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by Stephen Schettini $15: (one CD)
ISBN: 978-0-9731409-6-5
This recording of selected sessions of a workshop entitled The Art of Mindful Reflection was made in Montreal’s West Island in the Spring of 2008
 The Buddha was just a man, but a very big man, willing to take on the heavyweights of his day, to criticize a way of life that had been followed for centuries and, above all, willing to tackle the most intractable and apparently unanswerable problems of the human condition.
We suffer, but there’s a cause; we can stop, but we have to find the way. These two pairs: suffering and its cause, peace and its cause, are the Four Truths of the Noble Ones, which I like to call the four facts of life – the beginning, middle and end of all the Buddha’s teachings.
The Eightfold Path of the Nobles is the best known approach, but there’s another angle. In fact, the Buddha related to his contemporaries with enormous flexibility, and there’s always another way of approaching things. The teachings are rich and multifaceted.
In the Mahayana tradition, also known as the Northern Tradition, and encompassing the Buddhism of Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, the Three Principles of the Path remind us of the basic source of balance as we make our way on the path of meditation. They are renunciation, other-centeredness and right view, none of which are quite as simple as they sound, and all which are explained herein.
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