As we began a new series of explorations, Joey guided our reflections today on No Self, drawing from a number of sources. Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book “The Grace in Dying,” pages 21 & 31-39 offered an overview of our psychological development as a sequence of separations, distinguishing self from other, which takes us away from the primary unity, on which the sense of No Self might draw. A guided meditation by Tara Brach, drawn from her dharma talk “Being to Being – Loving Beyond the Trance” facilitated further exploration. That meditation, framed by a talk, can be found at
http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/175/talk/19503/
And Rodney Smith’s talk on “Dissolving Form” used the second skandha, vedana/feeling, to explore the ways in which we project characteristics onto the essentially empty being of the world.
Burlington Buddhist Sangha 