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Dharma Talks
2021-12-01 Hindrances and Distractions: Portals to the Path (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 64:39
Susie Harrington
The path of practice has many challenges. How we meet those and turn toward them and learn form them is possibly the most important aspect of our practice. This talk looks at these challenges in the retreat setting and suggests ways of meeting them.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Concentration and Insight

2021-12-01 The Parami of Sila - Good Relations 58:04
Jeanne Corrigal
This week we continue our exploration of the Parami - ten qualities that can support the mind and heart to cross the floods of challenges that can sweep us away. We turn to the practice of sila, which Jeanne likes to translate as good relations, and ways that we can reflect on our skillfulness as a support for joy.
Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community Wednesday Night Talks: The Parami (2021-2022)

2021-12-01 Introduction to Metta practice 40:17
Jean Esther
Short description of metta as an antidote to ill will followed by a guided practice with a focus on a benefactor or easy person
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center Freedom of Heart and Mind: Insight Meditation Retreat

2021-12-01 The Seven Factors of Awakening 2: Cultivating Mindfulness and Equanimity in Formal Meditation and in Daily Life 69:14
Donald Rothberg
Our practice aims at awakening (and awakened beings help others awaken). We review briefly the nature of awakening for the Buddha and later Buddhist traditions, and the centrality of the teaching of the Seven Factors of Awakening. We then explore the two foundational factors--mindfulness and equanimity--identifying their core qualities, as well as how to practice to cultivate each of these factors, both in formal meditation and in the movement of daily life. There is a talk and then discussion.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks

2021-11-30 Evening Dharma Talk (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 64:09
Dawn Scott
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Concentration and Insight

2021-11-30 Patience is Love 25:50
Ayya Medhanandi
Patience is love, a faith both fearless and true. How can we know and embody that? How can we value each moment and care for it, patiently turning the mind away from the world to the peace within us – to that raw dimension of a subtle and stunning silence? The less we cling, the deeper we enter it. Emboldened by formidable spiritual tests, as we abandon and purify the mind, the Path unfolds beneath our feet. With joy, wisdom, and gratitude, we persevere to the heart’s freedom – the Deathless.
Sati Saraniya Hermitage

2021-11-30 Guided Meditation: Anchoring Attention and Settling (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 1:13:47
Oren Jay Sofer
Morning instructions of Day 1 offering an overview of how and why to use an anchor to support settling and collecting
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Concentration and Insight

2021-11-29 Week 7, Part 2 31:42
Juha Penttilä
Guided Meditation
Gaia House Exploring Anatta (online series)

2021-11-29 Week 7, Part 1 60:45
Juha Penttilä
Final Notes
Gaia House Exploring Anatta (online series)

2021-11-29 Four Brahma Vihara Supporting Meditation 33:00
Ajahn Achalo
Four Brahma Vihara as a support to developing mindfulness and wisdom. A talk given to students of the Mahachula International Buddhist College Nov 29, 2021.
Mahachula International Buddhist College

2021-11-28 Refuge in the Way It Is - Meditation 30:22
Mark Nunberg
Common Ground Meditation Center Weekly Dharma Series

2021-11-28 Refuge in the Way It Is - Talk 59:08
Mark Nunberg
Common Ground Meditation Center Buddhist Studies: The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness–Mindfulness of Dhammas

2021-11-28 Impermanence ~ Allowing Ourselves to be Changed by that Truth 21:51
Ayya Santacitta
Talk & Guided Meditation | Tilorien Monastery
Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery

2021-11-28 Reflection on Dukkha & the Elements 22:02
Ayya Santacitta
Tilorien Monastery
Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery

2021-11-28 The Relationship Between Wakefulness and Love 54:47
Yanai Postelnik
Gaia House November Solitary Retreat

2021-11-27 Reflections on the path of practice, Karma and Equanimity 50:47
Gullu Singh
on the last night of the retreat we reflected on the path of practice, the fruits that spontaneously emerge from practice, how are actions of body speech and mind, the Buddha called karma, influences everything. the talk ends with some reflections on equanimity and the skillful work we can do to balance our practice with where we are in terms of the three marks of existence.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-27 Kuan Yin Compassion Ceremony (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 1:30:02
Kittisaro, Thanissara
Kuan Yin Compassion Ceremony
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-27 Lovingkindness Practice 29:38
Dawn Mauricio
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-27 Reflections on equanimity 12:27
Caroline Jones
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 2021

2021-11-26 Holding Our Suffering: Turning to the Sacred, Turning to the Collective (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 47:45
Dawn Mauricio
The state of the world is getting more intense, more extreme, more divided. It is undeniable that we need to do things differently, including thinking we can do it all on our own.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-26 Equanimity. 51:40
Caroline Jones
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 2021

