Mudita - das dritte der vier Brahmaviharas - wird als Mitfreude, wertschätzende oder selbstlose Freude bezeichnet. Sie ist die Herzensqualität, die das Gute, das Schöne, das Glück wertschätzt - in unserem eigenen Leben und bei anderen. Unser Leben ist reich an Anlässen für Mudita - seien es unsere Lebensumstände, die Schönheit der Natur, ethische, heilsame Handlungen und die Tatsache, dass wir dem Dharma begegnet sind und ihn praktizieren.

45 minute lightly guided meditation followed by a short teaching on impermenance.

Leerheit ist einer der wichtigsten, aber auch tiefgründigsten Begriffe im Buddhismus, denn die Einsicht in die Leerheit aller Phänomene befreit den Geist von Anhaftung und Ablehnung. Einfach zu sehen ist die Leerheit sozialer Konventionen. Traditionell wird Leerheit im Sinne der Abhängigkeit von Teilen und der Abhängigkeit von Bedingungen kontempliert.Die Einsicht in die Leerheit zeigt uns einen Mittelweg zwischen den Extremen von Nihilismus und Ewigkeitsglaube auf.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.

When we get stuck in difficult emotions like hatred, anger and fear, we are in a trance of separation – disconnected from the whole of our inner experience, each other and the web of life. This talk explores four inquiries that help us reconnect with presence and heart. Rather than reacting with aggression or blame, these inquiries allow us to respond to our struggling world with our naturally wise and caring heart.

Bodhicitta - der Geist des Erwachens - ist die altruistische Motivation, für das Wohl aller Wesen zu praktizieren und zu erwachen. Diese wunderschöne Motivation befreit die Praxis von Selbstzentrierung und Instrumentalisierung und macht den Geist glücklich. Wir erkennen, dass wir einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Welt leisten können.

Israeli Dharma Teacher Stephen Fulder joins James and shares about the current crisis in Israel and Gaza

Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a classical Buddhist technique for cultivating the warm qualities of the heart-mind. Please enjoy this twenty-minute guided meditation using phrases, images, and felt sense in wishing kindness for ourselves.

Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a classical Buddhist technique for cultivating the warm qualities of the heart-mind. Please enjoy this twenty-minute guided meditation using phrases, images, and felt sense in wishing kindness for a benefactor.

Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a classical Buddhist technique for cultivating the warm qualities of the heart-mind. Please enjoy this twenty-minute guided meditation using phrases, images, and felt sense in wishing kindness for a friend.

Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a classical Buddhist technique for cultivating the warm qualities of the heart-mind. Please enjoy this twenty-minute guided meditation using phrases, images, and felt sense in wishing kindness for strangers.

Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a classical Buddhist technique for cultivating the warm qualities of the heart-mind. When we cultivate the intention of kindness for the challenging people in our lives, we grow our capacity to hold everyone in unconditional love, even if we don't agree with their choices. Please enjoy this twenty-minute guided meditation using phrases, images, and felt sense in wishing kindness for a difficult person.

Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a classical Buddhist technique for cultivating the warm qualities of the heart-mind. Please enjoy this twenty-minute guided meditation using phrases, images, and felt sense in wishing kindness for all beings.

45 minute lightly guided meditation followed by a short (10-15 minute) teaching on Wise Attention, Careless Attention, and Views

This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world. …calling on the presence of your heart and offering whatever blessing or wish you’d like to offer to yourself… whatever prayer of care. Then in that heart-space including other beings in this world. Holding the world in your heart and sensing your prayer of care for all beings. ~ Tara (from the meditation)

Stephen Fulder is a senior Buddhist teacher, author and peace activist who lives and teaches in Israel. In this conversation Stephen shares about his experience during the unfolding violence in the Middle East, and what he and his community are doing to tend to the huge trauma people are feeling. He talks about being with intense fear and emotions, and how to talk with those who have very different views. And he shares about the past decades of the deep and powerful work he’s been involved in, bringing groups of Israeli and Palestinian people together to find their shared hearts and humanity. Together Stephen and Tara look at what our true refuge is in the midst of a world in crisis and pathways that can carry us to that precious space of equanimity, compassion and love.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

Es wird auf den Zusammenhang von Weisheit und Mitgefühl hingewiesen. Die Grundlage von Mitgefühl ist die tiefe Güte des menschlichen Herzens, Metta. Güte verringert unser aller Leid. Sie stellt keine Bedingungen und kann nicht zu Enttäuschung führen. Sie ist eine unendliche Kraft in unserem Herzen, in Angesicht von Leid wandelt sie sich in Mitgefühl, wird Wohlergehen wahrgenommen, entsteht Mitfreude. Die Ausdehnung unseres Blick führt uns zu der Motivation von Bodhicitta.

