Dharma Seed - dharmaseed.org: Eugene Cash's most recent Dharma talks: Recent Episodes
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I am intrigued by how we can live the 'holy life' as lay people. How do we erase the imaginary line between formal sitting practice and the rest of our lives? How can we bring full engagement to formal and informal practice? Is it possible to embody, in our lives, the understanding and insight that comes with intensive training? And can we live our lives in a way that expresses and continues to deepen our realization? These questions fuel my practice and my teaching.
I place a lot of emphasis on the Buddha's teaching about mindfulness of the body. The body is a powerful dharma gate. I encourage people to deeply investigate the body and use it as a place of recollection in daily life.
Our individual and cultural habits, our confusion, all require a sincere and ongoing commitment to spiritual life and practice. In order to mature our 'layastic' practice, we need to develop a palette of practices: mindfulness, loving-kindness, inquiry, reflection, precept practice, service, sutta study, etc.
I believe passionate engagement is the foundation of the spiritual path. Spiritual life blossoms when mindfulness is woven with a heartfelt sense of loving-kindness and compassion. With warm mindfulness as the basis of practice, our attachment to identity, roles and experience begins to loosen. As our experience and understanding matures, faith develops. This nourishes a devotion to practice which further deepens our insights.
It is precious to be born in the human realm and have an opportunity to practice and awaken. May we appreciate our inheritance and bring to life the teachings of the Buddha.
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) The world suffers. But most people have their eyes and ears closed. They do not see the unbroken stream of tears flowing through life; they do not hear the cry of distress continually pervading the world. Bound by selfishness, their hearts turn stiff and narrow... It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom and makes the narrow heart as wide as the world.~Nyanaponika TheraTo support San Francisco Insight Meditation Community, please go here: sfinsight.org/donate
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Knowing Impermanence Experientially is the doorway to Freedom. We see we can't hold on to anything! Letting Go– Not Clinging brings the Freedom to Be. Anicca vata sankhara chant: 'All conditioned things are impermanent. Their nature is to arise & pass away. To live in harmony with this truth. Brings the highest happiness'. Anicca vata sankhara chant.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How Relaxing into the Simplicity of Awareness brings an Intimate experience of the Knowing of Aliveness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Contemplating our mortality personally as well as learning how Buddhism utilizes Mindfulness of Death as a gateway to Awakening. The Advice to Anathapindika gifts us with the deeper teachings on letting go of attachment; letting go of our identity; letting go of life!
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Discovering how Right Effort leads to being present, awakening and realizing the Truth of the Dharma. We explored different currents of Rt. Effort: gentle; relaxed; willful; strong; fierce. We examined why and when different streams of effort might be skillful.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What makes humans precious? The magic, mystery & wonder embodied consciousness that is characterized by the Oneness of Birth-and-Death, & the paradox of unity of suffering and awakening being in Precious Human Birth
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We explored the components & dynamics of the 1st Foundation: Breath; Body Posture; Parts of the Body; Awareness in all activities of the Body. We examined the Insight with leads to being Independent- Not clinging to anything in the world.
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) “This vanishes, that vanishes, but that which knows their vanishing doesn’t vanish... All that remains is simple awareness, utterly pure.” - Maha Boowa
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) Celebrating the Dying & Rebirth of the Light. “You can pick all the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.” - Pablo Neruda
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) The beauty and mystery of each moment and its fugacious mystery. “Leave the circle of time and join the circle of love” — Rumi
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is to Awake? What is it to Awaken? Different forms and levels of awakening. How awakening begins in each moment. The relationship of love & awareness to awakening in Buddhist teachings and suttas.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring our relationship to the living moment. Openings, reactions and illuminations with the magic and mystery of Being Here.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Buddhist teachings on Death & Letting Go – Highlighting the sutta: Advice to Anathapindika. Appreciating his dying gift to us across time and space.
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) Exploring our live reality of waking up to change & discovery
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” — Wes Nisker
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) The support and functionality of Clarity and Mindfulness
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) The gift of truth is the most precious gift. The taste of truth is the sweetest taste. The Love of truth is the greatest love. Buddha (*Dharma means Truth)
(San Francisco Insight Meditation Community) Exploring the dynamism of dharma as we discover the potential for freedom here, in body, heart & mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring the pith instruction from the Satipatthana refrain: 'one abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world'. This level of letting go or release reveal what is here: both ordinary mind and Luminous Mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring how we atone: become one with what our experience in meditation and with the truth of each moment. Learning Right Effort as relaxing and giving ourselves to the dharma experientially. True samadhi means to come into harmony with this moment and discover what unfolds now.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we practice we see each moment is Good whether whatever it is. We recognize the Goodness of each moment, the Goodness of being alive, the Goodness of Discover the truth and the Goodness of awakening to freedom. The whole dharma is sitting right here and it is Good!