2021-11-26 Breath meditation, Dhamma talk on letting go and finding peace 1:22:30
Bhante Sujato
Breath meditation led by Bhante Sujato. Dhamma talk by Bhante Sujato on letting go and finding peace: identify wants, understand suffering, take small and doable steps, experience your progress, gain wisdom.
Lokanta Vihara

2021-11-26 Transforming Unwholesome Karma Through Compassion 45:23
Thanissara
The mutability of karma. An act of beauty in a war zone. Moments of connection with wildlife. Compassion meditation for ancestors, those in our near relational field, future generations, and all beings.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-26 Closing remarks – Refuge in this very body and mind 16:37
Ajahn Sucitto
This is a practice that bears great fruit. In the long run it makes you into a more wakeful, less tense person. Take some time to recollect it. Put aside what you don’t need and focus on what’s absolutely essential – presence and awareness. In this very body and mind you have the perfect system to practice, and to develop the boundless heart.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-26 Refuges and five precepts 6:19
Ajahn Sucitto
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-26 Q&A 31:20
Ajahn Sucitto
00:13 Working with tinnitus; 03:06 ‘sensing a way home to what I am’; 04:42 Becoming more comfortable with non-doing; 06:57 Mention not-self/anattā in the suttas; 11:26 Focusing on one point with breathing; 14:45 Feeling I should be doing something; 16:12 Building more energy in the practice as one ages; 22:32 Feeling angst about ending of the retreat; 23:15 Recollecting one’s virtues as preparation for death; 25:01 Having lost our ability to express open steady presence; 26:13 Refusing to identify with someone or some movement; 27:10 Aches in my shoulder in long sits; 29:06 Arūpa jhānas.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-26 Guided meditation – Breathing regulates body and mind 45:12
Ajahn Sucitto
Aspects of energy can be steadied through sustaining awareness over the entire process of an exhalation, until the inhalation begins. Help breathing to regulate your energy. Energy will regulate your mind, quiet it, steady it, compose it, and over time it will consolidate into a steady quiet form.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-26 Bring your chaos home to be released 43:11
Ajahn Sucitto
The suttas can give us prompts for how to practice, but the agent is this embodied heart. It’s a process of calming and steadying shared between body and heart that reveals that stable constant presence beneath the activated energies. Withdrawing energy from the activations, just witnessing the changeability of phenomena, there is dispassion and releasing. Meeting energy, not feeding it, so it can be freed.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-26 Standing meditation - Unified energy 52:51
Ajahn Sucitto
Practicing in standing posture, it’s much easier to feel the whole body as an undivided object. Certain things then become apparent – an unbroken unity, an energy. Stay in your energy body as agitations well up, are received, and then dissolve – because they’re energy. This is the development of true insight, to know phenomena is changeable. Therefore one becomes dispassionate towards them.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-25 The Power of Dharma in Groundless Times. 53:04
Thanissara
The danger and opportunity in the dying of an old world. The curriculum of decolonizing internally & externally. The reclamation of an ensouled world. Dharma practice as essential for navigating the shifts of consciousness needed for radical re-orientation within a moment of evolutionary potential.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-25 The suffering that leads to the end of suffering 37:23
Ajahn Achalo
A talk spurred by two questions: 00:49 Q1: How can we find meaning and purpose in the worldly life if we have aspirations to live a monastic life but have to be in the worldly life for family? 22:23 Q2: Since I began meditating, I have become very emotional. I am very quickly moved to tears and I start crying, either when seeing something ordinary and negative, like people arguing in the street or something painful, when I witness the suffering of people, children or animals. I sometimes start crying when reading or hearing a dhamma talk. In my chest, negative emotions like anger and frustration feel even heavier and more dense than before. Is this normal? What can I do to deal skillfully with these emotional states? I am deeply grateful!
Anandagiri Forest Monastery

2021-11-25 Chant - Suffusion with the divine abidings 6:56
Ajahn Sucitto
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-25 There Are No Footprints In The Sky (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 41:52
Kittisaro
Contemplation of form & emptiness. Everything is sacred. Emptiness facilitates resonant response. Undivided non-dual nature of reality.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-25 Reflections on equanimity. 22:21
Caroline Jones
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 2021

