As an introduction to Insight meditation we start with physical and mental relaxation, and then finding a home base or anchor for our attention in the stream of sounds, body sensations or what sensation arise in the body as we breathe. The first step is establishing steady calm abiding in the flow of the present.

Understanding Faith in the Buddha's teaching and in ourselves.

Includes beginning instructions for Metta practice and instructions for "Easy Being".

The Five 'Spiritual Faculties describe the unfolding of our practice. From Faith through Wise Effort, cultivating Mindfulness, deepening Concentration, flowering as Wisdom.

A guided meditation refining awareness of breath to deepen concentration.

When the body relaxes, Metta can permeate our being like a gentle rain.

The body is our home, our vehicle to freedom and our connection to the Great Mystery. This talk explores the skillful means and the opportunities of this foundational practice.

8-precept intro and chanting; at 15 minutes, practicing in the body instructions with body scan and practice guidance.

Gratitude, Generosity and Sila support happiness, joy, a sense of enoughness and renunciation. The practice of Sila is conducive to liberation.

Mind States, Moods and Emotions

When we meet hindrances with loving awareness they nourish wisdom & compassion.

Meeting hindrances with mindfulness & compassion.

A guided meditation directing forgiveness & metta toward our body, mind & heart

The Buddha described detailed steps we can take when developing and deepening our practice of mindful breathing. This talk covers steps 1-8 out of 16 classical steps given in discourses on this meditation.

With the further settling of the mind we can deepen our intimacy with the breath and body. From a wakeful connection to the body and a sense of happiness we can explore areas of pain and mental activity. With the calming of mental activity we open to deeper samadhi.

The importance of developing equanimity in our lives as meditators on the path of purification of mind/heart, and living in the world.

Guided meditation letting go of the primary object and allowing receiving each moment as it presents itself.

Sometimes we can misunderstand practice as mainly overcoming suffering. The Buddha spoke of cultivating and increasing wholesome states and being mindful of the "gladness of the wholesome."

Thinking subject

Dhammavicaya, the factor of discrimination, is one of the 7 factors. IT is a lens through which we can meet our experience, and cultivate understanding & insight.

Guided meditation exploring investigation/ inquiry/discrimination, through the lenses of wisdom.

As we further open our hearts to include even difficult people, it is very helpful to learn how to practice forgiveness. Often when deeply hurt our hearts hold resentments and yearn for accountability before it would be willing to risk opening again. And yet when others feel out resentment, judgment and the need for accountability they too shut down defensively. Starting with a good friend whom you have a history of love and trust, or even your companion animals, you can build a path of forgiveness. Some times we will never get full accountability, yet we can move beyond the pain of resentment to heal ourselves here and now.

This talk provides an overview of the Four Noble Truths, with primary focus on the Noble Truth of Dukkha and the Noble Truth of the Cause of Dukkha. Mindfulness of death is reviewed as a support for practice.

Compassion - Mindfulness, Kindness and Our Common Humanity

From the basis of our simple practices we can include mindfulness of how intentions and actions arise in reaction to what is pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral (vedana). The unconscious actions we take in response to vedana are the conditioning circumstances for our suffering. It behooves us to raise awareness to how our reactivity to vedana further conditions our patterns of craving, aversion, and ignorance.

In every moment of subjective experience there is a quality of pleasure, displeasure or neutrality. Bring mindfulness to the quality of Vedana trains us how not to add suffering when pain arises or pleasure fades.

Two Views of the nature of impermanence: The moment-to-moment view, and the infinite immensity view.

All experience arises and passed in the vast space of awareness. This meditation, adapted from Tibetan text, directs attention to awareness itself rather than the objects within the awareness.

Dukkha is an inevitable part of life, the 1st Noble Truth. How we meet it and work with it is a key issue of practice. If understood, it can be a doorway to liberation.

The Buddha's teaching leading to the freedom from the clinging to I, Me and Mine.

The Buddha taught that the six sense spheres of hearing, seeing, sensing, smelling, tasting and cognizing represent "the all". The Bahiya Sutta points directly to the sense spheres as not-self.

Fear of letting go and trust in the dharma

We are in an ever changing universe, yet conventionally don't understand this. Mindfulness brings us so much intimacy with things as they truly are that we wake up to this streaming nature. We have to let go of old habits of clinging to align with the stream we are in.

In the Dharma, it is said that there are Two Guardians of the world. They are actually inner guardians, or attitudes of mind, that support non-harming in our speech and behavior. This is a powerful cause for liberation to mature, resulting in a beautiful mind/heart.

Mindful awareness creates spaciousness for love to naturally shine through -- your true nature. The talk includes reminisces of Ram Dass, major benefactor of the insight meditation community, who passed away Dec. 2019 and whose practice was "I am loving awareness."

Guided meditation for embodying equanimity: neutral, friend and self

This talk emphasizes Wise Intention in the context of a long retreat: Wise Intention includes the three aspects of renunciation (letting go of the sense desire), loving kindness and compassion.

The highest of all teachings is "an appropriate response" that response that leads to the lessening of suffering for ones self and others. Less of a "thing" but more of an ongoing process of inquiry.

One of the great opportunities of sitting a long silent retreat is to take the momentum of practice forward into our daily lives.