Practicing Below the Waterline
Strategies for releasing subtle clinging
Meeting Dates: Sundays, November 16th – December 14th 2025
Meeting Time: 9:00am to 10:45am Pacific time (which is 5:00pm to 6:45pm UK time)
An optional mid-week guided meditation will be offered Wed. at 10:00am Pacific
Cost: This course is offered on a dāna or donation basis
REGISTER HERE: https://forms.gle/UxEadqAdELBRrs548
“Unfortunately, we mostly have a habit of looking at experience and phenomena in ways that tend to contribute to dukkha, not to its release and the unbinding of ourselves and the world….habitual and normal tendencies to view things in ways that fabricate, compound, and tighten dukkha are deep-seated and difficult to reverse. Nevertheless, that is the great and beautiful work of the path.”
Rob Burbea, “Seeing that Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising“
This five week insight/emptiness meditation course will explore practices and strategies for releasing attachment on the subtler end of the spectrum of clinging. Grasping and aversion towards aspects of experience that feel relatively neutral happens “below the waterline” of overt thought processes.. In this course we’ll work with practices and strategies that have the potential to increase our capacity to sense attachment with increasing subtlety, as well as practice in ways that have the potential to release clinging that is woven into our habits of perception.
In addition to instructions and discussion/reports around specific practices, we’ll explore the possibility of integrating or combining different types of practices in ways that allow for flexibility, skill, and depth in practice. Three Characteristics practices, awareness practices, and techniques related to absorption practices each have different mechanisms of releasing clinging, and can be explored in combination (within one’s practice, or within a given meditation session) in ways that can allow for more efficacy in one’s practice. Hopefully this course will support individual meditators in finding their own best strategies through exploration and experimentation.
Who is this course for:
The practices and approaches offered should be of most interest to experienced insight/emptiness mediators looking for strategies to release subtle clinging and move in the direction of less fabrication of experience. The exploration of the course will be held within the practice framework of Rob’s presentation of Buddhist wisdom practice, but it is not essential you be familiar with his approach in particular so long as you have experience working with insight/vipassana methods and an interest in working with “letting go” on subtle, perceptual levels.
Practices explored:
This course will explore application of both more traditional insight practices (Three Characteristics practices) as well as “awareness” practices that offer the possibility of displacing or shifting the sense of the location of awareness. Aspects of absorption practice (jhana, samadhi practices) that can be implemented as insight practices will be included. Exercises around “uhooking” clinging in different ways will be included.
Course elements:
- The main weekly course meeting will include practice instructions, time for sharing/questions/reports and a talk.
- A mid-week 45-minute group practice session will be offered live, and recorded for those unable to attend.
Experience level: Intermediate/Advanced. This is not an introductory meditation or mindfulness course. Applicants should some familiarity and experience with Buddhist wisdom teachings and practice. Different practices will be explored each week, and so the pace will be quite fast. It will be assumed that you have the capacity to cultivate stability of attention on your own (i.e. some kind of samadhi practice), the ability to apply mindfulness well, and have experience with some form of insight meditation (Rob’s approach, Shinzen Young’s approach, or other liberation-oriented insight/vipassna approaches) You should be comfortable sitting 45 min on a regular basis. I ask that you also have had a regular meditation practice for at least one year. It’s great if you have done meditation retreats, but there will be space in the course for those who are unable to do retreats but show commitment to practice in other ways. Please feel really free to ask me any questions regarding whether this course may be a good fit for you .
There will be a space on the application form to ask any questions about experience level or issues around attendance.
About me: Susy has practiced Buddhist meditation since 2001, and began practicing insight meditation five years later. In 2015 she began studying and training with Rob Burbea, and completed her teacher-training with him in 2020. She teaches meditation in Los Angeles, California, and is an artist and a parent. She is passionate about exploring the intersection between creative energies and contemplative practice, and supporting meditators wishing to pursue deep practice in the midst of daily life.
This offering is a part of my sharing what I received from my teachers that I love the most: the chance to explore the radical, wordless art of skillfully directing attention in ways that transform and open our sense of who we are and what the world can be.