451: The Heart of Imagination in Buddhism

The mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols
W.B. Yeats

These days, mindfulness is everywhere. How can engaging with images - with imagination itself - take our awareness deeper and help us connect with something truly transformative? Join our guests Vishvapani and Amitajyoti to explore how a Buddhist perspective on consciousness can help move us towards a life touched more fully by a sense of creativity and freedom. 

In this episode, we look at imagination within the framework of Triratna’s system of practice, an approach to Buddhism that represents a naturally unfolding process of experience emerging from the dedicated cultivation of awareness and kindness:

1. Integration, meaning embodied awareness.
2. Positive emotion: an open, loving and empathic heart.
3. Spiritual Death: releasing limiting attitudes, and finding a more authentic way of being.
4. Spiritual Rebirth: the realm of imagination that brings an expanded experience of ourselves and opening to a sense of mystery
5. Spiritual Receptivity: resting in the freedom of open, spacious awareness and creative flow

Each stage here is a doorway to a more creative realm that we can access whatever our circumstances. 

We also evoke the place of nature as intertwined with the life of the imagination. Resonance, empathy, connection with the world around us - with practice, these qualities in experience can be sustained as a flowing, organic, enriching state of being. 

The hopeful, practical vision here - the efficacy of cultivating a heart of imagination - can give us the confidence to allow our images, symbols and myths to open us up to new ways of living.

Enlightenment is the state of irreversible creativity
Urgyen Sangharakshita

Show Notes

🧘 Join us live for the ‘Heart of Imagination’ Home Retreat (or catch up later!)

📖 W. B. Yeats, ‘The Symbolism of Poetry’

🎧 Listen to talks on the system of practice in Triratna

🖥️ Vishvapani is a writer, broadcaster and mindfulness teacher with over four decades’ years experience of Buddhist practice

🖥️ Amitajyoti is a visual artist and a teacher of art and mindfulness with over 30 years experience of Buddhist and art practice.

🧘 ’Mindfulness and Imagination' Home Retreat with Vidyamala and Vishvapani (2023)

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Theme music by Ackport! Used with kind permission.

Podcast episode image by Amitajyoti