Do Something Meaningful: The Four Reminders and the Path of Awakening

With Dennis Hunter (Zopa Tharchin)

The Buddha presented a complete path of spiritual awakening that each of us can travel. But making this journey requires letting go of delusion and attachment to our old ways of doing things.

The Four Reminders are a set of contemplations that help us turn our minds away from delusion and attachment, and towards the path of awakening. In Tibetan Buddhism, deeply contemplating these four thoughts and integrating their meaning into our lives is the basis of all successful spiritual practice. Through understanding the Four Reminders, we understand the way to make this brief human life meaningful.

In this weekend program, we will study and contemplate these four topics in depth, through talks and discussion and practice. Working with Patrul Rinpoche's commentary in "The Words of My Perfect Teacher" as a starting point, we will seek to understand what the Four Reminders really mean to our lives, in a fresh, contemporary and personal way.

Dennis Hunter has been a student of The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche since 2004, and was one of the founding members of Nalandabodhi New York. He writes frequently about spirituality and Buddhism on his blog, "One Human Journey." Currently he is living as a temporary monastic at Gampo Abbey, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he is known by his Buddhist refuge name, Zopa Tharchin.