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Dharma Talks
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2019-06-19
Q&A
2:07:10
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Ajahn Achalo
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Questions are précised. Q1 0:00 - Could you explain the meaning of mind? Q2 14:29 - When watching the breath, continuous attention is difficult due to the interference of thinking. How can we overcome this? Q3 28:14 - What are the basic techniques of meditation for a beginner Q4 39:12 - Before starting meditation should we practice yoga to train our mind? Q5 40:52 During breath awareness meditation, should we take the breath consciously, or see the natural process of breathing? Q6 42:00 Can you explain the process of metta meditation and how it helps to overcome anger, frustration and resentment. Q7: 46:00 What is mindfulness meditation? How is it practiced? Can we practice it while working in the office? Q8 52:36 I have acute pain in the knees and ankles when I sit. Are there any exercises that would help? Q9 56:12 When I meditate I usually feel sleepy. Why is this? Q10 1:00:19 When I meditate I see colours and lights, hear the sounds and feel fully aware of what is happening around me. What is this state? Q11 1:02:51 When I meditate my thought processes get very sharp, and more and more very good ideas seem to come into my mind. Hence, now I know I am fond of thinking rather than meditating. Please advise me. Q12 1:13:02 How can we shift from samatha to vipassana meditation? How long will it take a beginner to practice vipassana? Q13 1:20:50 How can we identify the improvements and development of mental states we've achieved as a result? Q14 1:26:50 During meditation I see a lot of incidents / situations mentally, which I have never experienced in day-to-day life. What is this? Q15 1:29:32 When I go to bed I usually try to pay attention to my breath. Is this good or will it negatively affect my sitting meditation? Q16 1:30:29 How long one should practice meditation to achieve samadhi? May I know a program or meditation schedule in order to achieve this state? Q 17 1:33:15 I joined a new company that meditates 15 minutes before work daily. Why I didn't get this opportunity before? Was it an effect of my kamma?
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Colombo
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2019-06-19
Intention and the Power of Thought
46:18
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Shaila Catherine
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How are we using our minds? Where do our thought incline? The Buddha's teachings focus on the practical application of intention and the power of thought, rather than ritual, as the potent force behind action. Working with thought, we see how habits and tendencies develop and form patterns known as kamma (karma). We must be honest with ourselves and see any conceit, agitation, anger, greed, or restlessness that might be lurking as tendencies of mind. We can learn to use our thought skillfully, and guard the mind with diligent mindfulness. Wholesome and unwholesome thoughts are explored. There is nothing to fear from wholesome thoughts such as intentions toward renunciation, letting go, loving kindness, compassion, and generosity, and yet a concentrated mind will bring deeper rest. The path of liberation and awakening includes the development of morality and virtue, and also calmness, concentration, and wisdom.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2019-05-22
From the Ordinary Habitual Mind to the Buddha-Mind 5: Opening to the Awakened Heart
57:02
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Donald Rothberg
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After a brief account of the ten parameters of transformation that we’re considering in this series, we look at one of them--the ordinary habitual “heart,” our emotions and our access (or not) to kindness and care. We examine many factors that block or limit the awakened heart of kindness and love, including greed, hatred, and delusion; several dimensions of social and historical conditioning; the split between mind, body, and emotions; unhealed wounds; emotions like fear and anger; and attachment to views. We point to some of the ways, including in meditation practice, to access the awakened heart.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2019-04-22
The Face of Holiness
31:28
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Through the lens of Truth, mindful and attentive, we pierce anger, sorrow, fear and complacency. We are on the cusp of realizing who we are. Clear present awareness leads us inwards. We are on track to let go, relinquish and abandon all that is harmful. Discarding ancient beliefs one after another with microscopic insight, we empty out the rubbish from the mind. Radical awareness directly knows the impersonal, imperfect and empty nature of all that we experience. Now we see the face of holiness. Giving our hearts to truth, we are set free.
