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The greatest gift is the gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
2009-04-04
Batik Buddha
38:54
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Ayya Medhanandi reflects on the meaning of the different mudras or hand gestures used by the Buddha himself when he gave teachings. Each represents an important quality for us to practise and develop such as fearlessness or compassion. You can see these mudras that she describes on the batik cloth that was gifted to the Ottawa Buddhist Society at https://ottawabuddhistsociety.com/about-the-obs/latvian-buddha-batik/
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2009-04-01
Awakening Through Conflict
1:20:40
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Tara Brach
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The wisdom of the Buddha can guide us not only in discovering inner freedom, but in healing that which divides us from each other. While conflict is inevitable--we are wired toward flight and flight when our needs are not met--it is possible to have our patterns of interpersonal reactivity be the very grounds for awakening. This talk draws on the work of Non Violent Comunications (Marshal Rosenberg) and explores how mindful communications are an interpersonal meditation that gives rise to compassion and understanding.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2009-03-20
Unencumbered
19:12
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Fire is our teacher - the fire of pain, the fire of persevering through difficulty and the fire of going beyond what we think we are capable of. For we are greater that we know and our journey is one of learning to trust what is right and true. When the heart’s compassion, wisdom, and generosity mature, there is no space for fear. All the dross of the world melts away in the silence of pure presence. Here is the absolute sanctity of awareness, unencumbered, and joyous in the knowledge of pure love itself.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society (Sisters of St. Joseph Convent)
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2009-03-19
Ice Melts
28:52
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Within us is the seed of awakening. And yet we are so blind. Can we free ourselves by seeing through clouds of delusion, greed and hatefulness? Do we have the resolve and patience to begin and the humility and forgiveness to keep going in hard times? Vigilance in ethical practice, unremitting mindfulness, inner stillness, and sharp discernment melt ignorance and purify the mind. Not only that – joyous and aware, we radiate a fearless unequivocal compassion. When the sun rises, darkness disappears. Just so, we emerge from our blindness, at peace with all conditions
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2009-03-18
Fierce Gifts
36:07
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Ayya Medhanandi
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When life presents fearsome obstacles, be your own spiritual ally and turn those obstacles into windows that open to the depths of the heart. There, cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, radiant joy and the wisdom of discernment, behold the fierce gifts of the Dhamma that defy delusion and rescue us from the mire of every perceived burden.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2009-03-11
Without Anxiety About Imperfection
1:17:06
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Tara Brach
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The nature of being human is that we get caught in anger and judgment, hurt and fear. This talk explores what it means to be without anxiety towards this universal emotional conditioning as it appears in ourselves and others. Condemning imperfection binds our identity with an imperfect self. As we learn to pause and open to the direct embodied experience of emotions, we discover a space of presence that is filled with compassion and wisdom. Like the ocean, we can include difficult waves of experience and yet remember our inherent vastness, mystery and wholeness.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2009-03-11
Practicing Compassion, I
58:28
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Donald Rothberg
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The practice of compassion can occur both as a formal practice - one of the four practices of the Brahmaviharas - and as an everyday practice in the context of our lives. Compassion practice works because it helps us to to open to our deeper being. Yet to do this, we have to learn also to open to pain - and suffering - understood as the reaction to pain.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2009-03-04
The Divine Abodes: Equanimity
1:15:36
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Tara Brach
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Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. Equanimity is the balanced and open quality of presence that arises when there is no resisting or grasping after experience. It is through the space of this wise presence that unconditional love is free to shine through.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2009-02-25
The Divine Abodes: Joy
1:18:31
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Tara Brach
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Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. Joy naturally arises from the heart space that welcomes all that is. This talk describes four pathways of discovering and inhabiting this intrinsic openness of Being.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2009-02-23
The Joy Of Mindfulness
51:40
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Sylvia Boorstein
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Based on the concept that mindfulness cultivates insights which lead to wisdom to manifest as compassion that is experienced as joy, this talk is about 1) the joy of awakened physical awareness, 2) the joy of psychological clarity, 3) the joy of knowing universal truth, 4) the joy of service and 5) the joy of realizing the basic goodness of human beings.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Insight Meditation February
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2009-02-18
The Divine Abodes: Compassion
1:17:46
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Tara Brach
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Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. Compassion naturally arises as we allow ourselves to be touched by suffering--our own, those we know, all beings. As we discover our shared vulnerability, the pain of separation dissolves and our hearts open to widening circles of belonging.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2009-01-14
Humble Of Heart
1:11:49
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Tara Brach
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As consciousness evolves, there is a deepening understanding of the interdependence of all of life. This wisdom naturally leads to an authentic humility--an awakening from the burden and violence of self-importance. In this talk we explore the relationship between being humble of heart, and living with kindness and compassion. There is particular attention to the necessity of humility and deep listening--as individuals and societies--if we are to respond to conflict in a way that can bring peace to this earth.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2008-10-30
Ascending the Altar
34:52
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Ayya Medhanandi
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What is renunciation? Patiently we learn how to let go of the thoughts and actions that enslave us to samsara. And we begin to understand what it takes to tame the ego and cultivate greater and greater compassion in its boundless quality. Through this magnificent process, we study the way to ascend the altar and sit with our teacher, the Buddha.
