Speaker: Patrick Kearney (Joining online)

Wed 27 Mar | 7-8.30pm AEDT

Location: In person at Western Sydney University (74 Rickard Rd, Bankstown City Campus), Room 1.4.34 on level 4 or Online (Zoom link below)

Cost: Free

Patrick’s talks will be on insight (vipassana), and specifically insight as understood in the Mahasi Sayadaw lineage.

Insight is characterised by universality. “Noting,” or directly awareing this-now, is characterised by particularity. The movement from the particular to the universal is the movement from mindfulness practice as a discipline to insight or understanding. Tonight we will explore this movement using the Buddha’s template of dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda). How can we recognise the universal through the lens of the particular, the unique, the individual? We begin with the Buddha’s understanding of the structures of experience itself and see where that takes us.

About the speaker: Patrick has practised mindfulness meditation (satipaṭṭhāna vipassanā) since 1977. At that time there was little or no Buddhist meditation training available in Australia, so he spent years travelling in Asia and the USA working with teachers from different Buddhist traditions to learn the craft of meditation practice. Most of his training has been in the insight meditation lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw of Burma, which included several years as a Buddhist monk. His main teachers were Sayādaw U Paṇḍita and John Hale. He has also trained in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Zen where his teachers have been Robert Aitken Rōshi and Paul Maloney Rōshi.

Patrick has been a full-time teacher of mindfulness meditation for over 20 years. He conducts residential and online retreats, workshops and seminars. He has studied early Buddhism at post-graduate levels and has a particular interest in the original teachings of the Buddha, before the invention of “Buddhism.” This allows him to bring the radical insights of the Buddha to our contemporary situation. He sees meditation as a physical practice that reconnects us with the felt world of our senses, allowing us to live our lives directly rather than through the cling-wrap of our habitual thinking.

Hybrid event: Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in an interactive session in person at the Metta Centre or online by clicking on this link to access the session: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83506489824?pwd=cmpNQ1ljSmFVYURLWVN1dWllYUN1dz09 Alternatively, you can dial in from your telephone (call charges apply): +61 2 8015 6011 | Meeting ID: 835 0648 9824| Passcode: 718905