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Dharma Talks
2019-08-15 A Gift from the Sea – Unbroken Paua Shell and Consummate Trust 42:15
Ayya Medhanandi
There are many skills and restorative qualities needed for us to grow in our spiritual work. Let us not underestimate the essential ingredient of mettā. This universal quality of love will unfailingly nurture the unfolding of the Noble Eightfold Path. It enhances our energy to persevere with courage, agility and joy so that the journey is sustainable and our trust becomes unwavering. We reach out more to others and support them in the good, while rejoicing that as we accomplish the Way, we draw close to the Buddha.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-15 Metta To Phenomena - Guided Meditation 44:16
Zohar Lavie
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-15 Dwell in Intrinsic Emptiness – The Liberating Quality of Loving-kindness 37:52
Ayya Medhanandi
What are the prerequisites and supports for walking such a path of awakening? Kindness and a loving forgiveness rank with those qualities that are foremost. They allow us to repair the seemingly unforgivable, to heal what we could not see or wish to see, to dwell in the real not in our concepts, and so to ascend with the strength gained from that groundwork. Try forgiveness first. Recovery opens the way home to healing, to Truth.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-15 Day 5 - Dukkha WOL - Meditation Instructions 45:23
Zohar Lavie
Meditation Instructions for Day 5
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-15 Don't Be Afraid, Mahanama – Lean Towards Nibbana 32:54
Ayya Medhanandi
The Buddha told Mahanama not to be afraid of the muddled mind, just to keep developing the qualities which incline the mind to Nibbana. This Dhamma is for one who is content. A mind unburdened can pacify itself and be calmed. A mind fortified by faith, virtue – in particular, the virtues dear to the noble ones – learning, generosity and wisdom, will go to distinction. But for mental peace we have to consider how to seclude the mind and what we are giving our consent to in daily life.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-14 Part 2 – The Answer is Love: Evolving out of “Bad Other” 45:37
Tara Brach
These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? The first talk looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame and self-hatred, as well as the importance of helping each other defuse the trance of unworthiness. The second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad othering.” These times need our deepened dedication to love: By intentionally arousing compassion for ourselves and others, we directly contribute to the evolution of consciousness in our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2019-08-14 Dukkha, Clinging, Metta 53:33
Zohar Lavie
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-14 Meditation: Everything Belongs 20:34
Tara Brach
This guided meditation awakens an embodied presence through a body scan, and invites us to rest in the breath, while allowing the different waves of sensations, feelings and sounds to come and go. When difficult experiences arise, we breathe with them, feeling them fully and mentally whispering, “this belongs,” or “this too.” By not resisting, we discover the sea of awareness that has room for all the waves.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2019-08-14 Repair What Feels Broken – The Hardest Walk of All 37:45
Ayya Medhanandi
The path is a gradual one. Don’t go to the depths immediately. First develop the strength. Going slowly but deeply. Forgiveness, supported by patience endurance, acknowledging and seeing the breakage and repairing it regularly, repairing what has been broken or harmed, and freeing ourselves from the prison of our anger. How can we creatively counter the current of our addictions instead of gratifying it. If we do, we tap into the joy of the heart.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-14 Right Intention 59:36
Yuka Nakamura
The Buddha emphasized intention as the key to happiness and peace. However, often we are not aware of the intentions behind our choices and actions. Based on the Dvedhāvitakka Sutta the talks discusses the unwholesome intentions of sensual desire, ill will and cruelty and the wholesome intentions of renunciation, lovingkindness and compassion. It also discusses central aspects of mental cultivation.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg 14 day Karuna and Vipassana Meditation Retreat

2019-08-14 Day 2 Guided Metta (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 40:08
Vinny Ferraro
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Insight & Loving Kindness

2019-08-14 Day 4 - Meditation Instructions - Anicca Change 55:54
Nathan Glyde
Meditation Instructions for Day 4
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-14 Practicing with Conflict 1 67:15
Donald Rothberg
The world deeply needs a culture of skillful conflict transformation, informed by dharma practice. In such a culture, we would have individuals who combine inner capacities such as mindfulness, skill with difficult emotions, empathy and compassion, and equanimity, with perspectives on how to work with conflicts, whether inner, interpersonal, or social. In this talk, we look at some of the prevalent social conditioning around being with conflict, including tendencies to avoid conflict or act out when there are conflicts, and widespread tendencies to see conflicts dualistically and to project negative aspects onto “opponents.” In this context, Donald presents some images and reflections from his just-completed time of teaching and traveling for 3 1/2 weeks in Israel and the West Bank. He then focuses on some of the inner capacities important for being skillful with conflict, next time examining some of the perspectives on conflict that have come out of the fields of mediation, negotiation, and conflict transformation. There is also a time of discussion.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
Attached Files:
  • Photos (from a PowerPoint presentation) connected with the talk, Practicing with Conflict 1 by Donald Rothberg (PDF)

