Gaia House: Sharda Rogell's most recent Dharma talks: Recent Episodes
via dharmaseed.org
My focus in teaching is to provide the support that students need to turn their life to the dharma, to truth, and to find ways to come out of their pain and suffering. The retreat experience is an invaluable aid to this exploration; however, what matters more is how one integrates this under- standing into everyday life.
I care that students see through the illusory wall between formal meditation and their daily life. Then, what remains is a meditative attitude to all that occurs.
Vipassana practice helps us to become respectful and caring towards ourselves and others. This generates the conditions of mind and heart that allow us to awaken to the truth of who we are, rather than believing in our limited assumptions. As we see the impersonal nature of our own mind, we then experience a deep engagement with life that allows for a complete transformation of the heart. When we know this deeply, we can no longer unconsciously engage in actions that will lead to suffering and the ongoing destruction of our planet.
As a teacher, I am accessible and able to meet people at an intimate level. I am interested in how the language that we use can show where we are holding on. I look to the concepts about reality that people believe in as the key that unlocks the door to liberating insight. People can easily discount their experiences and forget that they hold the seeds to liberation, that the wisdom is already within them. As people speak what is in their hearts, affirmation brings about the confidence needed to take the next step, which can often seem confusing and daunting as one walks into the unknown territory of the mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A short dharma talk with a guided meditation on investigating mental activity: thoughts and images
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Given during COVID -19, how to find balance within our heart and mind when emotions are strong.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Mindfulness encourages releasing the hold of the discursive mind, and frees the attention to drop[ into the heart and body, revealing the source of true happiness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Closing reflections for a nine day New Year retreat
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) How to bring the mind to more balance and ease in the face of challenges.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) We can easily believe that perfection truly exists and if we can work hard enough we may reach it, until we see the pain in our striving and let go.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Bare attention and disengaging from story-making.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Once we strengthen the qualities of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom, this empowers us on the path to greater awakening.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Arriving On retreat. Body as a foundational support.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The five difficult mind states, classically laid out by the Buddha, that obstruct open heart and free mind, and the potential for deepening insight and wisdom.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How do we relate to others while staying connected to ourselves, so we don't get LOST. The Power of Present Moment mindfulness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) This talk is an offering of one of the discourses from the Majjhima Nikāya (MN 140) in which the Buddha gives a disciple named Pukkusāti, who has never met the Buddha and doesn't know he's talking with him) a powerful teaching on the destruction of all suffering.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Understanding the truth of suffering, or that things are generally unsatisfactory, we can loosen our grip and open more sensitively and respectfully to how things are.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We are shifting our perception from ordinary ways of seeing and knowing in a way that is in accord with the dharma, with insight into the way things are. Looking more closely at story-making.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we let go of the things we usually take as our refuge, the three refuges of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha begin to take on new life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When the small ego self begins to let go of it's self-centered position, the mind turns to the Dharma and sees the three characteristics of existence - impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) In itself, consciousness is pure, but it gets covered over with difficult patterns that bring about suffering. When these patterns are seen and released, a sense of well-being and clarity ensues. Three attitudes to bring to our practice that can hep us along the path.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We wonderfully open to all aspects of our mind body experience wherever we go - not leaving ourselves behind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Without wisdom and awareness, we can climb into our stories, both painful and happy stories, and not see how we are trapped and limited by what we believe is true. Looking at a bigger picture.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) This talks describes how to work with mindfulness of Dharmas-the transformation of dukkha (difficult states) to sukha (happy states) or the 7 Factors of Awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Drawing from the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness immersed in the Body, we cultivate a steadying presence as we open to wiser frontiers of our heart and mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How do we return "home" in every moment of our daily life? How our dharma practice shapes our life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) NO matter how much I might wish for suffering to end, it will always be an intrinsic part of our existence. Opening to this truth, awakens our heart of compassion.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Life is messy. Unless we are well-established in the wisdom of equanimity, we will likely be blown around by the worldly winds of change.