Buddhaverse and Karma with Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. and Robert Thurman, Ph.D.
Universe, Zeroverse and Buddhaverse with Robert Thurman, Ph.D.
Friday, October 20, 2017
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
In the beginning of the Vimalakīrti Sutra, the Buddha is asked, “How does the enlightening hero/ine bodhisattva purify and beautify the universe?” Buddha responds by magically projecting his vision of the world as a jewel environment, an exquisite realm perfectly suited for the lives of evolving humans and other sentient beings.
The enlightened vision of the universe is that it is not really happening. It is ultimately, actually in reality, uncreated. It is deepest peace, luminous transparency, and non-proliferating deathless bliss. It only seems to be there as a vale of suffering due to our active mis-knowledge, our ignorance. Our wisdom intuition first discovers it to be a “zeroverse,” sheer emptiness, and then further finds out that that emptiness is empty of itself and so does not destroy the ignorance-created, relative universes of mis-knowing individuals.
Today, materialist scientists have analyzed their way up to the anthropic constants, the strange facts of matter balance our lives on a mathematical tightrope, as a little more of this and a little less of that and we would not exist. For them it has to be an accident, since they are terrified of a theistic creator entity, and are rightly worried about being re-captured by some horrendous, fanatic Inquisition. But recently, we can see such post materialist movements as biocentrism and spiritual psychology, which build on the quantum discovery of material uncertainty and ultimate non-objectivity, to open up to the mind as being participant in nature.
In this plenary, we will praise scientific wisdom as experiential intuition, evaluate the post-materialist movements, and share the vision of the Shakyamuni Buddha’s Buddhaverse we have been enjoying all these centuries, as it emerges in our experience of the infinite individual universes.
Relationship and Karma with Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Friday, October 20, 2017
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
In this presentation Isa discusses how our relationships, even complicated relationships, can be understood as a vehicle for self- transformation. She places the experience of relationship in the larger context of key concepts from Buddhist philosophy such as reincarnation and karma to broaden the screen and scope of our relating. When we consider that the dynamics of our relating may be revelatory of our long standing karmic patterns, and when we consider that challenges in relating to others point directly to the places that are binding us to those karmic patterns, relationships can become a laboratory for self liberation. She shows that when we understand that everyone we relate to is a teacher to help us learn about ourselves, we can approach any kind of relationship with greater clarity even as we apply the lessons others provide us to our spiritual evolution. She will discuss how our karmic patterns are revealed through our reactions to the members of our birth families and how relationships formed later in life can either bind us to those karmic patterns or challenge us to transform them, depending on the level of self-responsibility we are willing to take. She will also discuss what a true soul mate is – and the role of soul mates in the process of self-evolution. The insights Isa offers come out of twenty years of individual, couples and family practice in the spiritual counseling model she developed, Depth Hypnosis. She will also discuss the conflict resolution process of Coming to Peace she developed which draws on Buddhist and earth-based wisdom approaches that foster equality, mutual respect, tolerance and personal responsibility. A basic tenet of Coming to Peace is that challenges in relationship can actually provide a roadmap for identifying the path to wholeness and can lead us to the peace that is at the heart of our experience.
Registration
These subsessions are a part of the SAND Conference. Time subject to change. For more information and registration, visit the SAND 2017 website.
