Seeing That Frees: Exploring Emptiness

Seeing That Frees: Exploring Emptiness is an online spiritual workshop and meditation course for experienced practitioners, taught by Yahel Avigur and listed in Barre, Bahia, Brazil. It follows a path of meditative experiments drawn from Rob Burbea's book Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising, leading toward experiential insight into the empty, magical nature of all things. It suits intermediate and advanced Insight Meditation practitioners who want a sustained, guided exploration of emptiness.

What to Expect

The program runs for six months, with twelve whole-course Zoom meetings every other Sunday, from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM Eastern Time. Each meeting includes guided meditations, Dharma talks, practice instructions and, at times, questions and responses. The course does not read the book at a steady pace. It dwells on key meditations, much as Rob Burbea guided practitioners on his longer retreats.

The sessions move through a clear arc:

- Welcome, the shape of the path, and a parallel thread of mettā and samādhi practice that continues throughout
- Mindfulness, and the emptiness of generalization and wholes
- Anicca, letting go through inconstancy
- Dukkha, working with vedanā and relaxing clinging, with material on causes and conditions and loosening self-views
- Anattā, loosening identification and opening to the vastness of awareness
- The fading of perception, intimations of emptiness, and mettā and emptiness

Between meetings, participants practice with recorded guided meditations and Dharma talks, read assigned sections of the book, and complete study activities. In the weeks without a whole-course meeting, optional small groups are offered for practice, sharing and community, facilitated by experienced practitioners familiar with the material. Their times are shared once the program begins.

An optional summer expansion adds five further sessions on the emptiness of dualities, the aggregates, analytical practices of not finding a thing, the emptiness of awareness, and the depth of mettā and emptiness.

The program begins with a shared ethical commitment to respect and non-harming, in communication with others and in one's own relationship with the practice.

About Yahel Avigur

Yahel Avigur is a Dharma teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition. He began practicing in the Mahasi Sayadaw lineage and with the Israeli Insight Meditation Society, while also working in activism and education. He met Rob Burbea, who became his primary teacher. Under Rob's guidance, Yahel was trained and authorized to teach Insight Meditation, emptiness as articulated in Seeing That Frees, and Samādhi and Jhāna practice. He teaches this course in a spirit of generosity and relies on dāna for his livelihood.

Before You Go

This is not a self-study program. It asks for roughly 10 to 12 hours a week, including attendance at the whole-course meetings, daily practice, reading and listening assignments.

Prerequisites:

- At least four weeks of residential, teacher-led, silent Insight Meditation retreats, or equivalent experience
- A regular daily practice in Insight meditation, Samādhi as taught in the Buddhist traditions, or the Brahmavihāras
- Interest and openness in experimenting with meditative approaches centered on a view of emptiness, as expressed in the first three chapters of the book

Participants are expected to have read those first three chapters before the program begins, and to bring their own copy of the book. Admission is by application. Financial assistance is available, and all fee levels give the same program experience. Teacher dāna is offered voluntarily and is not part of the fee.