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we journey along the path, we move from an ego-centric view to a dharma-centric view, supported by deepening wisdom and lovingkindness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Why come on retreat? As we orient to the present moment and reconnect with ourselves, we can begin to know what no longer serves us and let go. We open to a bigger picture of the way things are.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) If we try to get the conditions of our life to match our expectations, we will be disappointed again & again. Understanding the Buddha's teaching on 'dukkha' helps us let go and see more clearly.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we shift from a self-centered view to a dharma-centered view, we enter the authentic truth of our experience, and see with new eyes, even when facing difficult mind states. What can support this turning?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When the heart releases naturally, the grateful heart opens with joy. This talk ends with a fifteen minute gratitude meditation.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha invites us to open to all experience just as it is. When we open, we deepen our experience to allow both pleasure and pain and enter the stream of life without resistance or grasping.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) With wise and clear intention, we invite the conditions for transforming our heart-mind. We directly attend to the prickliness of aversion and resistance and open to the way things are.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Mudita is one of the divine Abodes. The quality of the heart that feels happiness for others' good fortune. An introduction followed by a 20 minute guided meditation.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring what covers over our innate goodness, including near and far enemies of loving kindness (metta), attached love and hate, and how to uncover the beautiful qualities of our hearts.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Dharma practice shows us how to awaken to the stillness of the unmoving mind, where joys and sorrows move freely through our heart.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring energy (viriya) as a factor of awakening, how, along with mindfulness and investigation, it drives our practice. Importance of intention and letting go.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is Equanimity? It is the stillness within the flow of conditions and is accessible in one moment when we let go of our reactivity and grasping.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) There are ordinary people in our life that care about our well-being. This guided meditation supports us to recognise and receive their care. (Adapted from John Makransky, in Awakening Through Love)
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A talk on how the Buddha's emphasis on loving kindness begins to dissolve the ego's confusion and awakens the heart to its natural expression of love.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha's teaching on the four ways of undertaking things that clear show us how to generate more happiness and less suffering for ourselves, others and the world. Once we understand, it is possible to make choices for happiness.
(Gaia House) Who am I When the Deluded Forces in the Mind Begin to Dissolve? Also, how to bring speaking and listening into our practice.
(Gaia House) Exploring how we compartmentalise things, people and experiences into good and bad, and get trapped in a solid self structure. How to free ourselves of this entrapment.
(Gaia House) How do we get bound up in unsatisfactory conditions and what is the way to release?
(Gaia House) There is an art to opening to experience. How do we do that without getting overwhelmed?
(Gaia House) What is Mind? Two supports and three questions to support continuity of awareness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Equanimity is not a destination to arrive at but something we can practice right in the moment with any conditions that arise. How do we practice?
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) A guided meditation where one receives the wishes from people who care about you and are extending their wish for your happiness and well- being. Includes people from ordinary life as well as spiritual benefactors. (Phrases adapted from John Makransky
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Recognition of the wholesome states of mind is important in their cultivation. Mindfulness of the body is encouraged as a support.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Equanimity is both our practice and the goal of the teaching. We start where we3 are with an attitude of welcoming all things.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We find joy in sensual pleasure but the true joy comes when we relax into the present moment and let go.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) It is possible to use our practice to keep away difficult emotions that we think are "bad" or "wrong" and this causes a split in our way of being in the world. When we practice a meditative approach to our emotions, we begin to wake up all parts of ourselves, and reclaim our humanity and our aliveness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha's teaching addresses the problem in life. Thoughts themselves are not the problem, rather the greed, hate and delusion bound up in the thought. A personal story exploring how to unbind ourselves from these conditions that cause us pain.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we are present with experience and can sustain our connection, this allows for a deep intimacy with all things. This brings love, delight, wisdom and responsiveness, as we engage with our life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) This talk explores Metta or loving kindness, and how to shift our view from being identified as a separate self (and the heartache that can cause) to understanding that nothing is fundamentally wrong with us.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) If we can leave our fixed ideas behind, and return to the openness of our direct experience, we gain a new kind of knowledge, independent of our thinking mind that is immediate, fresh and deepens our trust in the natural unfolding.
