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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

2022-02-24 Reflection - Reading "Stopping the War" chapter 27 from Steven Levine's book "Healing Into Life and Death" 56:32
Marcia Rose
Mountain Hermitage 2 Week ONLINE Samatha-Vipassana Retreat for Experienced Students

2022-01-17 11 talk: three characteristics and contemplation of death 37:56
Jill Shepherd
Exploring the universal characteristics of impermanence and not-self, and how these can come together in the contemplation of death to support living with more ease, happiness and peace
Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre Deepening into stillness, opening to peace

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

2021-12-11 Q&A 51:20
Ajahn Sucitto
00:12 Being at ease with suffering; 08:55 Time and space; 16:09 How to sit with constant pain; 20:23 Energy is blocked in the throat; 24:42 How to fully realize and penetrate suffering; 29:50 Hyper-tension; 36:44 Not taking things personally; 42:08 How to truly forgive; 44:31 Clearing ill-will; 46:10 Liberation through the deathless.
London Insight Meditation Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management

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)

2021-11-14 Reflections On Death And Birth That Support Presense 47:59
Brian Lesage
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center Second 3-Week Insight Meditation Retreat

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

2021-09-08 A Conversation Between Tara and Mark Nepo 1:16:49
Tara Brach
Mark is a spiritual teacher, wonderful poet, and author of many books including best selling The Book of Awakening. In this wide-ranging and rich conversation, Tara and Mark explore shedding our defenses, faith, compassion for ourselves and others, spiritual practice, and facing illness, aging and death.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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

2021-06-19 Maranasati ~ Recollection of Death 55:30
Ayya Santacitta
Talk & Guided Meditation | Canmore Theravada Buddhist Community
Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery

2021-06-19 Rebirth and Death 22:34
Ayya Santussika
Karuna Buddhist Vihara

2021-06-13 Death 32:11
Anushka Fernandopulle
True North Insight Body as Nature, Nature in the Body: Dharma and Our Connection to the Earth

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

2021-06-02 Day 4 Q&A2 50:15
Ajahn Sucitto
Shifts of energy and bodily effects: verbal vs. non-verbal insights; distinction between flood (ogha) and outflow (āsava); how to prepare for aging and death; with things that matter when and how to speak up and when to refrain from speech and actions; self and other/regret/family.
Cittaviveka Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload

2021-06-02 Day 4 Q&A2 50:15
Ajahn Sucitto
Shifts of energy and bodily effects: verbal vs. non-verbal insights; distinction between flood (ogha) and outflow (āsava); how to prepare for aging and death; with things that matter when and how to speak up and when to refrain from speech and actions; self and other/regret/family.
Cittaviveka Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload

2021-05-14 Death contemplation, Dhamma talk 1:36:46
Bhante Sujato, Bhante Akāliko
At Harris Park – no chanting due to Covid restrictions. Death contemplation led by Bhante Akāliko, Dhamma talk by Bhante Sujato: Vesak series, "What did the Buddha get wrong?"
Lokanta Vihara

2021-05-08 Unshakable Deliverance of Mind 31:41
Ajahn Sucitto
Mind always has some purpose to it. The aim is to keep refining that, keep it from becoming corrupted. Sustain inner awareness and disengagement. The unshakable deliverance of mind is the ultimate goal, not shaken by the circumstances of life, aging, sickness and death. (Sutta reference: MN 29)
Cittaviveka At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down

2021-05-06 Saying Goodbye: When a Friend Dies 60:25
James Baraz
This past week James felt very fortunate to be with one of his dearest friends in his final days died. This talk explores that life passage. How can we say goodbye to a loved one and grieve fully with the understanding that death is a natural part of the life cycle? How can practice help us through that process?
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley

2021-05-05 If You Were to Die Tonight... 65:14
Ayya Anandabodhi
The Buddha encouraged us to reflect on the fact that death could come at any time. This sobering reflection, when used in the right way, brings sharpness and clarity as to what is important in our lives
Spirit Rock Meditation Center The Four Protective Meditations: Developing Courage to Meet the Way Things Truly Are

2021-05-05 The Next Breath is Not Guaranteed 43:49
Dhammadīpā
Mindfulness of the breath, endings, and the nearness of death
Spirit Rock Meditation Center The Four Protective Meditations: Developing Courage to Meet the Way Things Truly Are

2021-05-05 Where Does It Come From ~ Where Does It All Go? 29:46
Ayya Santacitta
A talk on Maranasati ~ Recollection of Death
Spirit Rock Meditation Center The Four Protective Meditations: Developing Courage to Meet the Way Things Truly Are

2021-05-05 Returning to the Mystery We Came From ~ Maranasati 52:51
Ayya Santacitta
A guided meditation on death & dying
Spirit Rock Meditation Center The Four Protective Meditations: Developing Courage to Meet the Way Things Truly Are

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

2021-04-08 Death and Dying 57:42
Sylvia Boorstein, James Baraz
Sylvia and James will have a conversation about death and dying something they have both been recently practicing with in their personal lives.
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley

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

2021-03-20 The Truth of Impermanence and Death as Transformation 49:08
Alisa Dennis
Impermanence can be found all around us in Nature. Our bodies exist in Nature and so we are impermanent too. This is an exploration of mindfulness of death and dying as an opportunity to practice letting go while we are living, as preparation for focusing our attention with ease and alertness as we take our last breath in these bodies. Maranasati supports present moment awareness and the deepening of appreciation for life. The deathbed can provide an extraordinary opportunity to cultivate embodied awareness and compassion for self and others. An exploration of death not as the end of life, but as transportation into another realm of consciousness.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-20 Inquiry: Repeating Questions 10minutes each way each question 8:33
Eugene Cash
Tell me something you know about death. Tell me something you don’t know about death.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-19 Normalizing Death 47:51
Eugene Cash
Exploring our understanding of death conventionally and from a Buddhist perspective
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-19 Inquiry: Monologue 10minutes per person 33:45
Eugene Cash
What is your personal relationship with Death?
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-16 One Year Hence day 2 -- Impermanence, Death, and Equanimity 39:39
Kim Allen
Second of 5
Insight Santa Cruz

2021-03-15 24 talk: impermanence 33:23
Jill Shepherd
An introduction to the three universal characteristics of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self, focusing on impermanence then briefly touching into death contemplation
Te Moata Retreat Center :  Finding the heart of freedom

2021-01-27 Maranasati: Normalizing Death 58:42
Eugene Cash
Buddhist myth includes an alternative version of the Buddha's path in alignment with the Heavenly Messengers. Gotama Siddhartha wakes up to his 'intoxication' with youth, health, and life. He lets go of being intoxicated and seeks awakening.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Heavenly Messengers: Awakening through Illness, Aging, and Death with Debra Chamberlin-Taylor, Bonnie Duran, PhD, Leslie Booker and Eugene Cash

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)

2020-12-11 'Unestablished' Citta 40:55
Ajahn Sucitto
Citta can have sore spots, particularly volatile reactions that spin it out into planning. There’s the possibility of not being in that compulsive grip, of turning to the deathless element. Citta can be trained to withdraw into its own stillness, its own knowing.
Bodhi College Citta: Mind, Heart, Spirit

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

2020-09-06 Q&A – Desire, Hatred, Deathless and Boundaries 44:45
Ajahn Sucitto
How to manage inconvenient feelings of attraction; reacting impulsively towards sexual desire and hatred; working with boredom and drowsiness; how does one turn towards the deathless; is nibbana “a ground of being”; what does the use of “internal and external” mean?
Cittaviveka At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down

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

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