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John at the Center for Contemplative Research: Becoming an Active Participant in Your Own Life
July 11 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 pm
From Equanimity to Agency: Becoming an Active Participant in Your Own Life
Saturday, July 11th, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 am, Mountain Daylight Time (MDT)
9 a.m. PDT / 12 p.m. EDT / 6 p.m. Central European Time (CET)
Ways to attend:
- Online via Zoom: Click Here.
- In-person at Miyo Samten Ling Hermitage at 10:00 a.m. MDT (1 Carmelite Way, Crestone, CO), in the chapel (the building with the bell tower)
Make a donation to CCR – Donate.
Topic Description:
In our previous exploration of equanimity with John Bruna, we examined how a balanced and impartial mind frees us from being controlled by fear, attachment, and reactivity. But understanding this raises another important question: If we already know what leads to greater well-being, why is it often so difficult to actually live that way?
Most of us have experienced the gap between knowing and doing. We know meditation supports our well-being, yet we avoid practicing. We know kindness, patience, exercise, healthy relationships, and meaningful work enrich our lives, yet we often find ourselves pulled toward habits that offer immediate comfort while undermining our deeper aspirations. Why?
This Saturday, July 11, John Bruna will explore the conditioned patterns of mind that continually draw us toward short-term gratification and away from lasting well-being. Drawing from Buddhist psychology, contemplative science, and practical experience, we will examine how our habitual conditioning shapes our choices, why awareness alone is often not enough to create lasting change, and how we can gradually retrain the mind to align with our deepest values.
Equanimity is not the end of the path—it is the foundation that allows us to become conscious participants rather than unconscious passengers in our own lives. Through understanding the nature of conditioning and learning practical methods for cultivating new habits of mind, we discover that genuine freedom is not found in controlling circumstances but in developing the capacity to choose wisely, intentionally, and compassionately, moment by moment.
The invitation is not simply to know what is true, but to become the kind of person who naturally lives it.