If we investigate, we will find that much suffering arises out of mistrust--of ourselves, others and life. This talk explores the genesis of the great challenges of doubt and mistrust, and the pathway to trusting the goodness that is our essence.
In the context of wise speech practice, we continue to explore being aware of feelings and needs and introduce skillful ways to identify "how things are" through "observations."
The right views of the four stages of the Eightfold Path development support practices to purify speech and behavior, the mind and understanding, resulting in happiness of harmony, happiness of tranquility and happiness of peace.
We have allowed our planet to be run by an elite, which is not at all connected to what happens on the ground. This alienation needs to come to an end.
We have each disconnected our mind from the ensemble of our being, and allowed it to be run by our ego. Unless we reconnect, we will continue to live mindlessly.
When we see the world through the veil of our ego, our love flows in distorted and confused ways. Through mindfulness and metta and insight we can begin to understand these conditioned patterns and transform them into love and connection.
Learning how to work skillfully with the pleasant experiences that arise from the development of metta and concentration is an important part of supporting the deepening of these practices.
For many of us, the most apparent junctures of spiritual transformation are spurred on by challenging life situations. This talk looks at how our conscious aspiration for awakening, and our practice of mindful presence, can help us find peace, compassion and freedom when difficulties arise.
This joyful talk illuminates the practice of resting in present moment awareness. His experience being studied in an FMRI is also recounted, with the results of recent academic studies on meditation practice.
This joyful talk illuminates the practice of resting in present moment awareness. His experience being studied in an FMRI is also recounted, with the results of recent academic studies on meditation practice.
The practice of metta is powerful and challenging because it works on so many levels - the personal, the relative and the transcendent. Opening to all these levels and being willing to work with whatever arises makes this practice deeply transformative.
After a review of last time, of the importance of speech practice and the ethical guidelines for wise speech, we explore two ways of cultivating mindfulness in our speech, concluding with an exercise to cultivate inner and outer attention at the same time.
Emotion Management Techniques (EMT) are various mindful and skillful ways of transforming difficult emotions into opportunities for awakening.
Through full understanding of the emotions and their true nature, we begin to open our heart and respond to the emotions with compassion and wisdom and thereby experience greater happiness and freedom.
The Buddha taught that "Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind." This talk explores how our intention and attention can tap into the living awareness that is our source, and give rise to healing of body, heart and spirit.
A discussion of the importance of speech practice and of the four ethical guidelines for wise speech, inviting initial practice of cultivating wise speech.
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 Meditation) What is necessary for maintaining our practice in daily life, through inspiration, silence, Sangha and informal practice of mindfulness.
The Buddha seems to be encouraging an exploration of the themes of death and the body in this passage of the Satipatthana Sutta. Though all of us know we are going to die, few of us realize that fact as a living truth. This passage is meant to release us from our denial that fixates on permanency and continuity.
What is the Buddha's teaching on interdependence that arises from practice & what is his teaching on the nature of reality. It is inter- dependent and inter-connected.
Our speech practice deepens when we take difficult speech situations as becoming opportunities. We explore the centrality of working skillfully with reactivity; the possibility of becoming more skilled with finding non-dual approaches to conflict and how there are always openings for practice, even when the other seems uninterested in communication.
We explore three increasingly subtle aspects of wisdom and the speech practices related to each of them: (1) the wisdom to know what is wholesome and unwholesome, particularly in an ethical context; (2) the wisdom to know suffering and the roots of suffering, and freedom and its roots; (3) the wisdom to know the nature of more direct experience and the nature of concepts. In all types of wisdom, the basis is the close study of experience, leading to insight and clear seeing.