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Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center
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The Heart of Wisdom: Monastic Retreat
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2019-04-10
Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 2
49:22
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Tara Brach
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It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2019-04-03
Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 1
50:29
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Tara Brach
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It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2017-12-19
Feeling Emotions on the Meditative Path of Awakening
41:31
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Shaila Catherine
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Shaila Catherine discusses the importance of developing mindfulness of emotions and mental states. Human beings have the capacity to experience a wide range of emotions—they may be subtle or intense, unwholesome or wholesome. Working with emotions requires energy and courage to be willing to face the raw fact that this mental state is present. We can become aware of, and work skillfully with, any emotional state including anger, hate, gratitude, fear, sadness, calmness, insecurity, contentment, grief, tranquility, lust, compassion, loneliness, jealousy, envy, restlessness, peacefulness, faith, love. Emotions are changing mental states that arise in conjunction with every perception. When we are mindful of emotions we drop the conceptual narrative of the story line and investigate how the mind operates. What conditions nourish each mental state, and what conditions cause them to end? How do these mental states affect the clarity of our perception? We can observe the dynamic interaction of emotions and the body, and learn to work with emotions in conjunction with their somatic manifestations. We might gather ideas for investigation by reviewing the detailed Abhidhamma categories of mental states and the factors that constitute each state, or we might simply observe the arising and ceasing of mental states in activity and our meditation.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2017-10-25
Anger: Responding, Not Reacting
53:22
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Tara Brach
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Anger is natural, intelligent and necessary for surviving and flourishing. Yet when we are hooked by anger, it causes great personal and collective suffering. This talk explores how to transform patterns of reactivity by bringing a mindful and compassionate attention to the unmet needs that underlie angry reactivity. When we learn how to pause and connect honestly with our inner experience, we are then able to respond to others from our full intelligence and heart.
“Getting angry with another person is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned.” Buddha
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2017-10-14
Workshop: The Discipline and Freedom of Wise Speech
2:42:52
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Mark Nunberg,
Wynn Fricke
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The Buddha has much to say about wise speech as a cause for living with integrity and building wholesome community, and as a direct opening to what the Buddha calls the bliss of blamelessness. In this workshop we will look at the Buddha’s teachings on wise speech in terms of all the relationships we navigate in our lives. We will explore the radical question, what does speech look like when it is not being motivated by greed, anger or delusion?
The Living the Practice Workshop Series is designed for people who have an ongoing mindfulness practice and want to integrate the practice more thoroughly into all aspects of life.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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2017-09-07
"Peaceful Warrior in Modern Times"
52:12
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James Baraz
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The Buddha spoke of the power of non-harming as a support for inner peace and outward harmony. But how can we both commit to being peaceful while courageously and passionately standing up for what we feel is right and make a difference in the world? This talk includes some of the Buddha's words on peace and non-harming as well as two clips of Julia Butterfly Hill speaking about "Anger v. Love" and "Fierce Compassion".
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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IMCB Regular Talks
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2017-05-22
On the Look Out
33:59
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Venerable Punna was one of the great bhikkhus of the Buddha’s time, known especially for his fierce faith, practice skill, and his fearlessness. When the Buddha hears that Punna plans to wander on foot in a remote and dangerous frontier region, he questions Punna how he would respond to the inevitable perils and violent ways of the native people of that place. Their dialogue reveals Venerable Punna’s remarkable courage, wisdom, and selflessness.
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Madison Insight Meditation Group
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When Truth Speaks Out
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2016-11-20
Redemption
30:51
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Ayya Medhanandi
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How can we be free of anger? To cross a river, walk over it. From a burning house, escape. So too, when your heart is on fire, stay present, forgiving and compassionate. Balance and cleanse the mind to stop it from spinning with fear, to see deeply, to heal. We direct the mind to what is great – the very source of unsurpassed joy arising as we awaken to the blessed Dhamma.
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Satipaññā Insight Meditation Toronto
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2016-11-18
Look Within and Wake Up
22:01
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Ayya Medhanandi
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What are we, and what are we doing on this planet? We easily get lost in the dream of the world. It is a very good time to wake up. Right here in your own heart is the greatest adventure possible. See the danger and look inwards into the centre of the storm for sanctuary. That is how we shall bring forth a wave of awakening in this world.
