| |
|
Dharma Talks
|
2022-04-20
Awakening and Liberation: Buddhist Practice, Passover, Easter, and Ramadan
67:08
|
|
Donald Rothberg
|
|
|
At this time of the confluence of Passover, Eastern, and Ramadan, we look at their core messages of liberation, going beyond death, and spiritual purification, and the links of such messages to Buddhist practice, with the aid of images and music.
|
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
|
Attached Files:
-
Awakening and Liberation: Buddhist Practice, Passover, Easter, and Ramadan
by Donald Rothberg
(PDF)
|
|
|
2022-04-14
Maranasati: Practice with Death and Dying
50:31
|
|
James Baraz
|
|
|
The Buddha suggested reflecting regularly on five aspects of life called the Five Reflections (also called the Five Remembrances). This talk focuses on what he called "the most supreme of all meditations": mindfulness of death or maranasati. Although contemplation of one's death might seem unsettling or scary, when undertaken as a conscious practice it can be extremely enlivening and even liberating.
|
|
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
|
|
|
2022-01-17
Q&A
57:31
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
00:30 Questions about meditation; 16:01 What is awareness of awareness? Difference in mano, manas, citta and viññāṇa; 26:00 How to deal with impatience and restlessness; 30:27 How to know if I’m cultivating well; 31:37 Obsessive compulsive disorder; 36:47 Meditation on the 32 parts of the body; 39:54 When thoughts stop and fade away; 41:10 How to deal with death and loss; 43:20 Standing meditation; 45:02 Easier to recognize some feelings but not others; 48:42 Conditionality, saṇkhāra and the aggregates.
|
|
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society
:
Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
2021-11-26
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)
|
|
|
2021-11-25
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)
|
|
|
2021-11-04
Showing Up for Reality with Humility and Grace:
Terry Patten's Last Teaching
50:16
|
|
James Baraz
|
|
|
Beloved Philosopher, Teacher and Sacred Activist Terry Patten sadly passed away a few days before this talk. His last book, A New Republic of the Heart, is an inspiring teaching on how to face the global crises we are in. As he went through his own final journey he shared how one can face death with courage, wonder, grace and trust. It was a blueprint for how to meet the pain and sorrow of the world with those same qualities. This talk includes a powerful, clear, deeply moving clip excerpt of Terry's last teaching a week before he passed plus some of his teachings that have touched so many.
|
|
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
|
|
|
2021-10-29
A fruitful merging
59:24
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
Structures can be helpful, but they only get you so far and then you have to trust something more deeply felt – mindfulness internally and externally, conscience and concern. That’s the ultimate system. The qualities of this spiritual intelligence then blend into something affirmative and potent. We can begin to relax who we think we are, focus instead on these spiritual qualities that merge into the deathless, and allow the unbinding of that fixation of self.
|
|
Cittaviveka
|
|
|
2021-10-23
Death/Letting Go Meditation
28:47
|
|
Amita Schmidt
|
|
|
A progressive meditation on letting go that simulates the death process. Letting go of the senses, emotions, thoughts, and perception. See what remains.
|
|
Tri State Dharma
|
|
|
2021-10-11
On Death | Monday Night Talk
58:46
|
|
Jack Kornfield
|
|
|
We live in a culture of denial and youth. How can we find a freedom of heart in this world of birth and death? We can start by acknowledging that everything is subject to change. Death is an advisor that can give us clarity about what really matters.
We can be the loving witness of this life, yet not cling to it. We can cherish life, yet in the end we will have to let go.
As Mary Oliver writes:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
|
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
|
|
|
2021-08-28
Who Do You Think You Are?
21:45
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Not-clinging spreads very fast, very far. Its fuel power is letting go attachment to ‘self’; to selfishness and the inversion of the mind into a cocoon of self-concern – which is spiritual death. There’s no truth in that. Aren’t we all drowning – metaphorically? Not thinking of ourselves, the moment we jump into the river to rescue someone, we begin to wake up. Who can do that? We must help each other. But first we practice and gain strength to traverse the rapids and the mire of this conflicted, misguided world. Destination – directly knowing what we truly are – and are not.
|
|
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
|
|
|
2021-07-18
To Die With A Peaceful Heart
8:46
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Develop health of the mind. Many who face dire illness and many at the cusp of death overcome their fear or face death fearlessly. How is that possible? Caring for the mind can bring it to peace whereas the health of the body will never free the heart from the pain of losing what is most precious to us.
|
|
Ottawa Buddhist Society
|
|
|
2021-06-03
Day 5 Q&A2
54:25
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
Working at our levels but there’s nothing to attain/is citta is inherently pure; how to think about kamma after death; how does being enveloped in compassion feel; after moving energy down into belly deciding to move from samatha to vipassanā; the knower merges with the known and there’s no object left; when beginning to become concentrated I get hijacked into numbness/feeling lost in brahmaviharā; relationship between awareness, citta, mindfulness and the mind.
