This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet, Dorothy Hunt, “Peace is this Moment Without Judgment.”
Acceptance is radical because it undoes our resistance to reality. This talk explores how our meditation practice can cultivate a liberating acceptance, a heartspace that includes all of life and enables us to respond to our world with deep intelligence and compassion.
Using our imagination is useful for extending the range of what feels and thereby is possible for us. Yet, we might feel (or imagine) like the teachings and practices we do are to be with reality more directly than via imagination. But, is it that even possible?
James and Eve are delighted to host the first in person meeting at the Berkeley Buddhist monastery since Covid changed our lives.
In addition to a Dharma talk and exploration about Sangha, Eve brings her guitar and shares some music.
Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.
The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.
Following the noble eightfold path is caring enough to truly live. This talk also touches on the three kinds of dukkha, and the three kinds of craving.
In this retreat, we will be looking at compassion through the lens of the 7 Factors of Awakening. We are calling it the 7 Factors of Compassion and we'll be exploring how a compassionate response to each of the factors supports awakening. Tonight I am exploring the intersection of compassion and mindfulness, investigation, and energy.