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Satipaññā Insight Meditation Toronto
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2016-10-17
Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality - Week 5
1:28:22
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Mark Nunberg
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We have now completed half of our course examining our experience of sensuality. As we have begun to reflect on the limitation of sense experience we want to specifically look into the limitations of what we might consider wholesome experience. What danger, if any, is associated with wholesome experiences? At the end of MN 13, The Discourse on the Great Mass of Stress the Buddha uses the example of meditative peace as a sense experience with the allure of gratification, with drawbacks and with an escape. So if even the deepest states of meditative peace have drawbacks what about the pleasant wholesome states that our minds are still dependent on? Are these experiences a set up for disappointment, stress and suffering? What has our experience taught us? Let's notice the ephemeral quality of our wholesome moments. Are they stable enough to provide lasting satisfaction?
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality
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2016-07-16
Across the River of Pain
28:03
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Ayya Medhanandi
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We long to be free from this wandering, to go beyond all suffering. The body is our raft to cross from one side of the river of pain to the other. And there we leave the raft. But we don’t leave it until we cross, until we realize the Deathless – when no one ‘dies’ but we know the death of greed, of anger, of delusion. As we cross, we end the pain, grief, rage, vulnerability, fear – every form of distress. And where we were once inflamed by these troubles, they give way to the infinitudes of love and compassion.
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Canmore Theravada Buddhist Community
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2016-07-07
Ethics, Action and the Five Precepts
4:55:25
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Angie Boissevain,
Ayya Santussika,
Drew Oman,
Shaila Catherine
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This series will explore virtue as the indispensable foundation of Buddhist practice. The series will emphasize the five training precepts, and explore action, ethics, kamma, and cause-effect dynamics. The precepts are not rules to be obediently followed; they serve as guidelines for the intentional development of compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom. These five precepts offer us a joyful method to cultivate the heart, nurture harmony in relationships, and free the mind from inner forces of greed and anger that if unrestrained may cause suffering to ourselves and others.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2016-06-09
Mindfulness with Breathing
1:13:48
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Shaila Catherine
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Shaila Catherine gave the first talk in a four-week series titled "Cultivating Mindfulness." This talk focused on using the breath as the meditation object. When we observe our breath, our mind is free from unwholesome states, such as anger, greed, or doubt, because we are simply connecting with the very ordinary experience of breathing. We are not being pushed or pulled by desire or aversion. In fact, when we connect with the breath, we experience ease and happiness.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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In
collection:
Cultivating Mindfulness
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2016-01-08
Group B Interview 2
67:30
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Ajahn Sucitto
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1. On daily life: dealing with anger and hatred, and calming down. 2. On a balanced approach? 3. On overwhelming thoughts 4. On negativity towards others 5. On rapture 6. On being attracted to samsara. Renunciation? 7. Do I need to get more disenchanted? 8. On stress in spiritual friendship 9. Does the citta connect to other cittas? 10. What to do with the unknown? 11. Is the citta “the self”? 12. On “awareness” and “citta”.
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Wongsanit Ashram, Thailand
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2015-11-22
Fictitious Noodles
21:21
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Ayya Medhanandi
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What are we doing on this planet? How do we cope with feelings of fear? Can we observe wisely and penetrate through the fictions of the mind? To abandon them, we must understand them. Ayyā Medhānandī coaches us to investigate emotions like fear and anger, viewing their characteristics as tiny fragments of physical sensation and learning how to refresh the mind in one instant. Then we touch the space of non-fear, serenity and joy within us. A talk given at Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community in 2015.