(Te Moata Retreat Center) Our nature is love, yet through ego identification, this love becomes distorted. By following wholesome impulses, we strengthen our natural inclination to love.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The Buddha points the way to uncovering our essential goodness, here, exploring the five spiritual powers that turn our mind towards the beautiful; how to become intimate with all of life's experiences.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A talk given by Sharda Rogell, Anna Douglas and Howie Cohn teaching on the importance of practicing and following the path to wisdom and compassion as taught by the Buddha.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A talk given by Sharda Rogell, Anna Douglas and Howie Cohn teaching on the importance of practicing and following the path to wisdom and compassion as taught by the Buddha.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How does love express itself in the awakened heart/mind. And how does that love get so distorted that it can turn to hatred, cruelty and envy. How can we release our confusion and be free?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What has kept me on the path? Turning towards life instead of away-A radical confrontation.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We can actively engage in our healing & transformation by gathering skilful and wise intentions and consciously directing them. In this way we strengthen the creative potential of our mind. We can consciously direct our wise and skilful intentions in order to actively engage in our healing and transformation. In this way, we reinforce and strengthen the creative potential of our mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We have a tendency to fixate on things through attaching and resisting. By knowing deeply the impermanent nature and relaxing our grip, we come into a wise relationship with the conditions of our life and open to the way things really are.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) The Buddha says that the way of undertaking things that is pleasant now and ripens in the future as pleasure dispels darkness with its radiance. Cultivating prajna (or higher wisdom) guides us to make choices that bring about more happiness in our lives.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) Teachings on Anatta (not-self). Our self-image is only an image in our own mind. It’s not all of who we are. Who am I then, when I’m not bound by the limiting beliefs of my mind?
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) What is the goal of the path? As we wisely discern what leads to more happiness and peace and what leads us away, this leads to greater degrees of freedom and the deepening of our wisdom and compassion.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) The Buddha said, to take what is impermanent as permanent is wrong view. When we contemplate this truth and know it deeply, we will know the dharma as our true protection and refuge and this truth will set us free.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) The mind of a Buddha is at peace because of the absence of reactivity. Can we discover that place of rest in our own minds? Mindfulness of vedana, the feeling tone of experience, exposes the ways we try to control our experiences from our likes and dislikes. What does it mean to open to the way things are?
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) Meditation practice invites us to enter the dharma stream. Stop thinking and creating imaginary worlds. Experience life directly, here, now.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We live on the edge of uncertainty. But do we have to live with anxiety about this fact? The Dharma shows us we are the dynamic change and becoming. This is our own nature. Can we trust this and let go into it?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha conquered Mara who personifies the evil or unskillful forces of mind that overwhelm us. He gave the teaching on Four Ways of Undertaking Things, which is elucidated in this talk - a practical and helpful explanation on increasing our happiness and decreasing our pain through making wise choices.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we step back from the difficult patterns of mind with awareness and kindness, we find the first blush of freedom from non-suffering.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A concise exposition on the way these eight path factors form a cohesive whole for our practice in daily life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha showed us the way out of our human predicament of living life as if we were on a wheel in a hamster's cage. The first three Noble Truths are explored to reveal a profound liberation.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we shed our identification with our past and free ourselves from the belief, "I am my story," we open to a larger field of reality and to infinite possibilities of expressing who we truly are.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A talk given on the closing morning of retreat that lays out the way to live with wise intentions for liberating our habitual tendencies and living an awakening life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Unless we understand how we cling to the conditions of our mind and body as "me", we will live within a narrow and confined view and miss the revelation of our true beingness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A simple and clear exposition on the Buddha's insights into releasing, grasping and suffering. This is the release that opens our heart to great compassion.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we identify with our cruel inner critic, this undermines our capacity for kindness towards ourselves and others. Inclining the mind towards metta points us towards our own innate goodness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) First we find our outer refuge in sacred spaces in the triple gem, and through establishing a ground of trust we can let go, taking refuge in awareness itself where everything we need for awakening is available.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we see the world through the veil of our ego, our love flows in distorted and confused ways. Through mindfulness and metta and insight we can begin to understand these conditioned patterns and transform them into love and connection.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) To integrate our practice, we need to keep applying the wisdom of our insights we gain from our sitting practice, retreats, and life experience. In this way, we come to terms with the different aspects of our personality, the aaspects we like and don't like.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Realizing clearly that things don't bring lasting satisfaction, we become disenchanted with reaching out to things; the energy that was bound up with clinging is there, released towards liberation.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Our practice invites us to return to the present moment - yet in order to be here, we must let go of everything and enter this moment unburdened. Are we willing? If so, we will discover our true refuge - that which is utterly reliable.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) To be mindful of our present experience along with our gentle breath, can allow us to free our grasping and ill will, and allow us to feel the conditions that come and go like ocean waves.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) A talk given on a weekend retreat. With Trust as our main support, we begin to let go of our hopes and fears and drop into the truth of uncertainty. This is the doorway to freedom.