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) This is the only moment there is! This is your life Now! What happens if you give yourself to that truth? What happens is we let go of everything else except Being here right now. We discover the magic of reality revealing itself in this moment. To love the moment includes all the variants of love: liking, appreciating, caring for, wondering about, become enthralled or magnetized by, curious about & illuminated by Now.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring the role of love as part of practice. Following our hearts to awaken what is true. Utilizing the devotional skill of loving the present moment and giving our hearts to respond skillful in each sitting and in out lives.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How the simple practice of being aware, develops and deepens leading to awareness. This brings forth the maturity of Awakening characterized by abiding in the Presence of Sati/Awareness.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploration of the four principles of the Satipaṭṭhāna refrain: Ardent, Fully Aware, Mindful and Free. Learning what it means when: 'one abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world' The freedom of letting go of everything.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What do you hold on to? What have you let go of? What do you experience as you let go right now?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Tell me something you know about death. Tell me something you don’t know about death.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring our understanding of death conventionally and from a Buddhist perspective
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring the different understandings and function of mind in experiential practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Discovering the simplicity and depth of who and what we are moment by moment
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Buddhist myth includes an alternative version of the Buddha's path in alignment with the Heavenly Messengers. Gotama Siddhartha wakes up to his 'intoxication' with youth, health, and life. He lets go of being intoxicated and seeks awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Dharma Talk: As we understand how to practice meditation we open the doors of the dharma to reveal truth and display the beauty and love of reality.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Satipatthana - Four Foundations of Mindfulness offers us specific meditation practices with the body, breath, in four postures, in all activities, with the elements, with death, vedana, the heart/mind and the dharmas including hindrances and the seven factors of awakenings. Each of these practices includes a through line: One abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. The not clinging to body, heart, mind or any experience is both the foundation of the Buddha's teaching and the doorway to freedom. It's the experience of coming into alignment with ' he way things are.'
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We explored how to practice with an embodied awareness 24/7. Practice using a full awareness that allows us to be mindful through the knowing our body experientially veiled of thoughts, ideas and commentary. This direct knowing is proprioceptive, kinesthetic, often referred to as felt sense knowing.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Gratitude arises as the 5th Brahma Vihara. It is a quality of heart ripened by our coming into harmony with the reality of life and death. As we waken to the truth that this is the only moment there is, we discover the magic, mystery and beauty of simply Being.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What it means to let go as we live and as we die. How can we begin relax with the fact that in actuality we can’t really hold on to anything? This truth helps us to come into alignment with the way things are! Reality is not static, it is ecstatic, always changing.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring Maranasati: Mindfulness of Death/Awakening to Life. This talk highlights the normalcy of Death. We survey how death is related to in various Buddhist traditions as well as discussing personal experience of death as part of contemplative practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Reality is not static. It changes, morphs and is impermanent. As we practice we see that we can’t hold on to anything. Letting go becomes the join of simply Being
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Collective Dharma Talk on the Brahmaviharas (Retreat at Spirit Rock
Pamela Weiss: Metta-Loving-Kindness Jozen Gibson: Karuna-Compassion Devon Hase: Mudita - Joy Eugene Cash: Upekkha - Equanimity
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The function of 'samadhi'-concentration, unification, absorption, jhana, in the service of awakening. How samadhi is cultivated, sustained and practiced traditionally as well as personally. What arouses and sustains ones investigative awareness in formal meditation and life? The joy of samadhi.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The function of 'dhamma vicaya'-Investigation in the service of awakening. How investigation is understood traditionally as well as conventionally. What arouses and sustains ones investigative awareness in formal meditation and life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Aging brings many surprises. We can develop a ‘big picture’ that includes the wisdom of equanimity and relaxation. This wisdom of not clinging or letting go is fundamental to the Buddhist goal of awakening. It also can arise as we age, let go of everything, as we see that we can’t actually hold on to anything. The freedom of letting go is part of the fruit of practice and aging.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Mindfulness of death is both personal and impersonal. Eugene gave a picture of his experience of death and it’s relationship to his personal practice that included his time as a hospice volunteer/trainer, as a son caring for his dying parents, and, his near death experience. He also outlined Buddhist teachings about death in the Theravada and Zen lineages.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Maranasati leads to being real and being grateful for both life and death. As we mature and deal directly with the truth of death we value life and the preciousness of existence. This reality brings gratefulness of all that is given–– our bodies, hearts, minds, the earth, sky, universe and each moment.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Anathapindika was one of the foremost householder followers of the Buddha. As he is dying Sariputta and Ananda go to comfort him. Seeing his imminent death they offer teachings never before given to householders. He receives the radical teachings of not clinging, letting go of all experience and waking up.