How can we use our practice to see us through troubled times and remain a light against the darkness?

Laura Burges encourages us to see Buddhist practice as a laboratory, a place to experiment with our own experience. Drawing from the book, "Buddhism Without Beliefs" by Stephen Batchelor, she likens the Four Noble Truths to a diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment for the challenges facing us and the world. If they were contained in bottles, each would come with a simple instruction label:

1. Life is marked by suffering or anguish - "Recognize Me"  
2. The cause of suffering is desire - "Understand Me"
3. There can be an end to suffering - "Realize Me"
4. The Noble 8-Fold Path is the prescription - "Cultivate Me" 

To approach our practice as an experiment, she encourages us to develop an agnostic curiosity rather than hardening the teachings into firm beliefs. In this way, we can practice with an open mind and heart.
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Ryuko Laura Burges, a lay entrusted dharma teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, teaches classes, lectures, and leads retreats in Northern California. She received monastic training at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Laura co-founded the Sangha in Recovery Program at the San Francisco Zen Center and is the abiding teacher at Lenox House Meditation Group in Oakland. Shambhala Publications offers her Buddhist children’s books, Buddhist Stories for Kids and Zen for Kids. Her most recent book from Shambhala is The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction. Laura lives in San Francisco.

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CREDITS
Audio Engineer: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter