Summary: Episode Description: This seventh and final lecture of the program is entitled Towards a Culture of Awakening. Stephen begins to wrap up the program by reminding participants that the fourth task among the buddha's four tasks is the "cultivation of a path." When we cultivate something, we create a culture. So the culmination of the fourth task is a culture, a culture of awakening that can respond to our current global condition. The foundations of this culture include the central ideas presented in this program: Dwelling on the earth with care, engaging with a fourfold task, creating meaning through our choices and actions, and beholding an emptiness or nirvana free from reactivity in order to "radiate like the sun" and "flow like a stream." Stephen draws from a number of early buddhist texts in order to sketch out what such a culture of awakening might look like. In brief, it would be a culture primarily concerned with enacting a way of life grounded in human flourishing, it would encourage a response, free from hesitation, to the "unique immediacy" of our individual lives, it would be rooted in the eightfold path as an integrated ethical framework based on care, and it would, crucially, not privilege monastic over lay practice. After a brief detour into how a pre-buddhist culture of awakening may have spread beyond India and taken hold in Greece, Stephen concludes with another text from the Pali canon, the Parable of the City. This parable is about building a civilization, a society built on the buddha's teachings, in short, a "culture of awakening on this earth." For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: A Culture of Awakening: All 18 Parts
