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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
in English
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2024-12-13
The Three Supports and the Three Characteristics (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
58:53
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Mei Elliott
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This talk explores how the three supports (faith/confidence, well-being, and stability/concentration) provide the necessary conditions for insight into the three characteristics (impermanence, suffering, and not-self). In doing so, a map of the development of practice is unfolded, covering how insight occurs, what the insights are, and how they culminate in liberation.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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December Insight Retreat: Cultivating Calm, Contentment, and Confidence
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2024-12-11
Understanding and Practicing with Anger
63:35
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore the intersection of our more inner practice and our practice with the larger world, including the U.S. post-election world. Our starting point is seeing how widespread and predominant the emotions of anger and fear are in our society. We look particularly at the nature of anger and how to practice with it, especially in terms of our own anger but also in terms of the anger of others.
Anger, it has been said, is the most confusing emotion in Western civilization, seen often over the last 2500 years sometimes as both entirely as negative and sometimes as a quality that manifests, for example, in the Jewish prophets, Jesus, and God. There's a confusion also among Western Buddhists, who may have conditioning related to aversion to anger combined with following problematic translations of terms like dosa (entirely negative in the Buddhist context) as "anger" (not entirely negative in the contemporary Western context).
Based on these explorations of the nature of anger, we look at how to practice with anger individually, especially through mindful investigation of anger and how anger can lead either to reactivity and the formation of reactive views of self and/or other, or to skillful action. We also explore practicing with the anger of others through empathy practice.
The talk is followed by discussion and sharing, including of the experiences of practicing with anger from several people. The meditation before the talk includes a guided exploration of an experience of anger in the last third of the meditation period (the meditation is also on Dharma Seed).
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-12-08
Wisdom Power
27:01
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Treasure the silence within and listen attentively. Where else can we find the spiritual heights but within our own heart? In one moment of pure presence, we discover the joy, patience, mindfulness and 'kindfulness' that open our eyes to the truth of what we are. And in the goodness of time, there’s an emptying out. It's almost by unlearning what we’ve learned that we can see the blank screen of nothingness in the mind and know pure consciousness itself. This transcendent awareness becomes our refuge. We no longer look for refuge in other people, nor in ideas, concepts, occupations, travels, wealth, information, anything of the world. The heart is overjoyed in simple homage to the breath we breathe right now. This is waking up through wisdom power – pure presence ever transcending.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-12-06
Spiritual Joy
25:18
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Giving our full attention inwardly is waking up to the truth of pure presence. In one breath, one moment of pure awareness, we can know a spiritual joy that deeply calms the mind. The shutters of the heart open to a piercing clarity that cuts through the blinding deceptions of the world. Here in the silence at the very core of our being, we listen. The heart fills with joy and light, resplendent – just as the morning sun emerging from the horizon lights up the world. What we have been seeking far and wide is right here within us – seeing and knowing our true nature as it really is, we receive the gift of Unconditional Love
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-12-05
Metta as Refuge
35:02
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Leslie Booker
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A response to where we are in this time in our history when everything might seem a bit topsy turvy and upside down. The political commentator Melissa Harris Perry refers to this kind of confusion as trying to stand up straight in a crooked room. Many of us have been secluding, isolating, putting up walls as armour, as protection - in order to not feel the full catastrophe. Many of us are here because we’re ready to lay that armour down, to engage with life and be alive again. And so this afternoons reflections will be on how we can rest in Metta as refuge.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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In the Presence of Love: A Mettā & Qigong Retreat
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2024-11-27
Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness
24:12
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Tara Brach
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Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.” This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. - Thomas Merton
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-11-27
Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship
52:35
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Tara Brach
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Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group. The audio includes a poem of blessing by John O’Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya (from the archives).
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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