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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2015-10-04
How to be an Earthling
30:09
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Wes Nisker
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Stories celebrating our experience as Earthlings. Earth days (and Earth Care days) are not just a call to “do something” to heal our damaged eco-systems, but more of a spiritual exercise, a time to celebrate all life, regardless of kingdom, phyla, or species: regardless of color of skin, feathers, fur, flowers, leaves or bark. This is a time to reflect on our connection to this planet, and to embrace our basic identity as "earthlings.”
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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A Day of Connection: Sustainable Practice for a Sustainable World
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2015-10-04
Softly Close the Gates
30:00
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Ayya Medhanandi
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There is so much for us to understand. Preparing yourselves for that unfolding of wisdom, take your rightful seat in a balanced way and follow the path inward. Softly close off all the gates and give your full attention and energy to the mind's interior exploration – of itself. We are on a wondrous journey!
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2015-09-24
On effort
67:21
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Patrick Kearney
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Here we examine the nature of effort in meditation practice. We see how the traditional understanding of meditation as war is not necessarily an effective way of conveying right effort (sammā vāyāma) in the contemporary world. We find that our relationship to time is central to finding right effort, and how the work of meditation can become play. Finally, we see how the Buddha teaches different strategies fit different situations, and that right effort takes different forms in different contexts.
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Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre
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Month Long Retreat led by Patrick Kearney
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2015-09-22
The sweet essence - Part 2
62:34
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Patrick Kearney
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In the second part of Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, Mahā Kaccāna unpacks the process of delusion and drivenness to reveal the not-constructed (asaṅkhata), nibbāna itself. He does this by showing that what we take to be the solid ground (ṭhāna) upon which we build ourselves and our world turns out to be no thing at all. That beneath this web of concepts there lies a realm beyond concept, beyond language, yet so intimate that it is always available to us. It is available, now.
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Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre
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Month Long Retreat led by Patrick Kearney
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2015-09-22
On dukkha & dukkha nana
1:25:19
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Patrick Kearney
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We explore how the ordinary experience of dukkha becomes dukkha ñāṇa, understanding of the universal characteristic (samañña lakkhaṇa) of dukkha. We look at the how the perception of impermanence (anicca-saññā) creates anxiety when the heart intuits the groundless of experience, and how the unfolding of this anxiety is mapped by the dukkha ñāṇas of classical Theravāda Buddhism. Finally, we see how the experience of dukkha gives way to that of not-self (anattā), when the heart stabilises through the maturity of mindfulness (sati) and equanimity (upekkhā).
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Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre
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Month Long Retreat led by Patrick Kearney
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2015-09-19
Precious Human Birth
48:06
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Amma Thanasanti
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First talk of the retreat. The range of human experience includes choices based on greed, hatred and confusion or non green, non hatred and non confusion. There are many fortunate conditions that give someone faculties to hear to Dhamma, contemplate, practice a gradual path of awakening. Yet there are times when the path changes suddenly and we can feel groundless. Both the gradual and sudden aspects of the path are part of what we develop and realize as part of understanding the preciousness of our human birth.
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Shakti Vihara
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Portal to Pure Presence
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2015-09-17
Four Stages in the Transformation of the Judgmental Mind
61:42
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Donald Rothberg
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We first cover an overview of the two main inter-related ways that transformation of the judgmental mind occurs: (1) mindfulness and investigation of judgments; and (2) cultivating awakened states, particularly through "heart practices." In this talk, we examine four stages of the first way: investigating and transforming judgments by first noticing them and becoming more mindful of them in terms of the body, core narratives, emotional energy, etc., and then going beneath the surface of judgments, revealing and transforming the underlying habitual tendencies and core limiting beliefs, often initially unconscious.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Transforming the Judgmental Mind
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2015-09-17
Preparing the fire
66:12
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Patrick Kearney
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Tonight we follow the Buddha from Isipatana, just north of Bārāṇasī, to Uruvelā, on the near side to the Nerañjarā river. At Bārāṇasī he converts some of the commercial elite of the city, and when he has 60 arahant students sends them off on missionary journeys. The Buddha himself goes on a targeted mission to convert a community of dreadlocks-wearing (jaṭila) ascetics to his teaching. He does so by “shirt-fronting” Uruvelā-Kassapa, the senior leader of this community, with his shamanic powers, in order to prepare the way for his third teaching.
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Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre
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Month Long Retreat led by Patrick Kearney
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2015-09-14
What is Mindfulness?
55:38
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Sally Armstrong
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Mindfulness is becoming very popular in many areas of modern life: as a stress reduction, in schools, prisons, hospitals, in the workplace and so on. But what is mindfulness, and what was the Buddha talking about when he encouraged us to practice it? Right mindfulness, or Samma Sati, develops wisdom and understanding, decreasing unwholesome states of mind, increasing wholesome ones and leading us to more freedom and clarity.
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Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center
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Three-Month Retreat - Part 1
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2015-09-12
The four truths
1:16:26
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Patrick Kearney
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Having opened the hearts of his five companions with his teaching of the middle way, the Buddha now teaches the four truths of the noble ones (cattāro ariya-saccāni). These are: dukkha; its arising; its cessation; and the path leading to its cessation. This discourse centres on dukkha and craving (taṇhā), because the Buddha is concerned here with what coloured his own practice before his awakening – his sense of drivenness, of trying to get in the future something missing now.
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Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre
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Month Long Retreat led by Patrick Kearney
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2015-09-12
Reflections on Sujātā
22:23
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Ayya Tathaloka
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It was Sujata who offered rice milk to the Buddha after his extreme austerities which included living on one grain of rice a day. Sujata, a laywoman, is remembered and commemorated in the Theravada tradition as ‘The First Disciple of the Buddha,’ there even directly before his awakening.
Talk given at Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery’s International Bhikkhuni Day celebration in 2015.
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Dhammadharini
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