Summary: Speaker: Sasha Dorje Meyerowitz. Sasha explores how analytical meditation promotes our understanding of the truth and generates growth and faith on the path. Initiating the investigation by tracing the history of the concept of "being present" in the West, he cites the analysis of the Prasangika-Madhyamika philosophical school to explain the nature of time and the relationship between cause and effect. By breaking time down into smaller and smaller increments, we discover that we cannot find a single, discrete moment. Instead, we come to appreciate the interdependent, impermanent, and composite nature of past, present, and future. Similarly, questioning the concepts of cause and effect can transform our understanding of how objects arise and cease. Further, we can apply the insights gained from these investigations to our own experiences, using analytical meditation to understand their absolute nature as empty of objective existence. Engaging in the reasoning of analytical meditation ultimately leads us to a deeper faith in the Dharma and a richer appreciation of the magical, illusory quality of experience.
