Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia has been offering instruction in Theravada Buddhist teachings and practices since 1990. She is a student of the Western forest sangha, the disciples of Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Chah, and is a Lay Buddhist Minister in association with Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California. She has served as resident teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, taught many months at IMS's Forest Refuge, and served as a Core Faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She co-authored Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness, and Death and has written numerous articles for the Insight Journal of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
This talk examines sakkāyaditthi or self-view—the subtle way that we relate to experience from the vantage point of self. Through training and insight, sakkāyaditthi is eradicated at the first stage of awakening.
This talk is about sīlabbataparāmāsa—a subtle clinging to rites, rituals, precepts, and practices. We train in order to see and overcome this heady attachment to our practices (dāna, sīla, bhāvanā, mettā bhāvanā).
This talk is about sīlabbataparāmāsa—a subtle clinging to rites, rituals, precepts, and practices. We train in order to see and overcome this heady attachment to our practices (dāna, sīla, bhāvanā, mettā bhāvanā).
Going for refuge mirrors the process of waking up. We settle enough to know what we are experiencing (Buddha); we learn to let things be the way are (Dhamma); and we experience directly the happiness and release that comes from skillful behavior (Sangha).
This talk addresses several potential difficulties in practice – attaching to ideas about mindfulness and concentration, thinking that nothing is happening in practice, feeling half here and half not, and the tendency to “do” the practice.
The Buddha defines three kinds of conceit—conceit itself (māna), the inferiority complex (omāna), and arrogance (atimāna). Conceit is a player in giving rise to a sense of self and perpetuating it though ignorance. This talk offers practical guidance to help meditators see conceit and uproot it through understanding and insight.
This talk outlines the Buddha’s teaching on the three forms of craving—craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, and craving for non-becoming. Taraniya encourages the practitioner to use the retreat environment to observe craving in what may seem like minor or insignificant moments. These moments hold potential for major insights.
Given the conflicts, wars, and divisiveness over the past year, many people ask, “How do we practice with all of this?” Taraniya offers reflections on opening to difficulty, making practical adjustments in our lives to support inner balance, and increasing our capacity to manage mindstates through understanding and wisdom.
Here we look at fourth satipatthana and its specific instructions on what to see and how to see it—the five hindrances, the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the seven factors of awakening, and the four noble truths—with an eye to realizing how this practice helps us overcome self-view.
This talk examines popular strategies for behavior change such as willing ourselves into compliance and analyzing our history. And it contrasts these "old ways" with the strategies of Buddhist practices.
The Buddha never denied or affirmed the existence of a self. He merely noted that when we relate to the body, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness with attachment, we suffer. Non-identification with the body and mind frees us.
Making full use of perception of the new year to skillfully look back to where we have been and forward to where we are going. .. and at the same time, collapsing time to the present moment.
This talk looks at how we tend to form views based on likes and dislikes... and how we extend our views to form value laden statements about the world, the people in it and even ourselves. We move away from the direct experience into a world of fabrication and delusion. Our ideas become more real than the experience they represent.
This talk examines how the mind names or assigns qualities or characteristics to the things we contact. How it relates and draws associations to similar things we have known...and what it is like to attach to that.
What goes on in the mind when we remember things we have sensed, felt or thought in the past. It is through this activity of perception, and our attachment to it, that we have a very real sense of the past.
Perception is the function or activity of the mind through which we receive, sort and interpret sensory date. While it serves a very useful purpose... much of this activity is both unconscious and distorted. It is in our interest to see it meditatively and learn to relate to it skillfully.
This talk examines both the classical and subtle meaning of going to the Sangha for refuge. The classical refuge in Sangha involves going forth into monastic life and/or turning to elders for guidance along the way. The subtle refuge involves knowing directly the happiness that comes from keeping impeccable silā.
This talk examines both the classical and subtle meaning of going to the Dhamma for refuge. The classical refuge in Dhamma involves refuge in the teachings of the Buddha as set forth in the Pāli Canon. The subtle refuge involves taking refuge in things as they really are … understanding the subtle truths underlying all experience.
This talk examines both the classical and subtle meaning of going to the Buddha for refuge. The classical refuge in the Buddha involves refuge in the historic Buddha, while the subtle refuge occurs whenever we rest in the simple knowing of experience.
