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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2026-01-07
Practicing with Intentions
60:13
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Donald Rothberg
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We explore the centrality of being skillful with intentions in our practice and a number of different ways of practicing to cultivate skillful intentions, in part related to the New Year. We look at the Buddha's account of karma (kamma in Pali) as intention, and his teaching on the importance of reflection in living with skillful intentions. Remembering the Chinese Chan (Zen) teacher Yunmen's speaking of the centrality of "appropriate response," we develop a simple model for developing skillful intentions leading to skillful or appropriate responses.
We also explore the variety of types of intentions, and recent Stanford research about how we might skillfully (and successfully) follow intentions to develop new routines. We then look at the importance for identifying our deeper intentions of develop an intuitive listening to life and to what calls us, in part exploring the theme of listening through poems.
The talk is followed by a short guided meditation on intentions and then by discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2026-01-07
Guided Meditation Exploring Practicing with Intentions
35:36
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Donald Rothberg
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We start by tuning into our intentions, both our "larger" or "deeper" intentions for why we practice and a more specific intention for this practice session based on how we are in the moment (maybe really settled or maybe distracted by what happened yesterday). We then work to develop concentration (samadhi) in one of several ways, particularly setting an intention either to be more relaxed (if we tend to be "tight" and over-efforting) or to be more effortful (if we tend to be overly relaxed). We later tune in to how the practice is going and see if we want to respond with an intention. After a period focusing on developing concentration, we practice mindfulness, again after a while seeing how things are and whether we want to set a skillful intention related to mindfulness. We close with a series of reflections on what we want to let go of in the next period of time, and what calls us.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2026-01-02
Love and Emptiness: Finding Freedom in the Six Senses (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
49:40
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Devon Hase
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Drawing from the Culasunyatta Sutta and the teaching to Bahiya, this talk explores how the entire Buddhist path unfolds within the immediacy of our sensory experience. Emptiness is revealed not as a metaphysical abstraction but as the progressive letting go of what distracts us from what is peaceful—a movement from palace to forest to space to freedom itself.
The whole world exists within this fathom-long body and its six sense doors. Liberation happens here, in the seen, heard, sensed, and cognized—not through traveling to some distant realm, but through radical presence with what is. When we meet each moment of contact with the quality of spiritual friendship, recognizing the loving awareness we already are, even the difficult journey over open ocean becomes workable. We learn to fly between the lives we have and the lives we imagine, without the extra burden of complaint, held by the spaciousness of mind itself.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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New Year's Insight Meditation Retreat
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