Joy and happiness are essential aspects of the journey to awakening. This talk explores the role they play and how they can be developed through mudita, virtue, nature, generosity, concentration and insight
We are all philosophers of happiness. Retreat practice provides the opportunity to examine our strategies and model of the good life. We often find that we have a redemptive hope in clinging.
This talk highlights how we cling and explores a path of letting go.
(retreat talk) - By dedicating ourselves to loving the life that is right here--ourselves--we discover the heartspace that holds this world. This talk explores the pathways of forgiveness, offering and letting in love, and gratitude that reveal the vastness of loving presence.
The eight fold path is often emphasized as the set of practices that support us to reach liberation. It is also described as being the" possession" of those who are liberated. So we can understand that in our practice of the eight fold path, we are emulating those who are free.
This 2-part series explores conditioned and unconditioned happiness: What blocks us from experiencing true well-being, and the skillful means that allow this natural expression of our being to shine through.
All conditioned things (read: everything) are constantly changing. These were the Buddha’s last words to us. To the degree to which we are able to live this truth is to the degree that we end our struggle with life and live in this world with happiness and ease. All aspects of this retreat including the sitting and walking instructions, the dharma talk and even the format of the retreat will incorporate the teachings of change.
All conditioned things (read: everything) are constantly changing. These were the Buddha’s last words to us. To the degree to which we are able to live this truth is to the degree that we end our struggle with life and live in this world with happiness and ease. All aspects of this retreat including the sitting and walking instructions, the dharma talk and even the format of the retreat will incorporate the teachings of change.
Nibbana or Nirvana is the final goal of meditation practice From the time we begin the practice we begin to experience peace and happiness until we realize final liberation.
The Buddha clearly described how suffering (dukkha) comes to be in the teaching of dependent origination. Understanding this teaching helps us to recognize this process at work in our own minds, which allows mindfulness and wisdom to begin to uproot the fundamental cause of dukkha: ignorance.
This 2-part series explores conditioned and unconditioned happiness: What blocks us from experiencing true well-being, and the skillful means that allow this natural expression of our being to shine through.
We review and explore how crucial and challenging the root human problem as that of ignorance. We then examine in more depth the roots of personal ignorance, particularly as represented as limiting beliefs and how to access and transform such ignorance.
The inter-relationship between inner and outer. Knowing that we belong as a basis for meeting and responding to the suffering of our world, both inner and outer.
This talk summarizes the learnings from sitting in on practice interviews, IMS staff, and advise and personal reflections about continuous mindfulness.
Reflecting on mindfulness of body, which helps us to slow down and study the mind. It supports the sensitivity of heart, and is the way to walk our talk'.
When the experience of vedana - of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling tone - is not clearly seen with wisdom, it tends to lead on towards craving and suffering. With mindfulness of feeling, we understand feeling's nature as impermanent, which leads us towards peace.
Though its role in the process of waking up is pivotal, intention is very subtle, rarely conscious, and outside the control of self. Purification of intention is made possible through calm awareness of the things we think/do/say, kindness, and non-judging.
There are ordinary people in our life that care about our well-being. This guided meditation supports us to recognise and receive their care. (Adapted from John Makransky, in Awakening Through Love)
What will it take to have us collectively awaken to the suffering of our earth and respond? This talk looks at how we are destroying our larger body, the earth; what stops us from recognizing and opening to the suffering of loss, and ways we can evolve our consciousness and act on behalf of this precious life.
Over the years of practice we work with the precepts in a number of ways—using resolve and restraint, becoming acquainted with our karmic patterns and feeling the consequences of these, and strengthening skillful states by noticing what it feels like to do good, to behave well.
