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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2026-06-04
Quiet Strength: Exploring Equanimity with James and Margaret Cullen
49:41
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James Baraz
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Margaret is the author of the just released book, Quiet Strength: Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly through the Power of Equanimity. In this she leads in an exploration on this key quality that is so needed in these times.
As a therapist, Margaret facilitated psycho-social support groups for cancer patients and their loved ones for over 30 years. She has led research studies on the impact of contemplative programs, co-developed the Compassion Cultivation Training with Thupten Jinpa at Stanford University. Margaret is the founder of Compassion Corps, a program which brings compassion programs to underserved populations around the world. She has been a meditation practitioner for over 40 years.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2026-06-03
Dharma As Nature
47:53
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Chas DiCapua
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Learning to understand that the Dharma path unfolds in an organic, natural way helps to lessen the tendency to make Dharma practice another self-help project. Seeing the conditioned nature of suffering and the conditioned nature of happiness allows the self to get out of the way and let wisdom and discernment guide us along the path.
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Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
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2026-06-03
Letting the Tree Grow, One Ring at a Time
39:45
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Oren Jay Sofer
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The deepest transformation unfolds over years, too gradually to see — yet the only unit we ever actually work with is a single moment, met with kindness and a willingness to let go. Like a tree growing ring by ring, a whole life takes shape one moment at a time, with far less to manage than we think.
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Online
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Online Insight Retreat
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2026-06-03
Buddhist Practice and Transforming Social Conditioning 1
60:25
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Donald Rothberg
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We begin by focusing on a fundamental perspective for our practice: How our practice moves from underlying ignorance to wisdom. We look at both the traditional understanding of such ignorance and how contemporary psychological and social perspectives help us to identify further dimensions of ignorance, including our initially unconscious social conditioning. We start by considering how the Buddha related both to caste and to women's roles in the sangha. We then look at the nature of social conditioning, including how this is related to "in-groups" and "out-groups," along with "implicit bias," and ways that our practice can help us see more clearly and ultimately transform our social conditioning.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2026-06-02
The Spectrum of Desire
33:49
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Kim Allen
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The human tendency to want can range from highly unskillful or harmful forms of grasping and compulsion, through ordinary desires of life, into beautiful forms of aspiration and care. Buddhist teachings show how we can develop the more skillful forms of desire, such as wanting to be ethical, to practice meditation, or to awaken. Interestingly, moving into skillful wanting is an act of letting go.
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Insight Meditation Community of Richmond
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2026-05-27
The Liberating Joy of Renunciation
59:34
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Mark Nunberg
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The Buddha taught, “Whoever is addicted to society and worldly bustle, they will not partake of the happiness of renunciation, dispassion, peace, and awakening.” Wisdom and awareness practice is an invitation to wholeness and intimacy. We practice opening and receiving the activities of the mind and body with a wisdom that discerns the futility and stressfulness of attachment. The renunciation of attachment is a natural result of seeing things as they are, that all experiences arise and pass lawfully following impersonal causes and conditions. Renunciation, letting go, or letting be, is a profound giving of the heart to the moment just as it is.
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Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
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2026-05-25
Memorial Day and Dharma Practice
65:27
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Donald Rothberg
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After some personal stories from Donald about his father, who was a veteran, and about Donald’s experiences growing up at the time of the Vietnam war and being introduced to nonviolence, we explore the three main dimensions of our practice (training in ethics, meditation, and wisdom) related to the holiday. We focus on the ethical teachings about killing and nonviolence, including the complexities of these teachings; the importance of bringing mindfulness to grief, loss, and sadness, and of grounding in kindness, compassion, and love; and the wisdom and insight teachings about seeing the roots of violence. The talk is followed by discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2026-05-24
Right View as an Organizational Principle for Life
1:25:10
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Gullu Singh
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Right View is seeing in a way that aligns with reality. It is not a static belief or fixed opinion, but an ongoing, dynamic, experiential alignment with what is true. Right View brings the mind and heart into harmony, like a wheel properly set on its axle. With Right View comes clarity. We begin to see the distortions caused by clinging, greed, hatred, and delusion, and that seeing empowers us to act in ways that reduce suffering.
One of the most important teachings on wise view, the Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta (MN 9), offers a simple organizing principle—a kind of Dhamma algorithm—that, when practiced, can lead to greater well-being, deeper wisdom, and ultimately freedom from grief, sorrow, lamentation, dukkha, and distress.
The slides referenced in the talk can be found at https://links.gullusingh.com/e005e6
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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BIPOC Voices - Series
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2026-05-21
What Does it Mean to Practice Community? James and Nina Raddy
36:19
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James Baraz
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In this talk James introduces Nina Raddy, a member of our IMCB community, who shares from her own experience of community practice and helping build Community Village, a vibrant, peer-led meditation community for people in their 20s and 30s in the Bay Area. She'll explore how generosity, wholesome friendship, and simply showing up for one another can themselves become profound practices.
Buddhist teachings place great emphasis on spiritual friendship and sangha — the community of practitioners — as essential supports for the path. Yet in a culture that often emphasizes individualism and disconnection, sangha can seem like a good idea but not something we truly experience to the extent we wish we had. Data from the U.S. Surgeon General emphasizes that lacking social connection carries a mortality risk comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, making community engagement a biological necessity rather than a comfort. Community acts as the vital antidote to the modern public health crisis of isolation, transforming deep-seated loneliness into a foundation for emotional and physical survival. What does it mean to practice community?
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Equanimity: Cultivating Emotional Balance, Resilience, and Well-Being in Difficult Times
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2026-05-21
Metta as a Way of Life: Refuge and Response in a Fractured World
21:42
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Oren Jay Sofer
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Drawing on the Mettā Sutta, this talk from Clear Dharma Sangha explores mettā as a way of life, a profound wish for the safety and happiness of all beings, and a way of seeing. Through the practice of the neutral person, we begin to extend goodwill beyond preference — and to cultivate a refuge that steadies us not to escape, but to turn toward the world with clarity, courage, and care.
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Online
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