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A useful talk to help us understand the play of creative and destructive thoughts that explores one discourse the Buddha gave on cultivating our mind. He shows how we can interrupt patterns of mind that lead to pain and encourage wholesome and positive states to arise.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) An exploration into what makes equanimity an expression of the awakened mind, how equanimity gives rise to wise action and how our conditioned habits of mind interface with living a life of balance.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The Buddha encouraged us to discriminate our thoughts into two sets: Those that led to freedom and those that lead to bondage. What are some skillful; tools to work with our persistent and difficult patterns of thought.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This talk explores how to understand and overcome these two deep seated habits of heart and mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we come into connection with ourselves and our experience, we come into contact with a living reality. And rather than reacting to and controlling it, we begin to relax into a curiosity and love for the journey of discovery.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we move through the barrier of judgment and fear, we move from the known to the unknown, and come into a truer relationship with ourselves. Through exploring the meaning of "true safety", we find our only true refuge and protection.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) What does it mean to live a holy, or sacred life in the world? This talk explores how to integrate the teachings and practices into our daily life.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) When we let go, we feel threatened that we will lose everything, but in reality we have everything to gain. What are we actually letting go of and what remains once we let go.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) In the second noble truth, the Buddha tells us that the cause of our suffering is craving that leads to attachment. This talk is an exploration of what the Buddha calls our four most conditioned attachments and why we need to let go of them.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) As we walk the path of wisdom and compassion, we discover they are not separate. What happens when we let go of our identifications with our mental constructions and our mind drops into the heart?
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) We hear the teachings of letting go (or letting be) yet when we try, we find how difficult that is. This talk explores what we are afraid of and the freedom waiting for us when we take the risk of looking at what’s true.
(Wood Acres Retreat Center) The body is the first support for presence and connection to life. Even though many people find it difficult to reside in their bodies, as we arrive more fully, we find a happiness of mind that brings a sense of stability to our experience.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Our actions through speech and body have powerful consequences. We can choose whether they are wholesome or unwholesome. How can we strengthen the goodness while diminishing suffering.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Exploring forms of self rejecting. Opening to reality and what gets in the way of this.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A talk given at a women's retreat, exploring the conundrum between embodying the sacred feminine and experiencing our challenging ego self.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is left when we let go of the mental activity of objectifying, and solidifying our reality? What happens when we see into the empty nature of conditioned phenomenon?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) There is a storyteller in our minds that thinks it knows who and what we are suppose to be and do. We stay very busy trying to mold ourselves into that person believing something is wrong with the way we are. Through the practice of sensitive attunement, we rediscover our intrinsic nature as we enter a path of healing.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Knowing what thoughts to follow and what thoughts not to follow gives shape to our reality and illuminates the law of karma. A simple explanation of this law and how it leads to wise choices and action.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) An invitation to allow your heart to be touched and moved by all of life - not to transcend too soon. We can be guided by the four brahma viharas.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) An exploration of the freedom that is accessible through the recognition of the self-rejecting patterns of mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) An overview of the qualities of mindfulness as an expression of the awakening mind and heart.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Metta (lovingkindness) is a mind-turning practice, directing our heart and mind towards love and equanimity. How can we support ourselves to make this transformative turn?
(Gaia House) The Buddha's main instruction to us is how to 'turn our mind' toward that which is good and wholesome and brings the deepest happiness and peace. How do we do that?
(Gaia House) When awareness mingles with sensations in the body, it is like returning home after a long journey. So why is it so hard to rest in the immediacy of our experience called 'body'?
(Gaia House) To live freshly we will need to go beyond all that is known and familiar to us, which we avoid at all costs. Why do we hold on so tightly when what we are longing for is in the relaxation and letting go?
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This talk explores two of the Buddha's discourses that teach how to establish equanimity associated with insight. He teaches us what leads to more happiness and what leads to more suffering, and essentially, how we can cultivate more pleasure in our lives.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This is a 45 minute introduction and a guided meditation on Equanimity. By repeating certain phrases, we can decondition our reactive attitude and open our heart to the way things are.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Our mind becomes obsessed with three views that define who we take ourselves to be, me, mine and myself. Born from confusion about the way things are, we see ourselves and others in a narrow, contracted way and lose contact with our deepest nature. This talk is a clear and candid exploration that encourages practicing with awareness to find out what is true about this person I take myself to be.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) We usually view difficulties in our life as obstacles or inconveniences, but when we turn toward them as our path to awakening, the expression of our understanding is Compassion.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Conditions in our life are always changing and out of our control. We search for peace in the conditions rather than realizing peace comes from accepting that they change and ultimately, we cannot control the way things are.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) When we are identified with these five mind states they are called hindrances to seeing the way things actually are. Each one is explored along with skillful antidotes to overcome them.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is compassion and how do we open to our compassionate heart? And as we let GO OF our self interest AND demands ON LIFE TO BE THE WAY WE WANT IT TO BE and turn toward our own pain and other's pain, compassion can awaken in our hearts.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Mindfulness in body as ground will help us to deal with our physical and emotional feelings in a non-reactive way. What does equanimity truly mean in dealing with difficult feelings.
