herself to weaving the wisdom and liberation found while on retreat into her everyday life.
Linda completed training in mindful yoga in 2009, Community Dharma Leadership in 2012, and Yoga Therapy in 2017. Starting in 2006, she taught mindfulness, lovingkindness, and yoga for teens in Tucson area high schools. She has also taught community classes combining the practices of yoga and insight meditation, and guided individuals in yoga therapy.
Linda is passionate about embodied practice, expressed in a variety of ways. She is an accomplished gardener, yogini, cook, and friend and considers gardening, cooking, relationship, creativity, appreciation of beauty, and most other forms of ‘real’ life to be paths to waking up to our true nature. Her current aspiration is to embody (as fully as possible) the qualities of patience, self-compassion, generosity, and love in each moment of life.