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring the Buddhist teaching of Maranasati: Mindfulness of Death How it’s taught and how one personally works with, recognizes and manifests this practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Working with the conventional mind, including judging and comparing, and the unity of Small Mind and Big Mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How contemplating and practicing with our mortality brings forward human maturity and allows us to appreciate this precious human life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The radical teachings of letting go are offered to Anathapindika before he dies. He advocated these teachings be offered to all householders. How we practice radical letting go.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Great is the matter of Birth-and-Death. Life passed swiftly and is quickly lost Awaken! Awaken! Do not waste your life... Exploring mindfulness of death in Theravada Practice. Looking at the reality of human death in the world today and at the time of the Buddha. The paradox and potential of opening to the reality of death as part of life and Buddhist practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The function of samadhi, (concentration) in the service of awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Various ways to practice Right Concentration focusing on the lived experience of knowing, experiencing, feeling, sensing, discovering, becoming intimate with the breath.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring what we think death is and it’s role and function as part of Buddhist meditation and realization. We examine the role of death in our conventional lives with the arising and passing of roles, worlds we’re involved with & times and stages of our life that pass. What happens as we normalize the dying process as part of the great letting go. How does letting go reveal the awakened heart?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) What is it to age and how do we apply, learn and discover the dharma at this phase of life? We recognize the difficulties and joys of aging. Having lived a long life can bring a mature equanimity as the basis of our practice and life. Dharma points us to the simplicity of life and practice highlighted in Buddha’s instructions to Bahiya.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The primary dynamic that leads to freedom is letting go.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Gratitude arises naturally as we explore/open to the truth of the living impermanence of our lives. The dharma unveils various gifts of our aliveness. We recognize and become awake to the magic of life itself.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Recognizing letting go as a natural part of our life and death. The story of Anathapindika death, how he received the highest teachings and changed Buddhist culture so that these teachings are offered to all of the 4 fold Sangha.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring the celebration & relationship to death on Halloween and through the Zen practice of Segaki. We recognize the normalcy of death through Buddhist teachings, reflecting on our lives and in each moment of practice. Using reflection and meditation we discover how death leads to awakening and living our lives fully.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Maranasati – Mindfulness of Death is called The Supreme Mindfulness Practice by the Buddha. It teaches us to let go and value the fullness of our impermanent lives. Contemplating death reveals the paradox of dharma and death which are experience and known both personally and impersonally.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Guided Meditation followed by talk with Sister Abegail Nteko, moderated by Andrew Harvey.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The surprise of discovering the many domains of reality leads to understanding and freedom.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The meditative process includes active exploration of body, heart, mind, self and other - the whole of Reality. In addition to mindful awareness and kindness, waking up evokes our curiosity, wonder and intelligence as we discover the fullness of humanity living in each of us.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The meditative process includes active exploration of body, heart, mind, self and other - the whole of Reality. In addition to mindful awareness and kindness, waking up evokes our curiosity, wonder and intelligence as we discover the fullness of humanity living in each of us.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Storying, practicing and realizing the Dharma, erasing the line between retreat and everyday life practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The wise use of pleasure in Buddhism and meditation practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring the paradox of aging and dharma practice. Through dharma practice we discover the possibility of maturing as a human at ages 50 and older. Meditation uncovers what we know and the unknown through our presence, awareness and curiosity. The Two Truths reveal both conventional and ultimate truths of reality as we continue to practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Upekkha is the wisdom of the heart. It reveals a balanced, equipoise of heart and mind that is woven with love, compassion and joy. Often confused with detachment equanimity is a heart/mind resting in the wisdom of reality and awareness. It is the balance of heart/mind rooted in insight.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Practice reveals the Spontaneous Heart of Reality inherent in each human being. Becoming intimately aware of each moment of experience reveals the phantasmagorical reality available here and now. Know reveals not knowing. The Universal is revealed through the Personal. As the hardening of Heart relaxes the Dharma displays itself.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Paradox is at the heart of practice. It includes the teachings of suffering and the end of suffering; of self and not-self; and the Buddhist teaching of the two truths - relative and absolute reality being equally true.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we move closer to our direct experience, the body-heart-mind is infused with awareness. The simplicity of intimacy reveals the dharma within us.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Dharma is always right where you are, whether at Spirit Rock, or at home.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How the Dharma reveals the paradox of self/not self, paradox of boundless awareness, paradox of Big Mind and Small Mind.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Maranasati , Mindfulness of Death, reveals the potential for awakening as we live our life and open to the normalcy of death.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Things are not what they seem Nor are they otherwise - Buddha This talk explored the role and dynamic of paradox in Buddhist teaching and practice. We looked at the paradox inherent in the experience of the three characteristics -- anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatta (self and not self). As we relax with the paradoxical experience the three characteristics become portals to awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The curiosity and discovery of investigating the nature of reality opens us to simplicity and wonder.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Celebrating the Zen poet Ryokan, his life and teaching:
"What is the heart of this old monk like? A gentle wind beneath the vast sky."