(Unknown) Our spiritual practices allow us to reconnect with our deepest caring for our own happiness and well-being. When this is awakened, we purify our heart and our caring expands to include all beings everywhere.
(Gaia House) As the force of identification with our body, mind and feelings gets weaker, the sense of 'me-ness' weakens. Then, the 'I' is not so demanding and we small the perfume of selflessness.
(Gaia House) Sometimes mindfulness of the body is neglected for more exalted meditation experiences. However, the first foundation of mindfulness points to the importance of grounding in the body as a central support for presence and connection to our experience, which allows for a deeper investigation into the nature of things.
(Gaia House) Our meditation practice encourages letting go of what is familiar and secure to allow a deeper intimacy with the way things are. As we do this, we open the door to love, trust and the mystery of the unknown.
(Unknown) When we speak of the healing power of mindfulness, we mean healing the clinging mind. For this, we draw on mindfulness that opens the door to our wisdom and compassion, so we can see the truth clearly with a kind and loving-heart.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) 'Doing' can create a lot of stress. As I examine and let go of habitual patterns, I open to the freshness of not knowing and experience a wise and direct engagement with life
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Mindfulness practice is a confrontation with what is true in each moment--we examine the ways we defend against painful experience so that we can open to the richness of being alive.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Freedom is the cessation of craving (tanha). What is tanha, how can we recognize it and what happens when it ceases.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we are identified with these five mind states they are called hindrances to seeing the way things actually are. Each one is explored along with skillful antidotes to help overcome them.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Using the Buddha's teaching on the Four Ways of Undertaking Things, we can examine what the basis is for our choices. Is it ego that imposes an idea of what is right or wrong? Or can we listen more deeply to our inner wisdom?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Every moment is a revelation of the Four Noble Truths. What kind of suffering do we have influence over? Once we deeply understand the nature of impermanence, freedom from suffering is close at hand.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Understanding Anatta. Our personality doesn't have to dissolve in order to understand the not-self nature of who we are.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What keeps our heart from expressing pure lovingkindness? Understanding "tanna" or clinging, that gives rise to attachment & aversion, is the obstacle.
(Gaia House) There is no need to be afraid of our personality....embracing all the condtions of our experience brings us to deeper levels of understanding. By recognizing times of deep contentment in ourselves, we plant a cellular memory of happiness that allows us to more easily find a natural resting place for the mind.
(Gaia House) How do we express ourselves authentically, without falling into the extremes of indulgence and repression, where our ego is out of control, where we withdraw, hide behind our Buddhist practice, and lose touch with our vitality and our awakeness?
(Gaia House) What is your experience like when you feel safe enough to open your heart? When we pay attention directly and we are not rejecting our experience, we can explore the quality of love in three centres of Being - head, heart and belly.
(Gaia House) Mindfulness illuminates our present experience and allows for the qualities of openness, curiousity, interest and trust to arise as we explore what it means to be awake to our experience, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is mindfulness? Exploring the qualities of mindfulness: knowingness, openness, curiosity and kindness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) Looking directly at the original text in the Satipatthana Sutta on the third foundation of mindfulness, how does the Buddha instruct us and what supports this contemplation.
