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Tempel Smith's Dharma Talks
Tempel Smith
Tempel Smith spent a year ordained as a monk in Burma and teaches Buddhist psychology and social activism in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently part of the IMS/Spirit Rock Teacher Training Program.
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2025-07-14 Guided Forgiveness Practice 56:14
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From a base of loving kindness and compassion we can consciously aim our heart's attention into a practice of Forgiveness.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  Summer Lovingkindness Retreat
2025-07-12 Morning Instructions - Mettā (Loving Kindness) including Dear Friends 50:54
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Extending loving kindness meditation from the primary practice of ourselves and a chosen easiest being, we can open at times to include any dear friend whom also easily come to mind. At this stage of practice we are inclining out mettā practice to rest where mettā is easiest. This would be any beings for whom it is easy to see the good in them, and we easily feel warmth.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  Summer Lovingkindness Retreat
2025-07-10 1st Night - Why Come on a Loving Kindness retreat? 63:07
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What is special about a 9-day Loving Kindness retreat? The form of Buddhist practice helps cultivate positive qualities of friendliness and kindness, it helps purify old habits of defensiveness and hostility, and it help cultivate samadhi (concentration).
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  Summer Lovingkindness Retreat
2025-03-22 Three kinds of Nibbana in our western Insight traditions 52:57
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Within our blessed lineages of Venerables Ajahn Cha and Mahasi Sayadaw, and the teachings within the Pali Canon, we have found three kinds of nibbana. Nibbana is closely related to the full liberation from dukkha (suffering). To even talk about one kind of nibbana can be difficult as it is beyond language, yet there is another confusion within western Insight meditation. By practicing in Mahasi's Burmese meditaitons, in Cha's Thai Forest meditations, and here in North America, there are roughly three kinds of nibbana: a) an unperturbed background field of awareness, b) a perfect zero of cessation, and c) a stream of transient mind-body moments without greed, hatred or craving. Knowing of these three kinds of nibbana can clarify what our vipassana practices are aimed at.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
2025-03-17 Compassion Instruction and Guidance 51:33
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We need to explore how to find and develop true compassion which is a beautiful quality of opening our hearts to the suffering inside and outside ourselves. While there is pain in suffering we can actually grow to have a sweet heart of compassion when we know how to breath open heartedly in contact with pain and suffering. When we find true compassion we don't need to shrink back from what is difficult but rather use the commonalities of difficulties to feel warm and expanded.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
2025-03-15 The Process and Experience of "Streaming" 53:36
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The Buddha wanted us to learn how to wakefully "stream", to realize we are forever and only a stream of mental and physical phenomena. We have no part internally or externally which is permanent, though in daily life we subjectively feel as if there is a lot of dependably permanent parts of life. With the deepening intimacy of mindfulness all there is is a flow and change. With patience we can learn to find liberation within the universal aspect of impermanence.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
2025-03-13 Instructions and Guided Meditation: Choiceless Attention 59:12
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There is a style of mindfulness practice where we lightly attending a central, familiar anchor of attention, such as the breath or scanning the body, and then intentionally choose to watch our minds move through its habits and its nature. In this style of mindfulness practice we can watch our attention move through our six sense doors of stimulation. With this style of meditation we can directly see the dharma nature of our mind. With this style of practice we have to be careful we not lose attentiveness, which can be a shadow side of choiceless attention. We want to keep learning and discovering the dharma, and not space out into half committed mindfulness.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
2025-03-08 Vedana: The 2nd Foundation of Mindfulness 54:44
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An incredibly important aspect of mindfulness is to direct attention to "vedana" which is the tone of every moment which is either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This one tone of conscious experience is at the very root of all suffering and therefore all liberation from suffering.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
2025-03-07 Instructions and Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Thought 59:08
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5 mins for chanting refuges and precepts, then a careful guided meditation on mindfulness of thought. We create a base of being mindful with the breath and body to allow us some perspective on thought as a direct stream of phenomena.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
2024-05-02 DPP7 - Three Nibbanas in Theravada 1:36:21
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Spirit Rock has blessed lineages from both Ven. Ajahn Cha and Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw. From our deep connection to these traditional lineages, we can see at least three different kinds of Nibbana: 1. Nibbana for Everyone; 2. Dealthless Awareness; and 3. Complete Zero. As a maturing community of western Insight practitioners rooted in several lineages, we have the benefit of many styles of practice and Buddhist understandings. We also have the challenge of there being so many practices, and experience to where they lead. Here in this talk we explore three common understandings of Nibbana and how the various traditions guide us to them.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center :  DPP7 Retreat #5

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