Geisteszustände leiten uns in unseren Handlungen und führen entweder in die Richtung von Leiden oder von Frieden. Kilesa oder Klesha werden die Befleckungen genannt, die Unheil hervorbringen. Sie wollen wir erkennen und einordnen. Die Gegenmittel liegen im rechten vierfachen Bemühen, das direkte wertfreie Gewahrwerden fördert ihr Verstehen und erlaubt eine freie Entscheidung des Umgangs mit ihnen.

45 minute lightly guided meditation followed by a short (10-15 minute) teaching on getting stuck and unstuck

Achtsamkeit führt zum Gewahrwerden der drei Merkmale des Daseins. Ihr Erkennen ändert uns tiefgreifend. Worum handelt es sich hierbei? Und wie erkennen wir sie? Im Zentrum stehen Vergänglichkeit, anicca, und Nicht-Selbst, anatta.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

Loch Kelly is an author, psychotherapist and highly respected meditation teacher known for his instructions for effortless mindfulness. Our rich and wide-ranging conversation includes themes of interconnectedness, the natural weaves of psychology and meditation, the healing of self-compassion, the power of short glimpses into the nature of reality, RAIN, prayer, awakening through social identities, turning toward dying, centering joy and much more! Loch Kelly is the creator of the new groundbreaking Meditation and Wellness App, Mindful Glimpses. This new app seamlessly weaves together ancient wisdom, cutting-edge psychology, and neuroscience research. Drawing from over 40 years of mindfulness teaching and psychotherapy practice, Loch Kelly has crafted an app that provides simple yet advanced micro-meditations to return you to home base anytime of the day.

Our attention habitually fixates on the foreground of thoughts and feelings, and fuels an unconscious identification with a sense of separate self. This meditation guides us in recognizing the awareness that is the background and source of all experience. By resting in and as the awareness that we are, all sense of separation dissolves revealing the vastness and oneness of Being.

When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love.

When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

Refuge is a word that is often used in Buddhist teachings. We long to feel safe and protected from inner and outer harm. When everything seems out of control where can we find true refuge? How can the practice help us hold it all? This talk refers to a highly recommended conversation on the Mideast situation between two women (one Israeli, one German) who give communication trainings based on Nonviolent Communication: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16F_lL4N1w.

Reflection & Guided Meditation on the Four Elements as a support for shifting the cultural narrative

Brief meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

Overview of the Noble Eightfold Path

Le chemin que le Buddha propose est un chemin de bonheur, de joie, de plaisir, tout le long du chemin. Quel est le rôle de la célébration dans le chemin du Dharma? La célébration nous permet de nous retrouver, de s’arrêter pour apprécier, plutôt que continuer à courir et à chercher autre chose et ailleurs. Faire une pause et s’ouvrir à ce qui est là - la célébration nourrie la joie et le bonheur, elle nous permet d’ouvrir le cœur.

Guided Meditation on the Five Elements and Impermanence

Reflection & Guided Meditation on Metta, Mudita and Awareness of the More-Than-Human-World

Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment-to-moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”

The Dalai Lama regularly says that everyone wants to be happy, nobody wants to suffer. Arthur Brooks, in his new book on getting happier (co-authored with Oprah Winfrey) digs into the practical and science-based approaches that increase deep wellbeing. In this conversation Tara and Arthur discuss the ingredients of happiness, the role of unhappiness in our lives, how to work with core ego-fears, the power of metacognition, the necessity of transcendence of small self and the love that is the grounds of true happiness. Learn more about Arthur’s work & pick up a copy of his new book, Build the Life You Want at: https://arthurbrooks.com.

Reflection & Guided Meditation on the Six Elements & Awareness

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

Somatic Practice, standing

The barrage of frightening headlines every day often leave us with feelings of despair, hopelessness and negativity. While it's important to feel connected to the suffering all around us, it is equally important to nourish ourselves by opening to the goodness in life--both inside and around us. This helps us skillfully create a larger container so that we are not overwhelmed by the dukkha but rather can process it with balance and skill.

With selfless awareness, we practise good-will, radiating loving-kindness inwardly and to all beings, even to those who are indifferent or hostile, or to those who cause harm. This is the Buddha's instruction to us in the Metta Sutta. Can we unequivocally wish all beings freedom from harm? Can we forgive enough to convert thoughts of fear, anger or enmity into benevolence? It takes courage to enter a dark space without a light. So we try as much as we can because unconditional compassion and kindness in this world give peace, healing and reconciliation a chance.

Brief meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

The Buddha realized a state of pure awakened consciousness. We try to emulate his moral excellence by turning inward to bring the mind to silence. In that stillness, we can relinquish habitual unwholesome and harmful thoughts, thus revealing the same universal moral essence within us – just as in all beings. It is our pathway to the heart’s peace and freedom from suffering. Here, when loving-kindness and compassion preside, the gates to the Deathless are open.

This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love.