Using a simple example of stress in every day life, this talk examines the Buddha’s teaching on the first noble truth – particularly, “having to associate with things we don’t like, be separated from things we like, and not get what we want.” It considers the insights that accompany opening to this truth.
This talk examines how we attach to the meditation practice in a way that actually obstructs practice. More than anything else … difficulties in practice have to do with an incorrect understanding of practice rather than something we are doing or not doing.
Though its role in the process of waking up is pivotal, intention is very subtle, rarely conscious, and outside the control of self. Purification of intention is made possible through calm awareness of the things we think/do/say, kindness, and non-judging.
Over the years of practice we work with the precepts in a number of ways—using resolve and restraint, becoming acquainted with our karmic patterns and feeling the consequences of these, and strengthening skillful states by noticing what it feels like to do good, to behave well.
We confront many obstacles in practice—our karmic conditioning, cultural conditioning, and resistance to the realities of anicca, dukkha, anatta. In order to surmount these obstacles, anyone who wishes to progress along the path, must act on faith and the factors that support that.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
The Sabbasava Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 2 (All the Taints), deals with the eradication of the three taints: desire for sensual pleasure, desire for being, and ignorance. The taints are defilements brought about and strengthened by unwise attention. The seven methods are: Seeing, Restraining, Using, Enduring, Avoiding, Removing and Developing. This talk begins a five part series on this sutta. It addresses Seeing.
This talk looks at experience through the lenses of the Buddha's teaching in the five aggregates. We take a close look at the ways we cling to feeling, perception and formations.
This talk looks at experience through the lens of the Buddha's teaching on the five aggregates. We take a close look at the ways we cling to the body, feeling and consciousness
Through practice we learn to relate with non-attachment to the condition of the body and mind as well as the conditions of our lives. We do this through the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, the cultivation of samadhi, and the gradual eroding of self-view. Then we are well-positioned for insight.
The talk includes stories about learning generosity through giving to monks and nuns during the daily dawn walk (pindapad) in Thailand … that is, eeing how this opens a logjam in the heart and one experiences the sheer joy of giving. This talk also outlines and gives examples of the different kinds of giving as listed in AN 8.31 and 8.33.
This talk defines what constitutes the five spiritual faculties and what it takes to develop them. It offers a hands-on understanding of how faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom, when developed, lead to freedom.
This talk address the experience of wisdom as understanding the noble truths and the law of karma which results in a mind/heart that has replaced greed, hatred, and cruelty with non-attachment, kindness and compassion.
With so much emphasis on dukkha, on overcoming the five hindrances, etc., our practice can at times seem bleak. We can balance this and lighten the heart by knowing where and how to find the joy in practice.
Reflections upon (1) the importance of having a common value base and actively living by those values. (2) the great support that living in community offers, and (3) the importance of making an emotional connection with the teachings through devotional practices.
This talk examines the nature of the sense realm and considers how we give rise to craving in relation to sensory experience. It also examines the distortions that self-view sets up and the relationship between craving and the wrong-view of self.
This talk examines generosity, the quality of heart that takes us from self-absorption to open-heartedness. Generosity is one of the principle antidotes for the suffering states of greed, hatred and delusion.
This talk describes the use of contemplation and reflection in the meditation practice and explains the difference between reflective and discursive thought.
As meditators, we develop the capacity to relate anew to sensory input so that we are less and less preoccupied with the content of sensations, feelings and thoughts. From this new vantage point we are more able to see the clinging that leads to suffering.
Contemplating restlessness and worry -- what this mind state consists of and how to recognize it; name it; embrace it; and investigate it according to the Buddhist teachings.
Through meditation practice, we become more skilled at identifying what we
are experiencing, opening to it with a loving heart, and examining it with
an eye to insight. When we connect fully with what we feel, the heart is
not troubled and the nature of experience is apparent.
This talk spotlights things we experience during integration at the end of retreat and considers how to use re-entry well. Because of an enhanced sensitivity we are keenly aware of our usual mode of interacting, the impulsiveness of our actions, the impact of our speech. We also see our innate goodness with greater clarity. We need to feel the impact of all of this so that we reap the greatest benefit. Exhale retreat; inhale the rest of our lives. And try not to judge our practice.
Reflecting on the early years for practice–how we often try to get free of difficult states by engaging in battle with them. Gradually, we learn to shift from fighting mindstates to receiving them with an open heart. We see that there is a softening taking place simply through being willing to embrace them.