2019-08-13 Time for Change 52:54
Nathan Glyde
If we weren't in opposition to life's changing nature how would life be?
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-13 A Mystical Ladder - Patience, the Incinerator of Defilements 39:26
Ayya Medhanandi
We are ascending a mystical ladder which must be done so carefully and gradually. For a spiritual warrior, the path of practice is a gradual one. We are in a cloud of unknowing but patiently the cloud is emptied and we begin to see everything as impermanent. We know what is the path and what is not. This clarity will be for us a refuge. It is a natural unfolding through purification.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-13 Metta - Guided Meditation 44:35
Zohar Lavie
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-13 Breaking the Cycle of Harm – Patience and Friendship With the Lovely 35:38
Ayya Medhanandi
The insight into not-self requires a deeper seeing and understanding of reality. Virtue is our saving grace. It gives us the energy for enlightenment which we transform into right effort. Thus we are guided through the wilderness of the world to develop and sustain the heart like an ocean of peace. Patience works with Restraint, Renunciation and Resolve, and with a host of other wholesome qualities to take us beyond the cycle of harm; but we must also keep practising kindness and forgiveness.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-13 Day 1 Morning Guided Sit (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 60:46
JoAnna Hardy
Day one of retreat - landing in the breath and body
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Insight & Loving Kindness

2019-08-13 What is Killing You - Thorns, Barnacles, and Buoys on the Middle Way 30:32
Ayya Medhanandi
When you know what is killing you then you will know what will save you. Right effort protects us and offers safety and seclusion. We find saving grace within if we can navigate through the wilderness of the mind assisted by a host of special qualities. It’s like being at sea. Through the thorns, barnacles and buoys on the Middle Way, learn and understand how to let go – be free. Nothing remains hidden to a true seeker.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-12 Perception and Hindrances 57:29
Zohar Lavie
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-12 The Body 49:09
Bhante Bodhidhamma
A talk given by Bhante Bodhidhamma at the Golden Buddha Centre in May 2019, entitled The Body. Bhante Bodhidhamma explains how the Buddha taught that awareness is the way of seeing the reality of what we are and finding liberation from suffering. First, through the contemplation of the body, then the contemplation of thoughts, feelings, and concepts, step by step he takes us through the process of realising intuitively that we are more than mind and body.
Satipanya Retreat Centre

2019-08-12 Understanding Impermanence - Week 8 - Talk 56:40
Mark Nunberg
Common Ground Meditation Center Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Impermanence

2019-08-12 Understanding Impermanence - Week 8 - Meditation 33:17
Mark Nunberg
Common Ground Meditation Center Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Impermanence

2019-08-12 A Swallowtail Butterfly at the Hummingbird Feeder 30:58
Ayya Medhanandi
The quality of energy manifest as courage, commitment and compassion is the way forward. We have to be brave – like a lion. Brave warriors face the powerful maras, monsters of the mind, to overcome them. They train the mind to gain its freedom by developing heroic energy and superpower wisdom. These qualities are further ennobled with forgiveness and association with true spiritual friends.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-12 Samatha - Concentration and Steadiness of Mind 49:37
Fred Von Allmen
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg 14 day Karuna and Vipassana Meditation Retreat

2019-08-12 Full Body Breath Energy - Guided Meditation 41:53
Nathan Glyde
Feeling or imagining the breath entering the body as a means to stabilize and balance the attention.
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

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

2019-08-12 Monday Night Dharma Talk 65:12
Amma Thanasanti
Spirit Rock Meditation Center

2019-08-12 Day 2 - Full Breath and Easing Tension - Meditation Instructions 66:18
Nathan Glyde
Meditation Instructions for Day 2
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-11 Life is Pressing, Pause 46:32
Nathan Glyde
The power of pausing (mindful and heartful), what we notice about existence; dukkha and release, and ways of relating that bring more freedom.
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

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

2019-08-11 Body and Breath - Guided Meditation 45:10
Zohar Lavie
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-11 Masquerade of the Hindrances - A Blameless Life 26:25
Ayya Medhanandi
Clearly see the danger of the hindrances in the mind and stop killing goodness. The story of Angulimala's life reveals the power of moral rehabilitation to end our harmful ways and urgently revert to the path of goodness, wholeness and purification. There’s no one to blame for our suffering. Instead, as spiritual warriors, we reset our moral compass, cross the floods of existence, and live blamelessly.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-11 Sincerity of the Heart 10:32
Ayya Santacitta
Mountain Stream Meditation Center

