When life pulls us in unexpected directions, it can feel disorienting — like we’ve lost our footing or don’t quite know what practice is asking of us next. In this talk, we explore how letting life itself become the teacher can deepen wisdom, soften grasping, and turn the challenges of impermanence into a living path of growth and compassion.
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Talk: A Novel Way to Explore the Eightfold Path
Timecodes & main topics:
- 0:00 — Letting the Dharma Lead the Way
How growth often begins when we stop controlling the path and allow experience itself to guide us. - 3:00 — Creativity, Insight, and Spiritual Practice
The emergence of a teaching novel and workbook as practice becomes lived experience rather than theory. - 6:30 — The Eightfold Path as a Living System
Introducing the “cooking pot” metaphor for understanding intention, effort, mindfulness, and wisdom. - 9:50 — Wise View and the Roots of Suffering
How grasping at permanence and a fixed self naturally creates distress. - 14:00 — Why Wise Speech and Action Arise Naturally
Ethical behavior emerging from transformed consciousness rather than imposed rules. - 20:45 — Grasping, Impermanence, and Why We Suffer
How clinging to what must change creates emotional pain — and how nature helps us accept change. - 27:15 — Non-Separateness and the Illusion of Self
Exploring interconnectedness and relaxing the defensive “fortress self.” - 40:20 — Is Suffering a Teacher?
The Buddhist teaching of the first and second dart — pain versus the suffering we add to it.
A Meditation: Resetting Intention To Be Present
When your mind gets pulled into stress, distraction, or old habits, it’s easy to lose touch with what really matters to you. This meditation helps you pause, return to the present moment, and gently reset your intention — reconnecting with the qualities you want to bring into this moment, and the next.
Stephanie is the author of Asking In, Six Empowering Questions Only You Can Answer, and several other books, including a soon-to-be- published novel exploring the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path.
Stephanie founded Marin Insight Women’s Sangha in 2008. She has attended numerous retreats, mostly at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and taken many in-depth training courses. Before she discovered Buddhism in 1993, a lengthy illness and a wise meditation teacher led her to what she calls her nine-month horizontal retreat, out of which she wrote Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living.
She has served in leadership positions on the Board of the Buddhist Insight Network since 2019. BIN is an international non-profit, connecting Insight meditation teachers, sitting groups, and retreat centers for mutual benefit and inspiration.
