How a poised mind creates compassion

Shaila Catherine gave the fifth talk in a series on Recollective Meditations. This talk describes the recollection of the Sangha, reflecting on the virtues of a community of practitioners at various stages of awakening. This reflection uplifts the mind and reinforces those virtues, which in turn leads to the Path of awakening. When one recollects the Sangha, one's mind is not obsessed by greed, hate, and delusion. In addition, when we are temporarily discouraged in our practice, when we reflect on the Sangha, we can connect with a group of people who have been practicing the Path of awakening for centuries.

This talk reviews the Vipallasa Sutta: the Buddha's teachings about the distortions of the mind on our perceptions, thoughts and views. It gives examples of how distortions of view impact the speaker and how we might work backwards to clear up distorted perceptions based on what we know about the nature of ignorance (Avijja)

This talk is an exploration of how our inner dialog can hinder or support the practice, based on the tone and intention behind our words. How do we transform the voice of the critic into a wise good friend?

The teaching, relevancy and understanding of Karma, which is one of Buddhism's central themes, is really quite accessible and even quite ordinary. It's not something to be believed in, but rather it is to be understood as we come to see and know it in operation. Karma is 'action' or 'deed'. In the context of the Dharma it is defined as "action based on intention". This talk explores how through clarifying and purifying our intentions via mindfulness based Buddhist meditation practice we can free ourself from the actions that repeatedly throw is into suffering……free ourself from repeatedly being re-born into the realm of suffering.