2019-08-11 Day 1 - Pause, Relax with Body and Breath - Meditation Instructions 50:20
Zohar Lavie
Meditation Instructions for Day 1
Freely Given Retreats A Wide and Wonderful Path

2019-08-11 Beautiful Qualities - Five of the Ten Perfections 20:15
Ayya Medhanandi
The Buddha taught about ten perfections or beautiful qualities of mind that are needed to help us cross the flood of samsara, the cycles of existence. The first five of these are generosity, virtue, energy, wisdom and renunciation. When embodied, these qualities help to lead us out of the prison of impermanence. Overcoming ignorance and responding to life with greater joy, we live compassionate and harmless.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-10 Day 5 Choral Chanting (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 25:19
Rachel Lewis, La Sarmiento
La Sarimento leads "This Little Light of Mine" with ukulele, and Rachel Lewis leads two chants for Quan Yin with harmony parts.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Young Adult Retreat

2019-08-10 How To Cross the Flood - Seven Enlightenment Practices 37:34
Ayya Medhanandi
The Buddha answers a deva who wants to know how to cross the flood of sensuality, the flood of existence, and all its dangers. Walk the Middle Way, he taught, not stopping and not over-struggling with obstacles. Use the seven enlightenment practices to train our minds so that we can make this dangerous and urgent crossing. No matter how long it takes, never give up.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-10 Rapping on the Coffin 25:23
Dhammadīpā
a talk on death and its teaching of radical honesty
Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery

2019-08-10 I Will Not Be Angry – How Ajahn Gunhah Won the Hearts of Outlaws 12:33
Ayya Medhanandi
Laying down weaponry, giving up hostility, we can abandon negativity and establish sanctuary within us. We hear the inspirational tale of how Ajahn Gunhah transformed his kidnappers in northern Thailand. Through his embodiment of mettā they became his disciples, just as the Buddha had done with his adversaries 2600 years ago. Such is the power of pure mettā - good will or loving kindness. It is our true protection from harm. We too can rescue ourselves by developing it with great inner vigilance, wisdom, compassion and courage.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-09 Dharma and Recovery 1:54:55
Kevin Griffin
Spirit Rock Meditation Center

2019-08-08 Dharmas Without Blame 40:52
James Baraz
With such disorienting events such as mass shootings in the news, how can we find our balance and hold things with equanimity, compassion and a wise dharma perspective. That is the theme for this talk.
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2019-08-08 "Here Comes the Judge. Here Comes the Judge" (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 55:11
La Sarmiento
The Dharma of the Judging and Comparing Mind
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Young Adult Retreat

2019-08-08 27 guided meditation: compassion for a good friend, and self-compassion 20:46
Jill Shepherd
Practising with compassion for a good friend who is currently experiencing some challenges, then offering compassion to oneself
Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre Strengthening the two wings of Awakening: Wisdom and Compassion

2019-08-08 26 instructions: compassion and working with painful emotions 19:43
Jill Shepherd
Some suggestions for working with painful emotions, and using compassion and self-compassion as antidotes to afflictive mind-states
Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre Strengthening the two wings of Awakening: Wisdom and Compassion

2019-08-07 Part 1 – The Answer is Love: Evolving out of “Bad Other” 51:08
Tara Brach
These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? The first talk looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame and self-hatred, as well as the importance of helping each other defuse the trance of unworthiness. The second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad othering.” These times need our deepened dedication to love: By intentionally arousing compassion for ourselves and others, we directly contribute to the evolution of consciousness in our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2019-08-07 Meditation: Cultivating a Kind Attention 18:48
Tara Brach
Using the image and felt sense of a smile, we scan through the body, and awaken a sense of aliveness, presence and tenderness. The practice then extends to mindfully include all sounds, sensations, and feelings; and when difficult experience arises, to intentionally offer care. We close with an offering of loving kindness to our own being, to others who are suffering and to all life everywhere.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2019-08-06 Cutting Through Our Stories (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 57:15
Tempel Smith
Keeping your attention directly at the sense doors lets us cut through our habit of being lost in thought. As mindfulness increases, we can eventually by mindful of thought as it arises.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Young Adult Retreat

2019-08-05 Understanding Impermanence - Week 7 - Meditation 31:55
Shelly Graf
Common Ground Meditation Center Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Impermanence

2019-08-05 Understanding Impermanence - Week 7- Talk 25:24
Shelly Graf
Common Ground Meditation Center Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Impermanence

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