Our monthly Dharma discussions are always preceded by silent meditation (Zazen) and walking meditation (Kinhin) as well as chanting of the Sutras. Each week a senior monk will offer a Dharma talk on a wide variety of Buddhist topics.

This week Rev. Rev. Kevin Genjo LeBlancwill offer a Dharma talk on: The Two Barriers

In Vasabandhu's Thirty Verses; The 29th verse states: "Without thought, without conception, this is the supramundane awareness: The overturning of the root, the ending of the two barriers." The two barriers are: afflictive emotions and delusion which he already pointed at when he named the afflictions...the first of them being desire, aversion and delusion. Maybe this sounds too easy or maybe it doesn't, either way, the rest of the Thirty Verses outlines how, from the moment consciousness is born that the delusion begins, strengthens and so makes itself almost real through the imagination of the thing we call 'I'

The fascination of oneself to one's self is so powerful, that few humans will ever really take the time to investigate it's validity... "right here, right now and yet, rarely has it been met, even in hundreds, thousands, millions of eons."

The spiritual path is the path of investigation.