2021-11-25 Q&A 33:13
Ajahn Sucitto
00:12 Dispassion; 03:45 How do dispassion, disengagement and relinquishment reconcile with activism; 12:39 Body time versus clock time; 15:23 How should I teach mindfulness of breathing; 17:42 Joy and poignant sadness; 19:38 What is one then to be sensitive to in the third stage of the feeling tetrad; 25:55 Could you say that the citta is the deathless?
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-25 Q&A 23:17
Ajahn Sucitto
00: How to suffuse; 04:40 Placing and sensing the thinking mind; 07:14 Does Ānāpānasati help prepare us for end of civilization; 08:42 Nimittas; 10:01 When one area of body is not suffused; 11:25 How can we suffuse pīti/sukha? 13:00 Softening the process of enquiring; 15:26 Generating joy with chronic pain and vicious personal circumstances; 18:17 Blockages make nostril breathing difficult; 21:24 Can you speak about death?
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-25 Guided meditation - Gladdening the heart 38:37
Ajahn Sucitto
Tuning into where gladness is can be approached from different ways. One can recollect people or events that are gladdening, or one can tune into the energy of gladness that is felt in the body. Linger in its effects, the brightening, lifting quality that is agreeable.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-25 Jhāna 56:48
Ajahn Sucitto
Jhāna is a condition that supports getting out of the conditioned realm. It gives the mind enough stability to step out of time and enough happiness to step out of the pull of sense pleasure. It makes turning away, nibbida, possible leaving an experience of something open, measureless, where the heart feels freedom from stress, freedom from pressure.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-25 Time, craving and where they stop 51:03
Ajahn Sucitto
Your intimate environment is not about time, it’s about kamma. Enter into this embodied world with patience, resolution, goodwill and mindfulness, holding it steadily. There’s an aware intelligence that gets stronger and wiser when you can let go of the stories; it will work for your welfare.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-24 Freedom is the Essence of All Things (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 56:26
Kittisaro
Contemplating what never changes. The indestructible heart. Mind the Gap. Radical reflection, returning to the root, where all things merge. Kuan Yin's meditation method.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-24 Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship 52:25
Tara Brach
Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group. The audio includes a poem of blessing by John O’Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya (from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

2021-11-24 Meditation: Energy and Source (19:21 min) 19:21
Tara Brach
Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

2021-11-24 Q&A Saṇkhāra, self, khamma, khanda 39:39
Ajahn Sucitto
00:48 You said, ‘I’m not a person who worries a lot, but a worry that persons too much.’ Can you say more? 02:07 I’m not clear about the term ‘volition’; 31:32 Are the suttas prescriptive (something to do) or descriptive (something that will happen anyway); 34:03 How to calm the bodily formation; 36:30 How to contemplate impermanence, dispassion, cessation and letting go?
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-24 Guided meditation – The craft of meditation 29:04
Ajahn Sucitto
Settling into direct experience, finding a stable place within the constant tidal wave of phenomena arising. Disengaging, carefully attending. It’s a craft, feeling out how this form is best sustained, smoothed out, appreciated, lingered in. This is the craft of meditation.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-24 Q&A 34:29
Ajahn Sucitto
00:11 Feeling dizzy with QiGong; 00:49 Difference between calming mental activity and calming mind; 14:33 How to calm bodily activities with searing bodily pain; 16:29 Do we work sequentially on calming mental, then bodily formations, or together; 18:09 Examples of ‘accept not adopt’ particularly around past trauma; 21:04 Q6 When the hindrances calm down, what else is there to be found as citta saṇkhāra? 22:56 What does vicāra mean; 26:09 In-breath is short and painful when trying to elongate; 28:25 Should I try to smooth out bumpy breathing; 30:18 Meditative experience in terms of this social existence.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-24 Cultivating Generosity and Gratitude at the Time of Thanksgiving 65:05
Donald Rothberg
After we set the context of the holiday of Thanksgiving, including Native perspectives, we explore the inter-related qualities of generosity and gratitude. Gratitude is especially in relationship to acknowledging the generosity of others, and of life. We clarify a number of ways to cultivate these two qualities. The talk integrates some discussion and is followed by a longer period of discussion.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks

2021-11-24 Yin Meditation - Depth receptivity to internal experience. 29:55
Thanissara
Moving from goal to source. This is how it is now. Contemplation within the frame of the 4 Noble Truths.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

2021-11-24 Returning to body and heart 59:30
Ajahn Sucitto
We get conditioned to be insensitive to heart and body. To return, enter the body as an energy form, staying with it, thoroughly sensitive to the entire body. When you can feel the presence of your own embodied energy, the heart finds a refuge in that. There’s something here that stays present, grounded, firm, accepting.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-24 Body regulates heart 39:32
Ajahn Sucitto
You’re born into a system that knows how to regulate and discharge emotions and energy. If the energy is right, distractions and unevenness fade away, and the harmony of body and mind acts by itself. Practice asking what is needed now to bring ease, clarity and joy into your life. Use cultivation to do what’s needed, to maintain health, balance, sanity, lightness of being.
Bodhi College Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

2021-11-23 Inner Peace is Not Apart from Activism 53:12
Thanissara
The gift of the 4 Noble Truths in meeting the challenge of these times. A transmission of courage from Ajahn Chah. The profound impact of the Buddha's engagement with the world.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Journey into Refuge, Presence, and Love

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