“When you fully understand how you enter into and disengage from the round of suffering, you will appreciate and value knowing the way persons and things actually are.” –The Dalai Lama, How to See Yourself as You Really Are

Though it’s not obvious, our minds are constantly constructing our realities. Rather than the neutral observers we take ourselves to be, our minds assess objects with the view of how they might make us happy or how they could cause us pain. As a result, we flit through the round of suffering as we open ourselves up to intense craving, hatred, and a multitude of other counterproductive emotions. This way of looking casts our worldview in an illusion that things exist inherently rather than as they truly do, in interdependence. 

In his book How to See Yourself as You Really Are, the Dalai Lama shares step-by-step personal advice for learning to see the world and ourselves as we actually exist, without the overlay of false imagination. In words that are warm and clear, the Dalai Lama shows his own personal path toward understanding: key ideas for reflection and essential phrases from Buddhist masters that hit him like a lightning bolt with the force of their meaning.

Shantideva Center welcomes meditation teacher Stephan Pende as he leads an in-depth guided reading of this book–which is actually a tightly focused and clear program for meditation. The full series of 24 classes encompasses twelve weekends over the course of the year, from January to December. Let this course by Stephan Pende serve as a framework for your personal meditation practice to this most beneficial aim: seeing yourself as you really are.