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Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)
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2015-03-24
Contentment
39:28
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Jason Murphy
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This talk was given as part of the series "Eight Great Thoughts" (Anguttara Nikaya 8:30). Can we be at ease with whatever the situation is, whether it is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? In this day and age of discontentment, effort put into this practice gives us hope of realizing contentment. We can realize contentment one breath at a time. We have the power to shape our minds. We have the ability to feel and know suffering and be liberated from it. And it is up to us to do the practice, for one who is content is free from greed, anger and delusion.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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In
collection:
Eight Great Thoughts
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2014-08-19
Mindfulness in Close Relationships
41:37
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Matthew Brensilver
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." A real place for us to check our practice is in our relationships. After all, we are deeply relational beings. Sometimes, our deepest grooves in our minds are only stimulated in relationships. Defilements and habits of mind, such as greed, anger, and delusion, arise in ways that they don't in other situations. In other words, forces of suffering that are latent in other situations can arise in the context of close relationships. Fortunately, this is actually not bad news. Rather, it offers us opportunity to practice, to see ourselves more clearly, to become more free, and to see how we can untangle the love from clinging.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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2014-08-13
The Dhamma of Snow
26:04
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Ayya Medhanandi
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In the grip of painful feelings such as fear, anger, grief, or despair, we are in danger of allowing these to subdue the mind. Discernment and clear awareness help us to see through our pain to the ending of pain – not only for ourselves, but for all beings. We ascend the highest Everest of the spiritual realm. That might seem impossible from where we sit now. But if we trust this process, just like the sudden vanishing of winter snow, we realize a transcendent interior melting of all sorrow.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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2014 Chapin Mill Retreat
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2014-08-11
I Give You My Bread
24:26
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Ayya Medhanandi
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There is no final cure for the body, but the mind can be freed. No matter how much craving, anger, sorrow, fear or obsessive negative thoughts keep storming the mind, don’t let discouragement become another hindrance. Every new moment is a chance to see these hindrances for what they are with pure awareness itself. Patient, courageous and wise, we are ready to receive the gift of ‘bread’ and to win back the boundaries of our hearts.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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2014-07-01
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
7:06:03
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Andrea Fella,
David Cohn,
Jason Murphy,
Margaret Gainer,
Matthew Brensilver,
Misha Merrill,
Robert Cusick,
Shaila Catherine,
Sharon Allen,
Tony Bernhard
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This series of talks provides insight and practical advice as to how to take the wonderful and serene mind that we develop during our meditation practice into our daily lives, into our relationships with others. Sometimes, the deepest grooves in our minds are only stimulated in our relationships to others. Defilements and habits of the mind, such as greed, anger and delusion, arise in ways that they don't in other situations. Fortunately, these daily life encounters offer us opportunities to practice, to see ourselves more clearly, and to become more free. This is the liberating power of awareness and mindfulness.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-06-22
Meeting Anger and Hatred
48:06
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Martin Aylward
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Martin explores different personality styles of resistance and rejection, the ways anger functions and the importance of letting ourselves feel negative emotions as a way of freeing them up and letting go of our personal hard luck story. He also explores the way practice can transform anger into fearlessness as an important force against injustice, oppression and inequality.
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Gaia House
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Intimacy and Infinity
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2013-10-01
Investigating Aversion and Anger
38:15
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Shaila Catherine
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This recording begins with approximately 20 minutes of teachings on anger, followed by a little less than 20 minutes of a guided meditative reflection.
The talk examines the force of aversion, anger, hatred, and hostility as manifestations of what in Pali are called dose-rooted states. Rather than criticize and judge ourselves when anger arises, we extract ourselves from the story of anger, and practice seeing it as an experience of suffering—as dukkha. Anger does not happen to us; we actively engage in the process. Therefore, through clear seeing and wise inquiry, we can change the conditions that perpetuate anger in our lives. Often anger arises when there is unwise attention to an unpleasant sensory or mental contact. We can learn to work mindfully with these deeply conditioned tendencies and feeling how it manifests in the body, become aware of the feeling tone (vedana), recognize the mental state, and discern how it functions—its origin, cessation, and way leading to its cessation. The primary antidote is mindfulness.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks
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2013-09-18
Spiritual Urgency – Samvega
58:53
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Marcia Rose
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What brings us to spiritual practice? What has moved, inspired and urged you to find a clear and wholesome ‘other way’ than feeling overrun with old reactive habit patterns of sadness, fear, attachment, anger, and confusion.? Samvega is the movement of the heart/an inner response towards an urgency to practice and an urgency to awaken.
