Recorded at Insight Meditation Satsang
Online,
April 11, 2023
DESCRIPTION
Tonight at Satsang we’ll continue the conversation from last week about ethics and wise action. To understand the relationship between action and emptiness, we have to find a middle way between fundamentalism and relativism. The desire for certainty in an uncertain world makes simplistic physical interpretations of the ethical precepts attractive, and this is the form fundamentalists always preach.
But this approach always fails—life is too complex, and everything arrives as spectra, never dyads. The postmodern approach that emptiness seems closest to understands spectra, uncertainty, and interdependence, but can get lost in relativism. As if our faculties of discernment can’t let go of a harmful body of meaning without thinking that means that all bodies of meaning are harmful.
This becomes a middle way problem, a variation of the “middle way between existence and nonexistence” that is the central pillar of the Madhyamāka—the Middle Way school. The parallels to current political and social problems are clear, and suggest that bodhisattva wisdom—the wisdom of the middle way—may be a productive way to think about moral issues in a less-polarized way.
SEAN OAKES
Sean Feit Oakes, PhD (he/they, queer, Puerto Rican & English, living on Pomo ancestral land in Northern California), teaches Buddhism and somatic practice focusing on the integration of meditation, trauma resolution, and social justice. He received Insight Meditation teaching authorization from Jack Kornfield, and wrote his dissertation on extraordinary states in Buddhist meditation and experimental dance. Sean holds certifications in Somatic Experiencing (SEP, assistant), and Yoga (E-RYT 500, YACEP), and teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, East Bay Meditation Center, Insight Timer, and elsewhere.
LINKS
Website: seanfeitoakes.com
Community Page: In It To End It
YouTube channel: In It To End It
Spirit Rock: spiritrock.org/teachers/sean-oakes
Insight Timer: insighttimer.com/seanoakes
GIVING
All of Dr. Oakes’ independent teaching is offered on the model of Gift Economy, in the Buddhist tradition of dāna, inspired giving. Support of our teaching and community is gratefully received. Thank you for your generosity.
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Blessings on your path.