The Diamond Cutter Sutra starts with a seemingly simple question, yet the profound answer given has been a source of inspiration across thousands of years to those who seek both worldly success and spiritual fulfillment.

The question is: how should a bodhisattva—someone who strives to develop the capacity to care for great numbers of human beings—live their life, and even more importantly, how should they think about the successes and challenges of life in general?

No one needs much convincing that there is immense suffering on this planet, nor that much of our human activity is geared towards alleviating or at best minimizing its impact on our lives. At each turn, tensions, wars, famine, and natural disasters happen on a regular basis. And in the peaceful times between, just like a bird anxiously scanning the landscape to avoid becoming someone’s prey, we sense with some fear the very next inevitable downturn.

The question is, how effective are our attempts to reduce the world’s suffering and to have a lasting impact in doing so? Is it possible to overcome these up-and-down cycles? Is there a way to have a meaningful and long-term positive outcome and not be filled with anxiety about the next disaster that will appear in our lives?

In this 11-class series, we will provide an extensive guide of how to engage in an effective and successful life of service as a bodhisattva. Our exploration will ultimately dive deep into the power of understanding emptiness: a profound experience that has the capacity to root out all our negative emotions and give us an immeasurable capacity to positively impact the immense suffering on this planet.

The Diamond Cutter Sutra will also teach us about the relationship between karma and emptiness, and how to use our understanding of karmic cause and effect to reach both personal worldly success and our highest spiritual aspirations.

Finally, as a group, we will look at the most pressing problems in the world, working together to understand some of the deeper causes to develop an international community project to address these issues in a real, practical way.