|
|
Cittaviveka
:
Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
|
|
|
2021-05-02
Q&A2
45:41
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
Where is the experience of bodily energies found in the suttas; what is the source of Ajahn’s ‘forensic precision’; how to us somatic presence with the 3rd and 4th foundations of mindfulness; please help with insomnia; experiencing resistance to standing meditation; grief and pain experienced with ‘Future and Past’ exercise; how to deepen into the ‘neither/nor’ space; is samādhi developed by sustaining sati; how to deal with overactive citta; how did you deal with the fear of death when being robbed in India?
|
|
London Insight Meditation
:
Clearing the Floods
|
|
|
2021-04-01
The Buddha Was Right
18:13
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
As seekers of truth, we turn the wheel of Dhamma inwardly. There alone can we understand the mind’s purity and directly know the true rhythm of the heart, undiluted by worldly refrains. The sounds of the world can turn coarse and invasive until we listen to the silence in our interior depths. Secluded from life's relentless currents, we traverse the ‘cloud of unknowing’ with the riches of our virtue. Then we shall dis-cover and gain strength enough to fulfill the way of the Buddha, a transcendent going forth through the gates of the Deathless.
|
|
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
|
|
|
2021-03-27
Deathbed Goal Challenge
13:51
|
|
Amita Schmidt
|
|
|
The deathbed goal is a practice that reminds you to cultivate, in the here and now, qualities which you most want to manifest in this human life.
|
|
Dharma Zephyr Insight Meditation Community
|
|
|
2021-01-03
The Value of Death
25:53
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
This path takes us to our true home through cultivating sanctity, and understanding the value of death: the death of greed, hatred and delusion. When we see all things as impermanent, death gives definition to our life. It delimits our experience. That’s how we learn how to love – because if things were permanent, we wouldn’t know the meaning of love. We would not know how to love. And that would be a terrible loss – not to know, not to learn, how to love.
|
|
Portland Friends of the Dhamma
:
Ever Present Refuge
|
|
|
2020-12-13
Love Everyone Or Die
24:23
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
We may speak of or feel that we know about death but until we truly contemplate, approach and move into death, what do we know? This is a tale about looking into the eye of a tortoise shell butterfly while it lay dying on the shrine. Straining as it reached up towards us waving its frail antennae when it heard our chanting, we felt at one even with this tiniest of creatures - who also wanted only to be loved.
|
|
Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)
|
|
|
2020-12-10
Q&A 2
52:56
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
Relationship between citta, mano and viññāna; why doesn’t citta appear in the chain of dependent co-arising; what is samudayo; the nature of contact and perception conditioning feeling; how can one prepare for death; skills and developments of the mano function and how that mixes in with citta; helping other people; bubbling energy in meditation; limiting external impingements on citta in householder life.
|
|
Bodhi College
:
Citta: Mind, Heart, Spirit
|
|
|
2020-09-16
The Four Remembrances
50:42
|
|
Tara Brach
|
|
|
When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry.
This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices—Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness—that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
|
|
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
|
|
|
2020-08-19
The Inner Stopping
26:54
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Wherever we go the mind does not remain happy - unless we fully awaken. How can we end the restless tides and remain inwardly stable, content within ourselves like the well-hewn wheel that stood still when it stopped rolling and did not fall down? Purifying our bodily acts, speech, and mind in the Buddha's gradual training, we go beyond the eight worldly winds, coming to cessation, to the Deathless.
|
|
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
:
Chapin Mill Retreat
|
|
|
2020-07-15
Meditation: Listening to Life
48:41
|
|
Tara Brach
|
|
|
The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.
This meditation ends with a tribute to Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and a reading from his writings on death and life.
|
|
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
|
|
|
2020-06-20
Mantra of Compassion
14:15
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Fear is the absence of love. Our inner purification is a movement away from fear to the embodiment of pure love - even to love the dying moment. We grow in stillness and peace as if sailing an ocean of joy, in the peace of the mind's deepest waters where we can touch the Deathless. A guided meditation and reflections offered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
|
|
Madison Insight Meditation Group
|
|
|
2020-05-24
The Quail's Tale: A Path to Harmlessness
41:38
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Praising Truth for its own sake, we lean in the direction of Truth. We make our intention not to harm by body, speech, or thought. Harmlessness leads to selflessness. Selflessness leads to the Deathless. To boundless compassion. It will save us from the flames of greed, violence, and delusion raging around us. Like the baby quail. What saved it from the forest fire was the purity of its own truth developed over lifetimes. A talk given in a Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC) zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
|
|
Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)
|
|
|
2020-05-12
31b The Body
22:03
|
|
Bhante Bodhidhamma
|
|
|
Unfortunately the laptop stopped! Luckily, I was coming to an end. Death contemplation is taught by the Buddha, see my Talk 03,04,45. I would simply have said that body as subjective experience is to be investigated and is a path itself to liberation from suffering.
