Intention, effort & stabilising.

Bringing awareness to the quality of mindfulness itself, and as needed, infusing it with kindness, compassion, appreciation or equanimity

This session starts with a guided meditation (30 mins). Followed by a reflection on the Sister Sela sutta. The latter part is a questions and response session. For privacy, the questions have not been recorded, but it should still make sense.

Instructions about mindfulness of emotions and difficult mind states.

Moving into the inter-reactive, inter-responsive world we can become distracted, scattered. Seeing the seeds or tendencies to act in worldly ways contributing to disparities and lack of fellowship, we hold our attention suitably, living with others calmly and peacefully.

What are we doing on retreat, and why? Reflections on how times of retreat are relevant to the whole of our life.

Short instructions and guidance for investigating mindfulness of mindfulness itself

Description pending

Exploring how these two work together to strengthen discernment about what's skillful, and what's unskillful. Includes some ways of working with more entrenched or intense afflictive mental states, bringing wisdom and compassion to them to help them release.

From Harris Park. Bhante Sujato on the four iddhipādās: chanda (desire, zeal, enthusiasm), viriya (energy), citta (awareness, clarity, knowing), vimamsa (inquiry). Included in the 37 factors that sum up the teaching and are the backbone of structure of the Samyutta Nikaya. Dhamma chanda: desire to get rid of desire. viriya: keeping going, not giving up. citta: mind; synonymous with samadhi and jhana = citta bhavana. vimamsa: reflecting, looking back, curiosity leading to wisdom.

40:19 Q&A (questions are précised) 40:33 Q1 History and geography teach us that ten thousand years ago people were living in filth, like animals. Yet the scriptures speak of many thousands of eons of lives. How are these [two very different time frames] possible? 43:00 Q2 Could you please give more tips and advice for real beginners in meditation? 50:08 Q3 Regarding the four foundations of mindfulness, is there one which is more important? 53:57 Q4 I have come to see doubt as a most important hindrance in my practice. I even doubt the existence of that thing called enlightenment. How can I get rid of that? 58:46 Q5 Regarding sense restraint, can you say more about practicing with sound here. 1:07:54 Q6 How can householders go deeper into vipassana with the limited time in their lives? 1:12:31 Q7 Could you clarify how we would do the Buddho mantra in our daily tasks

As we quieten the noise of aversion and grasping, some stillness and calm can arise in the spacious welcoming of our experience. We can start to feel a freeing of the heart from our often limiting agendas and sense that heart-mind can stay open, connected and engaged, even when we struggle or are not in control.

This talk explores the topic of Clear Comprehension (sampajañña in Pali) a powerful Dharma teaching on four different aspects of practice. In the Satipatthana Sutta the Discourse on the Four Foundation of Mindfulness, with regard to each foundation, the Buddha says the following: "Here, bhikkhus (practitioners), a bhikkhu (practitioner) lives contemplating the body in the body, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief..." Clear comprehension means more than just having bare attention. Understanding and applying these four facets of Clear Comprehension can support a real deepening of our Dharma practice.

The teachings on the Middle Way, in their different expression, all point to a dynamic, responsive balance that aims to avoid skewing to any side of a perceived polarity. They do not imply a "being stuck in the middle", nor do they promise that we can eventually find a place to land, settle and discover freedom in taking a side in any duality. The teachings on the Middle Way keep us on our feet, questioning, opening, refining. They reveal and offer the liberating perception of "Neither-Nor".

A guided meditation inviting us to be wth our experience without aversion or clinging, staying open to whatever is arsing in our awareness. Acknowledging that at times we identify and then soldify and even calcify around a position or way of seeing, we explore if it is possible to engage and take a clear ethical stance, without falling into the trap of extreme polarisation. Attending to experience in this way can potentially soften, calm, and mute our habitual reactions.

Feeling tone (vedana), reactivity and spaciousness.

A guided meditation beginning with a reflection on gratitude, opening to joy, and then cultivating Mudita - joy in the happiness of others.

A brief introduction to generosity as the foundation of this path of practice, then exploring generosity as support for skillful mental qualities to arise

Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.

Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.

How can we navigate through the extremes we encounter in experiencing and perceiving "ourself"? Can we let all parts belong, none of it ‘me’ or ‘not me’ ?

Softening the mind's tendency to polarise: the cultivation of friendliness and good will as an antidote to reactivity.

Paying attention we will recognise how irritation, fear, anger etc lead to contraction that will feed and strengthen the perception of polarities and "either-or". Can we see this is happening, without judgement? Can we open and soften to this with kindness, curiosity, humour and a spacious attitude, thus diminishing the creation of dualities?

The Fabrication of Dualities

Not-self, emptiness & dependent arising.

On this 54th anniversary of the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 55th anniversary of his talk, "Beyond Vietnam," at the Riverside Church in New York, we explore the nature of Buddhist practice to transform racism, in the context of examining the nature of awakening in the contemporary world. We start by asking whether we may be undergoing a kind of "Fourth Turning," in which there is emerging an expanded contemporary sense of awakening, which includes the transformation of forms greed, hatred, and delusion not explicitly identified in the traditional understanding of awakening. Answering the question affirmatively, we point to two broad areas of ignorance, related to psychological material, and to social conditioning and institutions. On this basis, we then use the traditional Buddhist framework of training in wisdom, meditation, and ethics (and action) to give a preliminary account of a Buddhist approach to transforming racism. From a wisdom perspective, we look particularly at the Buddha's response to the caste system, and his sense of caste divisions as arbitrary (and empty) constructions, followed by looking closely at the constructions of whiteness, blackness, and race in the colonies in the 17th century, linked with greed and the strategy of divide-and-conquer, which have been central to maintaining racism since then. We then look more briefly at the nature of meditative and ethical training in the transformation of racism. A discussion period follows the talk.

The four elements.

Reflections on the path of awakening, the Brahma Viharas, and advice for retreat.

Teachings; Introduction to Theme of Inquiry Practice

How does our concept of for whom we're practising shape our practice? Including our energy and enthusiasm, what we might do in the practice, and more…