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The truth of human experience is the doorway to awakening. Awareness reveals what is know and unknown.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Marana Sati, Mindfulness of life and death, is an inherent aspect of Buddhist teachings and practice. Both life and death are doorways to awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The skillfulness of not-knowing is part of practice and the contemplative experience. We are released from the limitations of the known with the inclusion of not-knowing. The skill and art of not-knowing becomes one of the doorways to awakening, realization and the continued maturation of our understanding. As the Zen monk/poet Ryokan said, "I do not know others. Others do not know me. Not knowing each other we naturally follow the way."
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Buddha's relationship to his body as a doorway to Enlightenment.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Discovering beginner's mind, not knowing and mystery on the path to awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The purpose and usefulness of embodied meditation: How to stay connected to the body.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Understanding practice to include deep retreat and the entirety of life.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Deepening concentration moves on two axis - horizontal and vertical. Continuity, or staying over time, is the horizontal axis. Intimacy, or the movement toward dissolving the subject/object, is the vertical axis. Together concentration deepens.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Citta - mind heart is open like silence, like space. Guided meditation resting in the sky like nature of mind.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What is awakening? What do we awake to? What do we awake from? What allows for awakening to unfold.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Dhamma practice opens us to the world of paradox and mystery. The Buddha's teachings on relative and ultimate truth reveal to us the seamless nature of the Path.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Why mindfulness of the body is the ground of all mindfulness teachings bringing body and mind together.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The judging mind helps hold the sense of self as a static entity. Compassion allows us to be with all manifestations, however painful, allowing for healing and release.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How mindfulness works with the construct of self - exploring the dynamic between self and not self.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Going home, we take the understanding of that the Dharma is our lives. We enter through various Dharma Gates, Sangha, Service, Meditation
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Openness, Acceptance, and Intimacy are qualities of Mindfulness practice that lead to awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) This talk was co-created with the participants of a beginners retreat at Spirit Rock. It was based on their experience and themes raised about practice.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Dharma opens us to a mystery--the mystery of awakening, of practice, of each moment. When we see through the eyes of mystery, the world reveals its inherent luminosity.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How do we make sense of the differing and sometimes contradictory teachings we hear; one of the fruits of practice is the resolution of paradox.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha describes how the intoxication with youth, health and life fell away. What allows for our intoxications to fall away? How does letting go happen? How do we cultivate awareness, kindness, presence and understanding that allow for the alchemy of release?
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Mindfulness of the body has the breath at the center and includes all four postures, movement, speaking, listening, feelings and all activity. We can practice mindfulness of the breath and also mindfulness with the breath - developing an enlarged awareness. This practice can take us all the way to enlightenment.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Often the power of mindfulness of the breath is underestimated. This talk illuminates the depth of breath as skillful means to develop samadhi, oneness, intimacy, mystery and awakening.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Reflections on Father’s Day and Buddha and his son’s teachings.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) How the three characteristics function to reveal the mystery of everyday life
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) "We are what we seek." This dharma (often translated as 'truth') is revealed by living a life rooted in the Truth. The teachings value the 'Truth' as a basis for mindfulness and virtue as well as the means to traverse the 4 Noble Truths and the 2 Truths of Relative and Ultimate reality.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha described 3 "intoxications" that fell away which set the stage for his enlightenment and the teachings of mindfulness and embodiment.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Exploring identification and attachment obscures the natural radiance. How dis-identification reveals the nature of mind. Buddha described a luminosity of mind. This talk explores the attachments and conceptualization that veil this luminosity and points us directly at the radiance of mind. Includes a guided meditation. The Buddha point to the luminous nature of mind. Our practice allows for recognition and realization of our natural luminosity.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How mindfulness of breathing helps us to develop concentration and samadhi.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Question and answer about the events of September 11th, 2001.
(Unknown) How do we live? How do we embody the teachings? This talk offers an explanation and overview of the Eightfold Path, as well as reflections on the path as the embodiment of the Dharma. To come into alignment with the Path is to come into alignment with our own nature.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A view of the Eightfold Noble Path as guidelines for coming into accordance with truth.