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Birken Forest Monastery
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2008-06-06
At the Shrine of the Awakened - Unfathomable Love
35:51
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Ayya Medhanandi
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What is spiritual beauty? Kindness, forgiveness, unconditional love? Can we sustain a hallowed inner space that will not be degraded by unkind thoughts? When noble virtue protects the heart at its innermost core, we repair and train the mind to go beyond all brokenness. Relinquishing the burden of endless struggle, we harness awakened wisdom and compassion to free ourselves. We are a pure clear vessel of unfathomable love.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2008-05-14
Self And Not Self III
57:31
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Donald Rothberg
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Transformation Beyond the Constricted Self
After a review of teachings about not-self, and an exploration of the ways that the self appears as an overlay on, or constriction of, the flow of experience, we look in this final talk at what si there when a constrictive self is absent: 1) individuality without identification, 2) awareness, 3) wmptiness of phenomena and self, and 4) compassion and responsiveness.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2008-05-10
A Little Renunciation
32:45
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Ayya Medhanandi
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How training the mind in following precepts, such as the rules regarding the use of four monastic requisites - food, robes, shelter, and medicines, can win us greater patience, faith, gratitude, calm, courage, and mindfulness. Such ways of renunciation test our commitment to the path and teach us how to forgive and let go even our fears so that we harvest the riches of joy, compassion and inner peace.
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Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)
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2008-04-04
Opening Talk for Insight Meditation and QiGong
37:00
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Norman Feldman
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Opening Talk for a retreat where the silence, sitting and walking of Insight Meditation and the movement of QiGong are seamlessly woven together into a form that invites us to gently explore the ways in which we define and limit ourselves, allowing insight into our true nature to arise, freeing us to live in a woser and more compassionate relationship with ourselves and the world.
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Gaia House
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Insight Meditation And QiGong
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2008-03-14
Brahmavihara Retreat
12:39:57
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Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
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The brahmaviharas are four mental states that the Buddha encouraged for the practice of meditation. They are loving -friendliness (metta), compassion, sympathetic joy (rejoicing in the happiness of others), and equanimity. Through these practices we develop a loving heart, concentration, self-acceptance, fearlessness and happiness. These practices also establish our fundamental connectedness to all life.
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Bhavana Society of West Virginia
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Brahmavihara Retreat
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2008-03-07
Death
63:39
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Rob Burbea
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A free and honest life includes the very real awareness of death. If we can find the courage to deliberately contemplate death, to keep it in mind, this can open our life in a profound way to a nobility, urgency, purposefulness and beauty. The heart grows in compassion and moves toward the Deathless.
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Gaia House
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A Work Retreat: Working And Awakening
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2008-02-13
The Ethics of Sunyata
1:31:39
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John Peacock
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-02-12
The Birth of a Bodhisattva
1:13:46
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Rob Burbea
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-02-10
Love and the Emptiness of Things
1:30:39
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Rob Burbea
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-02-08
Sunyata
62:00
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John Peacock
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-02-06
Dependent Origination
1:27:27
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John Peacock
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-02-04
Compassion
69:55
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Rob Burbea
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-01-30
Anatta
1:22:03
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John Peacock
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-01-30
Exploring the World of Loving Kindness
1:11:25
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Rob Burbea
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-01-29
The Place of Samadhi in Metta Practice
1:26:04
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Rob Burbea
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This series of talks and guided meditations explores the development of the practices of both Lovingkindness and Compassion, with particular emphasis on the radical possibilities of Awakening that they bring. Through these practices we come to develop deep and beautiful qualities of heart as a real resource both for ourselves and the world, and also open ourselves to the profound and liberating understandings that can emerge from this path of love.
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Gaia House
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Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008)
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2008-01-28
The Discussion Of The Wisdom Dakini
1:14:52
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Lama Palden
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Dakinis are activity aspects of awakened mind. Outwardly the dakini can support, nurture and protect us. She also can show up to cut through conceptuality. Ultimately dakini is the wisdom aspect of our own minds; the openness aspect that is the space for and is inseparable with everything that is. When this aspect is realized all phenomena, all experience become workable, eventually blissful. True nature is wisdom, openness, compassion and love.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2007-10-24
Wisdom
56:52
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Donald Rothberg
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How do we live and act wisely, whether in our meditation practice or in the rest of our lives? The core of our practice is to come back to wisdom moment-to-moment. The main teaching on wisdom that can guide us is the Four Noble Truths. We explore this teaching as a practical guide, requiring an understanding of causes and conditions. Yet wisdom ultimately must also be connected to to two further qualities to be whole - to compassion, and to courage.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Cultivating Clear Seeing, Opening the Heart
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2007-10-03
Path Of Peace
1:12:35
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Tara Brach
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Awakening from the Trance of Separation - We all have conditioning that can keep us at war with our inner life, and fuel violence in the world. These universal tendencies can block our natural attunement and capacity to respond with compassion to life. The practices of presence allow us to recognize this conditioning and awaken to the truth of our connectedness, to the wisdom and love that make peace possible.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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