Our deep potential is to live from an awake, loving heart. This talk looks at how, with a kind and mindful attention, we can decondition habitual tendencies toward grasping and self-centeredness, and nourish the sense of connectedness and care that gives rise to generosity. As we bring these heart practices alive in our most immediate relationships, they have the power to evolve consciousness in widening circles across the world.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

Brief meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep breath, and awakening a full relaxed presence as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm. Resting fully in this presence is the gateway to deep peace and inner freedom. “Little breath breathe me gently, row me, for I am the river I am learning to cross.” – W.S. Merwin

The divides in our world can only exist if we humans are divided from our own full being and habituated to divides with others. In this reflection we explore bridging inner and relational divides as the grounds for evolving consciousness in our species and awakening to more connectedness and love in our world.

This talk explores the intersections of Dharma wisdom and insights from modern psychology on how we can discover a reliable refuge in loving awareness.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

The core teachings of the Buddha offer us a ready escape from the hells of hatred and hostility. Though the heart is perturbed, we reach deeply into our core to connect to that aquifer of Dhamma within us, calming the mind again and again. This fiber of peace is more than an intention. It's energy sets in motion the wheel of Truth that stirs us to forgiveness, restores us to kindness, and compels in us a breadth of compassion for all beings and all conditions. At last, even in the face of vitriolic treatment, wisdom and peace shall prevail. We are in the shelter of the Sacred.

Brief meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, a scientist and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has authored a number of books, including bestselling “Born to be Good” and most recently “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life”. Our conversation covers the biological, evolutionary and cultural bases of human goodness and the centrality of awe in the human experience. We explore the blocks to experiencing our full potential, and ways we can cultivate our innate capacity for finding wonder, love, creativity and beauty in our daily lives. Learn more about Dacher’s latest book at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622175/awe-by-dacher-keltner/

Brief meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

When our body and mind is relaxed, we become filled with a very awake, dynamic quality of presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing, opening our senses and resting in the vastness and inherent freedom of our own natural awareness.

When physical or emotional pain is too much, our conditioning is to pull away and avoid direct contact with raw feelings. The result is a trance – we are split off from the wholeness of our aliveness, intelligence and capacity to love. This talk explores how this dissociation shows up in our lives and how mindfulness enables us to integrate cut-off parts of our being in a powerful way, and awaken from this trance.

Brief meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

Let us not serve the false, fierce tyranny of fear – withering, unworthy, not to be clung to, and not who we are. By emptying the mind of fearful thoughts, we stop clinging to anything of the world – one moment at a time. Tasting the joy of true freedom, we enter that dimension of transcendence, beyond the prison of grasping a self and all its adornments. For there is no 'one' to be afraid, no ‘one’ who dies, and no ‘one’ to awaken. But there is waking up as we let go into the peace of selfless awareness.

Across millenia, the Buddha speaks of his awakening – teaching us how to take refuge, how to be fearless, how to walk the Middle Way, how to understand suffering, and how to know what to trust. Fear is the opposite of trust. So be willing to relinquish concepts and questions and let yourself live into the answers day by day where fear can end – there in the pure sanctuary of the heart. For this, we learn to have compassion even for those who kill us. But we must give up what is not trustworthy. With courage, compassion, and clear awareness of what we face now, stay quietly present and listen carefully. The truth will speak, and we shall understand.

This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, “Walk Slowly,” by Danna Faulds.

Our deepest longing is to feel our belonging to each other and all life. This reflection examines the primary forces that keep us trapped in a trance of separation. We then explore two powerful dimensions of spiritual practice that can undo trance and reveal the sentience and love that is our shared essence.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

This Thursday our meeting will take place just as we arrive at this year's Winter Solstice (7:27pm Pacific Time). This longest night of the year has given rise to many holidays of light (Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Soyal, the winter solstice celebration of the Hopi Indians, and many others). We will explore accessing the light within as we experience the solstice and navigate the shadow within us and in the world.

Could we really love if we lived forever? There is no true love without suffering. This is revealed through our mortality and the impermanence of all conditioned things. We are not the body but its fragility reflects our true essence. Just as when a candle melts, the flame burns. Just as the sun arises out of the darkest night, so too, our awakening to truth is grounded in understanding the Buddha's Noble Truth of suffering. We witness how suffering begins, how it ends, and how to free ourselves from it. As the heart breaks open, we are waking up to the truth of what we are, nothing less than unconditional love. In the words of Victor Frankl, “To give light, we must endure burning.”

Meditation followed by a dhamma talk.

This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source. The meditation closes with “Walk Slowly”, from the poetry of Danna Faulds.

When we are lost in the trance of doing, our lives are on automatic, and contracted by sense that something’s wrong or missing. This talk explores the challenges of learning to pause, and the blessings that arise when we step out of our incessant mental and physical activity and reconnect with the being-qualities of presence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives). “The deepest expression of love is this non-doing presence because that’s when we are inhabiting who we really are.”

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

As we come to the last gathering of the year, join us online as we will reflect on this moment together--looking back at the past year, seeing where we are right now and getting in touch with our vision for the upcoming year. We will mark this time together with an end-of-year ritual and support each other in our intentions for the New Year. Please bring a candle, some pare and a writing implement.