Ayya Santacitta co-founded Aloka Vihara in 2009 and received Bhikkhuni Ordination in 2011. She is committed to Gaia as a living being and is currently developing the Aloka Earth Room, currently located in San Rafael, California. AYYA SANTACITTA was born in Austria and did her graduate studies in Cultural Anthropology in Vienna. In 1988 she met Ajahn Buddhadasa in southern Thailand, who sparked her interest in Buddhist monastic life. She trained as a nun in England and Asia from 1993 until 2009, primarily in the lineage of Ajahn Chah, and has practiced meditation for over 30 years. Since 2002, she has also received teachings in the lineage of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Christina Feldman's Talks given at Gaia House on 24.09.2013: Swimming Against the Tide (Duration 61:35) LEIGH BRASINGTON has been practising meditation since 1985 and is the senior American student of the late Ven. Ayya Khema. Leigh began assisting Ven. Ayya Khema in 1994, and began teaching retreats on his own in 1997. He teaches in Europe and North America and is the author of the books Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas and Dependent Origination and Emptiness: Streams of Dependently Arising Processes Interacting. Find more information about Leigh’s teaching and schedule at leighb.com Norman has written many books both as a poet and Zen Buddhist Priest: His latest poetry releases are; "Nature" (2021, Tuumba); "There was a clattering as..." (2021, Lavendar Ink) and "When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen" (Shambhala, 2021).

Rob: I feel like the contextualization of it is itself what I would call a soul question and empty. For me, going thoroughly, deeply into emptiness – as coming out in the way I teach now – means also that conceptual frameworks are empty, which includes the conceptual framework of Buddhadharma, of the Buddha’s teachings, the conceptual framework of awakening, the conceptual framework of Jung, the conceptual framework of what we’re now calling soulmaking – all of it. That leaves us, again, with a playground of conceptual frameworks. Yeah, there’s some interesting philosophy to discuss there, because you can’t just say everything is true. But basically the idea that there’s any kind of, “This is the right way to see it, or the true conceptual structure that reveals or discloses reality,” that starts opening up. Michael: What I specifically mean is rather than, for example, doing a yidam practice with a Vajrayāna deity, one might use archetypes as well as just regular objects and experiences. But having said all that, what is emptiness? As you said, it’s an impossible question, because I find the way I speak or what I might say is very much dependent on my sense of who I’m talking to, whether I speak more poetically or more logically or more polemically or whatever. This feels like a bit of a blank right now when you’re asking me, in terms of who’s listening and what kind of personalities they are, and what speaks to them. Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Basically that’s the whole premise of the book. We can divide ways of looking into two broad camps. There are ways of looking that kind of keep suffering and dis-ease and whatever objects and selves are involved in that suffering, they keep it solid and real-seeming and there, or they make it even stronger and more intense. We’ve got those kinds of ways of looking in, kind of broadly speaking, one camp. And the other kinds of ways of looking are ways that fabricate less, that cause the fading – to some degree or other – of the suffering, the sense of self, the sense of things.Michael: Can you actually remember that moment of kind of leaving the well-worn trail and going off into – just to horribly mix metaphors for a moment – going off into your jazz improv on emptiness?

For many though, their first encounter with Rob was in his seminal book Seeing That Frees, published in 2014. After a startling chapter laying out the connections between Samadhi and Insight practice, the reader is guided deep into the heart of emptiness and dependent arising. In his inimitable prose - gentle, precise and inviting of personal exploration - Rob sets out what he had discovered about how to use the wisdom teachings with skill, subtlety and without limiting the profundity of the Buddha’s core teaching to any single conception. Seeing That Frees joins up the dots and has become a classic manual for practitioners, one to take on a solitary retreat and really soak up. Zohar Lavie’s Talks from the Meeting Uncertainty with Wisdom and Courage: Perennial Teachings for a Changing World retreat on 07.06/2021: Anicca Brings Possibilities (Duration 40:35) So besides Thanissaro Bhikkhu, what other resources did you find that helped you do this long process of investigation into emptiness? CARL FOOKS has been practising in Mahāyāna and Theravāda traditions since the late 1980’s, starting with Rinzai Zen before settling on the Mahasi tradition in 2007. He has been leading groups since 2011 and teaching retreats at Satipanya and Gaia House since 2014. He has an MA in Buddhist Studies. Soon after he arrived in the States Rob began meditating at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Centre, an urban non-residential Dharma centre not far from his neighbourhood in Boston. There he met Narayan Helen Liebensen, one of the teachers at Cambridge Insight, and practised with her from 1993 to 2002. Narayan remembers “how unusual a student he was because of his fierce curiosity and compassionate heart.” She recalls the students in the experienced practitioners’ classes with him being “inspired and even awed by his passionate search for the truth.”

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VIMALASARA ( VALERIE MASON-JOHN MA - hon doc) is a public speaker and master trainer in the field of conflict transformation, leadership and mindfulness. They are also the author of ten books and the Co-Founder of Eight Step Recovery, an alternative to the 12-step program for addiction. They were featured at TEDxRenfrewCollingwood, where they gave a talk entitled " We Are What We Think", which outlined a course of action we can take to work on the global epidemic of bullying. Whilst much of his teaching happened within the cloistered walls of Gaia House, Rob’s vision of the Dharma resisted any constraint. Through his talks and personal guidance he opened up conceptions of the Dharma that made students radically question everything they thought they knew, about what the Dharma was and where it could lead. He would advocate active and at times even disruptive participation in the world, in the spirit of the Bodhisattva ideal. Activism was effectively legitimised and encouraged as a profound avenue of practice, both for cultivating and for giving expression to the liberated heart. It was a talk from 2011, The Meditator as Revolutionary, that inspired so many of his students to take their practice off the cushion and into the world.