(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) We are not trying to eradicate our personality, but as our experience becomes more infused with Nibbana, we experience our personality in a fresh way.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How do we reconstruct or refashion the self into a whole person.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The First Noble Truth acknowledges two aspects of suffering, one we can change and one we can't change. It also asks us not to personalize our suffering.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Our mind moves to manipulate our experiences to find a way to be happy. When we stop and embrace our experience, even when difficult, this present attention opens us to our deeper nature.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What can we trust? Can we trust our conceptual framework of right and wrong? The Buddha's teachings point to something more reliable. What is it?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) To realize the deepest levels of equanimity, we need to let go of all our ideas of what equanimity is, and this is what drops us into the unmoving stillness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We steady our mind through developing concentration and come to know our own innate nature as still, yet firm and supporting. We discover a ground to our being that that allows us to meet the challenges of life in a balanced way.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How do we practice effort that is directed towards freedom from suffering and brings us emotional strength and balance? How do we awaken "natural effort" that leads to effortlessness?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We often compare where we are now to some ideal state and get caught in the painful habit of rejecting our experience. How do we transform this habit in order to come into connection with the truth of the way things are.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Realizing the truth of non-clinging is the heart of the Buddha's teaching and one that leads ultimately to the realization of selflessness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is the pathway to go "behind all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life"? A primary focus on judgement.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The judging mind wants to dictate our reality. Once this is accessed, spacious mind opens.
(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) What is the path of serenity? What is the path of insight? The gradual training for developing concentration.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we embody our experience fully, the idea of what we think will bring relief from our unhappiness drops away, and allows us to drop into the true source of our happiness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Desire supported by ignorance leads to narrow self-interest. Desire nourished by wisdom has the potential to change the world.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) True practice is knowing that you are already a manifestation of compassion without trying. Knowing that, we let go of what is false and keep returning to our peaceful heart.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Moving out of duality of right and wrong -- we can learn to listen to our intuitive wisdom rather than be driven by our fearful and confused thoughts.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we understand that our happiness and unhappiness depends on our actions, then we can act with intentions that are loving and generous. This is what brings about the happiness we long for.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Metta practice works it's magic by reflecting back our momentary experience so we can see where we are still holding. Embracing these parts of ourselves leads us to the boundless heart of metta.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) If we learn to act from intuitive wisdom, rather than our ideas of how we should act, we can make wise choices that will lead to a balanced mind and a compassionate relationship to life.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) We are constantly searching for that which will free us from our anxiety. By investigating the energy of grasping onto things, we can begin to let go and come to know deeply the difference between ordinary happiness and true happiness of the Buddha.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) We journey together during the talk to awaken into trust of the universal now.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) An invitation to use adversaries to enhance our practice. This is the path to compassion. This talk invites us to use what is difficult in our lives to enhance our practice. Compassion awakens within us through opening our hearts to the challenging and painful. Approaching obstacles with a receptive attitude, we can enter into life with more courage and strength, and a deeper sense of connection
(Unknown) This talk invites us to use what is difficult in our lives to enhance our practice. Compassion awakens within us through opening our hearts to the challenging and painful. Approaching obstacles with a receptive attitude, we can enter into life with more courage and strength, and a deeper sense of connection
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The only thing fixed in the universe is our perception; everything else is already free. How do we transform our sense of stuckness?
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) A radical transformation can happen for us as we see through our solidification of concepts.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Examining our judgements so we can live with a wholehearted engagement with life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Our search for comfort, security and contentment shapes our world yet eludes us. How can we find true happiness--the happiness of the Buddha.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Finding true refuge in love and faith, rather than in the "things" of life.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Is the problem in what is happening, or the way we relate to what is happening?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When wanting and not wanting quiet down, one can know true being.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) When we meet difficult experiences through embodiment rather than transcendence, it increases our capacity to open to the immensity of our life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) to awaken to the stillpoint requires a complete shift in the way we relate to activity and time, without their end.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Why "being awake" in our lives seems like a threatening prospect, and how to overcome our fear of this.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Striving to be better than we are interferes with embracing our essential wholeness right now,
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) There are two currents, the worldly current and the Dharma current. Follow the Dharma and your world will transform.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Our intentions shape our reality, but suffering ends when we let go of attachment to the outcomes.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) If we don't suppress or indulge our emotions but befriend them, we open the door to freedom.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) By letting go of our attachment to conceiving, we touch a deeper reality.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Turning toward ourselves with awareness rather than away in fear is a movement of love.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) what is compassion? can we open to the painful element of life without recoiling in fear?
(Gaia House) Can we really let go, or is true letting go the by-product of understanding the pain of holding on? What does it mean to let be?
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Allowing ourselves to feel our minds without identification.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Seeing resistance as the root of suffering.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) delving into the sweet taste of emptiness: where do we look
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The spiritual journey is not about becoming better.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Settling into the rhythm of how to be with ourselves.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) surrendering to the truth of your own experience