Transforming Habits
Self-Paced Practice Course
with Zenki Dillo Roshi
About This Course
This couse explores how we can discontinue dysfunctional habits and instead form habits that create a wholesome, nourishing life. Self-help books provide us with tips for how to become the best version of ourselves. There is a lot to learn from these behavioral strategies, but they only go so far. From a Buddhist point view, habit transformation is primarily about awareness and freedom from identification with views and behaviors. Self-improvement must be based on this freedom, otherwise it keeps us imprisoned in self-criticism and a never-ending race with ourselves.
Even when this freedom is glimpsed and realized, why is it still so difficult to give up so-called bad habits? Because they serve us! To transform them, we need to dig deep and unlock the internal stoppages around which they have formed. Once they are not needed anymore, they dissolve almost effortlessly.
The original live course took place over a 6-week period from October 5-November 9, 2024, led by Zenki Roshi, at the Boulder Zen Center.
What You Will Learn
- Understand how all habits have an underlying structure that links cues and cravings to behaviors and rewards
- Map your habits and thus see what they are really about
- Realize that habits are insubstantial; they change or end when the underlying action isn't repeated
- Gain insight into how and why certain habits become dysfunctional
- Develop a kind relationship with all your habits (wholesome or unwholesome, functional or dysfunctional) by recognizing they are serving you in some important way
- Dis-identify from habits by establishing your sense of self as a field of open awareness
- Recognize the many rewards of open awareness such as unconditional contentment, resilience, compassion and many more
- Understand habits as being held by "parts of yourself" rather than your true self
- See that dysfunctional habits are usually part of a network of habits (a tangle) that has formed around a deeper unresolved life challenge (a stoppage); when the stoppage is unlocked, dysfunctional habits dissolve almost effortlessly
- Form wholesome habits as an expression of your true nature
- Understand yourself as a bodhisattva on a path of establishing habits of wisdom and compassion
What You Get
This course consists of 6 modules (see curriculum below), each consisting of a video dharma talk, several practice suggestions, and written materials to deepen your study. Altogether you will receive:
- 9 Dharma talks originally given to a live audience
- 17 practice suggestions to integrate the content of the talks into your daily life
- All Dharma talks and practice suggestions in audio format for easy download, so you can use the recordings while on the go
- A combined PDF file of all practice suggestions to download
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Lifetime access to course
Plus: - 1 free practice meeting with Zenki Roshi to discuss questions about your practice