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Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
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2013-07-06
The True Strength of the Heart and the Transforming of Shame
56:52
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Leela Sarti
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All central issues of our life are located in the heart. Having explored the heart-capacities of compassion and joy in the previous evening's talk, this talk turns to another facet of heart-presence: true strength and life zest - to be turned on to be in life, turned on to the truth. How does distorted strength, expressed as inner hardness and anger, and the flip side of strength, weakness and helplessness, relate to authentic strength? How can we harness and and make alive the lions roar of the heart? One particular area where we need some courage and guts is in the exploration and work with shame, guilt and self-judgement. What do you feel guilty about? What is unforgivable in your life? What does guilt and shame do to you, and what is a wise and skillful approach to deal with this "inner swamp-land"? How can we make our heart and mind a good place to live, free from shame and self-harm?
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Gaia House
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The Liberating Intimacy of Being Who You Are
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2013-06-02
That Which Supports the Truth In Us
28:51
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Ayya Medhanandi
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There is a fearlessness that we can know, where greed and anger are vanquished. It is a state of equanimity with whatever comes which no one else can pollute, disturb or destroy. There is nothing more difficult - or more noble - for a human being to realize than this indestructible peace of heart. So why would we want to dedicate ourselves to anything less than that? May we realize this precious truth for ourselves and preserve it for the benefit of all beings.
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Canmore Theravada Buddhist Community
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2013-02-09
Awakening
42:31
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Shaila Catherine
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Awakening is the profound aim of the spiritual life. Awakening is not described as a mystical goal, we wake up to the four noble truths. We look squarely at the world and recognize that we cannot fix it, and through this clarity we realize the end of suffering. Enlightenment does not imply a separation from life, instead, it brings us to face the reality of lived experiences without resistance. Profound realization brings a deep equanimity and peace into every encounter; it is defined as the ending of greed, hatred, and delusion. Awakening is known through the result—the end of defilements, craving, and ignorance.
This talk teases out the meaning of several difficult "D" words: disenchantment, dispassion, detachment. These terms do not imply an aversive response to experience, instead they play a vital role in the process of awakening.
The talk explores profound spiritual experiences. It considers the danger of arrogance and conceit arising, clinging to, and corrupting enlightenment experiences. It discusses how to express, describe, and speak about our spiritual awakenings without identification.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Saturday Talks - 2013
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2013-01-22
Dependent Origination: Causality
60:56
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Rodney Smith
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Dependent Origination is the way the Buddha understood the arising of individuated forms in the world. The question D.O. attempts to answer is how the world and the sense-of-self come into existence. That is, what are the causal conditions of separation? Why do we see the world as we see it? The first two talks in this series are overviews of the sequential unfolding of D.O. and the remaining talks examine each of the twelve individual link within this chain. Conditioned causality is the fact that many conditions conspire to allow a single internal or external event to arise. Western thought usually focuses on a single cause, but with increased insight we see that causal factors are limitless. No one person or one event "made us angry," the whole universe was the reason that anger arose.
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Seattle Insight Meditation Society
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In
collection:
Dependent Origination
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2012-05-08
Dynamics of Emotion
44:27
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Shaila Catherine
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Meditation can reveal the dynamic process of emotional life. In this talk, Shaila Catherine explores relationships between mind and body, between thoughts and emotions, and between present moment experience and concepts. Emotions are not avoided in meditation, instead we engage in a balanced and wise investigation of emotions and see their changing, impermanent, and empty nature. Transformative insight into impermanence may come through understanding the functioning of mental states, without worry about difficult emotions such as anger, grief, or fear. We will learn to respond, act, and speak with wisdom as we learn to open to the full range of emotional life.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks—2012
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In
collection:
Meditation and the Emotional Landscape
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2012-04-30
Opening Our Hearts
59:25
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Yanai Postelnik
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We can at times feel our hearts closed or hardened into a sense of distance, or disconnection from life. As we feel deeply into our experience, we can learn to meet our pain, fear, anger and reactivity, with acceptance, kindness, and courage. In this journey, our heart naturally begins to soften, revealing its natural sensitivity and the profoundly connected openness of our life.
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Gaia House
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Insight Meditation and Yoga Retreat
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