|
|
Satipanya Retreat Centre
|
|
|
2020-03-11
Letting Go - Release - Freedom (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
60:35
|
|
Eugene Cash
|
|
|
Satipatthana - Four Foundations of Mindfulness offers us specific meditation practices with the body, breath, in four postures, in all activities, with the elements, with death, vedana, the heart/mind and the dharmas including hindrances and the seven factors of awakenings. Each of these practices includes a through line: One abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. The not clinging to body, heart, mind or any experience is both the foundation of the Buddha's teaching and the doorway to freedom. It's the experience of coming into alignment with ' he way things are.'
|
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
March Monthlong
|
|
|
2020-03-04
From the Ordinary Habitual Mind to the Buddha Mind 16: Working with Our Psychological Conditioning 3
62:28
|
|
Donald Rothberg
|
|
|
We begin by pointing to how combining traditional Buddhist training with transforming psychological and social conditioning and unresolved material suggests the contours of a contemporary path of awakening. We then identify some of the main areas of the contemporary “shadow,” of unconscious, unresolved conditioning and developmental wounds, such as anger, fear, death, shame, conflict, trauma, grief, sexuality, and so on. We then give a “map” of four stages in the transformation of the shadow (particularly in a meditative context), starting with finding ways to access the shadow, then learning to be with and explore the shadow, then transforming the shadow, and then integrating the shadow work with daily life.
|
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
|
|
|
2020-02-23
Q&A
55:48
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
What is mindfulness; What is investigation; Unusual images arising in meditation; Death and afterlife; How to deal with vulnerability of heart?
|
|
Emoyeni Retreat Centre
:
Clearing and Renewal
|
|
|
2020-02-20
Practising with Death and Dying
2:35:07
|
|
Rob Burbea
|
|
|
CRUCIAL NOTE: It is highly unlikely that this talk will be properly or adequately understood without a prior very good working familiarity and competence – both in actual practice and conceptually – with Soulmaking Dharma teachings and practices, as well as with Insight Meditation. Without this background it may be that the talk will in fact be misunderstood, and it is unlikely that the talk will be helpful. Please note too that much of the material in this series of talks (In Psyche’s Orchard) is based on or continues explorations of material laid out in a particular previous series (Four Circles, Four Parables of Stone and Light). In Psyche’s Orchard was recorded by Rob at his home.
|
|
Gaia House
:
In Psyche's Orchard
|
|
|
2019-12-17
Death and the Poignancy of Life
61:37
|
|
Matthew Brensilver
|
|
|
William James said that death was the ‘worm at the core’ of the human condition that turns us all into ‘melancholy metaphysicians.’ A century later, awareness of mortality is documented to affect our thinking and emotional lives in powerful ways. It figures prominently in Buddhist practice.
In what ways does consciousness of death distorts our view and lead us away from wisdom and compassion? Alternatively, how can we open to the truth of finitude such that our heart is softened? Can we intuit the freedom or love that might be released were we more deeply at peace with our mortality?
In this evening program, we’ll consider the way death can harden or soften our heart – and how dharma practice might lead us to a life that feels complete. All are welcome.
|
|
New York Insight Meditation Center
|
|
|
2019-08-12
A Matter of Death, Life, Truth and Recovery
24:13
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Call suffering by its true name and the face of the Dhamma will emerge from within us. We meet the truth of impermanence, of death, and the universality of pain as we carve out the understanding of who we are and why we are here. Nourish the mind with virtue and shine the light to our true home, to insights that repair what has been broken and free us from fear, anxiety, and the many sufferings we have endured.
|
|
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
:
For Our Long Lasting Benefit
|
|
|
2019-08-11
Death - Portal of Deliverance
38:50
|
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
|
Contemplating the 4 elements, the 32 parts of the living body, and the remains of the body in a charnel ground, we gain a deeper understanding of impermanence and the intrinsic impersonal and empty nature of the body. Seeing it for what it truly is can free us from fear of death. We study it and gradually unveil the true gift of death as a portal to our liberation.
|
|
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
:
For Our Long Lasting Benefit
|
|
|
2019-07-16
Taking the Problem out of Pain
47:45
|
|
Shaila Catherine
|
|
|
In this talk, Shaila Catherine encourages practitioners to view illness and pain as opportunities to practice equanimity, patience, and mindfulness of the body. When we are sick or in pain, we can still practice being attentive to present conditions, and reflect that all beings are all also subject to illness and death. Illness is not wrong; it is inevitable. The more we resist this fact, the more mental suffering we add to our physical difficulties. When we learn to be present with both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, we will know an experience of profound peace.
|
|
Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
|
|
In
collection:
Meditation in Hard Times
|
|
|
2019-03-27
The Four Remembrances
50:43
|
|
Tara Brach
|
|
|
When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices – Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness – that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
|
|
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
:
IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
|
|
|
2018-07-04
Skeleton Woman: Embracing This Living and Dying World
45:58
|
|
Tara Brach
|
|
|
Based on a wonderful myth told by Clarissa Estes, this talk looks at the way we run from “lady death” and the blessings of opening our arms and heart. If we can embrace the whole of our nature with unconditional presence – including the inevitability of change and loss–we discover deep wisdom and enduring love. (a favorite from the archives)
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing it and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
— from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Rainer Maria Rilke
|
|
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
:
IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
|
|
|
|
