In the first meeting of this new webinar series, David will speak about the importance of integrity,

addressing it on two distinct yet overlapping levels. The first involves embracing universal ethical principles, living in a way that avoids intentional harm of living beings and the earth while also expressing our intention to be what the Dalai Lama calls “a force for good.”

The second level involves embracing our inherent uniqueness and accepting the “perfect imperfection”

of the human condition. It’s in this very process that we can actualize our amazing capacity for self-

transcendence and come to know our true nature. In addition to David’s talk, there will be an experiential exercise and opportunities for discussion. Gathering as a caring community, we’ll explore our growing edges and the inherent goodness in each of our hearts.

In the second meeting, David will speak about the importance of generosity in the material realm, the emotional realm, and the spiritual realm. He’ll discuss the relationship between the small, egoic self which tends to focus primarily on its own needs and desires, and our true nature, another aspect of our being that naturally embraces generosity as a way of living.

In addition to David’s talk, there will be an experiential exercise and opportunities for discussion. In this session, we will highlight the importance of honoring our own needs at the same time that we cultivate a generous heart, a heart that is rooted in the felt experience of our sacred interconnectedness.

The ancient Roman playwright, Plautus, said “Patience is the best remedy for every trouble. A person who is a master of patience is a master of everything else.” This comment really caught my attention and strongly suggests that our innate capacity for patience is a very worthwhile topic to explore. Many of us have had experiences that support Plautus’s viewpoint.

This ancient Roman perspective is consistent with the way patience is understood in Buddhist teachings. It is one of the paramis, a Pali language term that translates as “perfection,” and it’s understood to be a skill that a practitioner cultivates on the path of spiritual awakening.

In this session, David will give a talk and introduce some of the methods that help us to develop patience in the midst of uncertainty. We’ll discuss the special relevance of this quality at the present time on our planet. At our own pace, we’ll each move toward a deeper understanding of patience and an enhanced ability to suffuse our daily life with it.

The quality of compassion plays a central role in all of the perennial wisdom traditions. It begins with our

relationship to ourselves and naturally extends to other people as well as living beings of all kinds, including the earth. Compassion in action, which will also be discussed in this webinar, is a way that we share our gifts with the world when we feel moved to do so by the suffering we witness.

Given the challenges inherent in the aging process, it’s essential that we learn to reframe our suffering as a gateway to compassion. While we don’t deny the difficulties associated with growing older, we see them as an opportunity to experience our deeper nature, which is loving awareness. In this webinar, David will speak about compassion as well as lead the group in an experiential exercise designed to open our hearts to ourselves, to one another, and to the world.

What does it mean to become wise? In a culture that emphasizes the rational mind in the way ours does, there’s a risk of confusing wisdom with being “smart.” While it can be very helpful to collect information and to have a good memory for facts and details, those processes have limitations when it comes to living a conscious life. Ram Dass described wisdom in this way, “Wisdom is learning to live in harmony with the world as it is in any given moment.”

That’s the way of living we’ll explore in this webinar. David will discuss the ways in which conscious aging enables us to distinguish authentic intuition from self-deception. There will be a guided meditation, time for discussion, and an opportunity to affirm the potential we all have to live wisely and to inspire others to do the same.

The word “love” is often a source of confusion for people in modern western cultures. For some people,

it’s almost exclusively associated with romantic relationships. For others, it has distinctly spiritual

associations, as in “the love of God” or the phrase “unconditional love.” For yet others, it’s used in

mundane ways associated with ordinary daily life. For example, “I love cheesecake.”

To avoid contributing to the confusion, western Buddhist teachers often use the word “lovingkindness”

when talking about this profoundly important human quality. Lovingkindness is one translation of the Pali language word metta. Metta is also translated as “unconditional friendliness” or “universal goodwill.” In Zen tradition, it’s called “grandmother mind.” In this webinar, David will offer a talk on lovingkindness as well as lead an experiential exercise. There will be an opportunity for Q & A as well as heartfelt discussion of this wonderful human quality.